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BUCKEYEAMPS Hypex NCx500 Amplifier 2channel Review

restorer-john said:
OK. It's really simple.

Continuous power is just that. No pissing around.

How much continuous power can your amplifier deliver at its rated distortion, bandwidth and at what load impedance? Not for 10 seconds. Not for 30 seconds. Not for for 1 minute before exploding. 5 minutes is the latest 'cop-out', but for me, it should be indefinite.
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Absolutely. The word can't really be interpreted any other way. Continously = Indefinitely (until brown out.)
 
sarumbear said:
The SMPS is not the power amplifier. it’s a free standing unit. Do you measure a power amplifier output power by the SPL value of a speaker connected to it? Then why would you measure the power supply output capacity with the power output of the amplifier its feeding?
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You ask them. They want you to use them with their modules and see no other applications for them. That's what they tested and that's what they advertised. You are allowed to not agree.

1691328298874.png
 
restorer-john said:
@Apollon Audio How about addressing your misrepresentation I spoke of in post #102? Waiting...

Hint: Admit to the deception.
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What do you mean with misrepresentation?

What about my Stepped level sweep is a misrepresentation for you? If I say that it is impressive how the NCx500 module performs in a Stepped Level Sweep, it is not a misrepresentation.
 
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Holdt said:
Absolutely. The word can't really be interpreted any other way. Continously = Indefinitely (until brown out.)
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or your dummy loads catch fire!;)
 
PeteL said:
A few toughts:
  • I am also in the camp that peak power is the spec that matter more for music and program reproduction but it doesn't change the fact that it should be clear in the specs of the amp.
  • Whatever the advertised power spec is, their is no excuse on the amp not shutting down per circuit protection before being damaged. If Hypex own protection is insufficient, you design some.
  • Manufacturer claims a faulty power supply, maybe, we are not fully sure of that by the information provided. Manufacturer offered a replacement PSU, it's fair but in my book it's not what a great warranty is. You provide shipping labels, you get the whole amp, You fix it, pass it trough quality control and send it back. If that's too long you ship a new amp.
  • That said, I get it. This is very inexpensive for what you get, profit on this is extremely tight. Sometime you get what you are willing to pay for.
  • As other have said specs appears to be misleading when put against Hypex specs for Power supply, but also maybe the module (the x version is not freely available but general construction and heat management suggest no major changes in continuous power capabilities). It is not up to the reviewer to dig what theoretically the amp can do. He is provided with the manufacturer's advertised specs, but for the rest of us, It could be interesting to know how long it was demanded to this amp to run over 100W continuously, If it had been running above 325W more than 10 sec, if proper cooling time was done in between tests. Again not that he should have, but good info to assess.
  • I personally had a NC500 module (previous) die. I initially suspected the PSU too because nothing was powering on but it was the module. Not sure how the manufacturer, from remote knows for sure that it's the PSU that died. Are we sure? Has the amp been opened? In all cases yes, shit may happen, but it is still a fail. I seem to understand that the manufacturer rely on some third party for test and measurements. It also suggest that the QC capacity may be a bit limited. Again, I get it. Cost.
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Good points and very reasonable.

The one point I would question, though, is your third point, that the manufacturer should provide a whole new amp instead of a new PSU. I think we need to consider the context of this particular case before making assumptions about @Buckeye Amps ' customer service or warranty practices. The amp here is currently in the hands of someone who's testing it, not the end-consumer. There is probative value in putting a replacement PSU into the original amp: to test the hypothesis that the PSU was (a) the source of the problem and (b) faulty.

If someone just bought a Buckeye amp for personal use and the power supply failed, we do not know if they would be offered a new PSU or a whole new amp. It is possible (probable, in my opinion), that Dylan of Buckeye would send them a whole replacement amp, for two reasons: (1) to make the customer whole and given them security that they're getting a perfectly functioning, all-new amp, and (2) to get the amp back so he could examine it himself to see what exactly went wrong.

In this case, that 2nd reason is being addressed, at least for now, by @thin bLue . So I would say we should hold off on judging Buckeye in this regard.
 
Apollon Audio said:
What do you mean with misrepresentation?

What about my Stepped level sweep is a misrepresentation for you? If I say that it is impressive how the NCx500 module performs, it is not a misrepresentation.
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You know full well what I am talking about. It's your credibility at stake here, not mine. You have a 'massive' 87 posts on ASR and I think I've posted over 11,000 posts. I have no commercial dog in this fight, but, you do.
 
Chrispy said:
The only actual rating is that by the final product manufacturer, tho. You can verify it/dispute it, but it's still what the manufacturer/brand provides for the finished product. It's not easy to find the full details with some using these modules....let alone verified for the finished product vs the module's ideal spec.
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Sorry, no. Your claim that "the only actual rating is that by the final product manufacturer" is a tautological claim: you're arguing that the manufacturer's rating is the only "actual" one by simply asserting that this is what "actual" means. The actual performance of the kind of amp we're discussing cannot be fully described with a single wattage number. The official or standardized rating is indeed the manufacturer's rating, and there is no disagreement that this rating should be what the amp can produce, contininously, at any and every frequency from 20Hz to 20kHz. The question is the value of additional specifications for continuous power in a major part of the full frequency spectrum, and/or for peak power. But I don't think anyone is disagreeing that the topline power rating should be for continuous power.
 
I would be interested in seeing a comparison of different heat sinking solutions for these amps/SMPS.

How thick do you need the case? What material? Does a TIM help? What are the effects of heat fins? How well can the amp perform at various ambient temps? How about active airflow? Even water cooling?

These amps seem to be limited by their ability to dissipate heat, especially at abusive phase angles. What I don’t know is how they react to (more expensive) cooling solutions.
 
mdsimon2 said:
I might have missed it but was the mains voltage monitored during testing? I wonder if the lower power is the result of voltage sag?
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You are right in that mains voltage should be noted, monitored and/or regulated during testing. Especially with these incredibly high powered class D amplifiers.
 
Bird_of_Hermes said:
I believe he mentioned his nominal mains voltage at some point in the thread.

He also asked Apollon to ship the amp to S. Korea, so I would assume that they use the 220V that I found online.
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I was about to edit but you ninja'd me :)
So,no problem,220V is in the high power zone.
What I didn't see in the .pdf is if it has PFC capabilitty,like the modern PSU's.
 
Bird_of_Hermes said:
I believe he mentioned his nominal mains voltage at some point in the thread.

He also asked Apollon to ship the amp to S. Korea, so I would assume that they use the 220V that I found online.
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Like with most unregulated smps power supplies, if your mains voltage is lower, the power supply will also output lower DC voltage per rail. For instance here in Slovenia we have around 245V AC. With this voltage the SMPS 1200 power supply outputs 90-92V DC per rail. The higher the DC votage that the NCx500 module gets for instance, the more peak power it will output. If your mains voltage is 90-100V AC for instance, the smps 1200 power supply will output only around 75-80V DC per rail. This will result in lower peak power of the amplifier module.
 
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Sokel said:
I was about to edit but you ninja'd me :)
So,no problem,220V is in the high power zone.
What I didn't see in the .pdf is if it has PFC capabilitty,like the modern PSU's.
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I know that Buckeye advertises their new PSU contracted from Micro Audio has this capability:

Whereas others rely on using multiple power supplies, Micro Audio has produced an SMPS exclusively for Buckeye Amps to power our 3ch NCx amplifier to full specs. This not only lowers cost but increases reliability and brings with it better efficiency due to Active Power Factor Correction.
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He doesn’t mention if he will use this SMPS on his stereo/mono options, but I assume he would.

@MicroAudio this is outside the scope of this thread, but I would appreciate it if you could talk about your PSU’s PFC and the benefits it might bring to consumers audio solutions?
 
tmtomh said:
Good points and very reasonable.

The one point I would question, though, is your third point, that the manufacturer should provide a whole new amp instead of a new PSU. I think we need to consider the context of this particular case before making assumptions about @Buckeye Amps ' customer service or warranty practices. The amp here is currently in the hands of someone who's testing it, not the end-consumer. There is probative value in putting a replacement PSU into the original amp: to test the hypothesis that the PSU was (a) the source of the problem and (b) faulty.

If someone just bought a Buckeye amp for personal use and the power supply failed, we do not know if they would be offered a new PSU or a whole new amp. It is possible (probable, in my opinion), that Dylan of Buckeye would send them a whole replacement amp, for two reasons: (1) to make the customer whole and given them security that they're getting a perfectly functioning, all-new amp, and (2) to get the amp back so he could examine it himself to see what exactly went wrong.

In this case, that 2nd reason is being addressed, at least for now, by @thin bLue . So I would say we should hold off on judging Buckeye in this regard.
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Perhaps, but suggest he found good middle ground in this case. Unless it is clear the tester is credible and is not intending to do destructive testing, could simply have denied warranty coverage.

Agree on replacing the entire amp versus just the supply. However, like comparable audio vendors, he runs a lean shop and diagnosing means either shipping modules back to the supplier or to a repair shop. Doing this very often either translates into higher prices or potentially going out of business.
 
Rick Sykora said:
Perhaps, but suggest he found good middle ground in this case. Unless it is clear the tester is credible and is not intending to do destructive testing, could simply have denied warranty coverage.

Agree on replacing the entire amp versus just the supply. However, like comparable audio vendors, he runs a lean shop and diagnosing means either shipping modules back to the supplier or to a repair shop. Doing this very often either translates into higher prices or potentially going out of business.
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Doesn't the original supplier (Hypex) cover the cost of failed units?
I believe they sell the same unit in their diy shop,wouldn't they cover it for me if it failed?
So,it only comes down to shipping cost.
A subject very much debated about Chinese suppliers.
 
Apollon Audio said:
Like with most unregulated smps power supplies, if your mains voltage is lower, the power supply will also output lower DC voltage per rail. For instance here in Slovenia we have around 245V AC. With this voltage the SMPS 1200 power supply outputs 90-92V DC per rail. The higher the DC votage that the NCx500 module gets for instance, the more peak power it will output. If your mains voltage is 90-100V AC for instance, the smps 1200 power supply will output only around 75-80V DC per rail. This will result in lower peak power of the amplifier module.
Click to expand...

Just an aside, before someone says something, I would like to point out the potential confusion about the terms used in the datasheets such as "Peak Power Output". I could be wrong, but I think their 700 W spec actually referred to average power output and the "Peak" refers to a short but not specified/quantified duration in ms or s, and it would have been better if they had specified the duration such as what they stated elsewhere for the PS, such as (arbitrary example only) 700 W average for 10 seconds heat sink temperature <-75 deg C.

If they truly mean peak power than we have consider average power output = 2X peak power output, for sine wave. I would at least give them the credit for avoiding the technically incorrect RMS power output that most other manufacturers use.
 
restorer-john said:
OK. It's really simple.

Continuous power is just that. No pissing around.

How much continuous power can your amplifier deliver at its rated distortion, bandwidth and at what load impedance? Not for 10 seconds. Not for 30 seconds. Not for for 1 minute before exploding. 5 minutes is the latest 'cop-out', but for me, it should be indefinite.
Click to expand...
I think everybody agrees on that, not sure what is your gripe. I don't think it's worth fighting over semantics. We also agree that Buckeye's spec are at least incomplete. I said it before, specifications standards are unconsolidated, and not enforced, If they where there would not have these arguments. Sure we know what continuous power mean, but do we know what Peak Power means? Maybe Manufacturers don't use it because it is fundamentally unclear? I mean for the longest time, it was burst momentary power, and was limited by your capacitors reserve. There is no such thing as dynamic power on class D and it's limited by the thermal metrics, maybe the standards should be updated to match the reality that class D is dominating the market and not going anywhere soon? so what metric to specify what your amp can do for short periods, which is important and is what we demand of an amplifier in daily use. Seconds? at least the average joe can understand that. Celcius? Nobody is able to measure that (maybe technical reviewers should) In the meantime anything will go and we'll have debates like that.
 
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