Dual Mono vs single power supply stereo?

[Nosu]

Hi guys,

Newbie here, just getting into the whole hifi thing, please go easy!

I recently purchased a Perlisten S7t and trying to decide on an amp to drive the units.

Upon browsing some ready made Purif or Hypex products, I noticed that there are dual mono with individual psu for each amp module or stereo with 1 psu driving both amp modules.

Obviously the stereo version is much cheaper than the dual mono, so I was wondering if it’s worth paying the extra?

 

[NTK]

Welcome to ASR!

The performance benefit of monobloc vs stereo, IMO, is extremely minimal. Most music signals will have a much higher crest factor than the sine waves used to spec (and test for the) the maximum amplifier output power. What that means is that the average power you will use your amplifier for is going to be much lower than the rated output in the spec sheet. Along with the dynamic nature of music, the momentary peak power you'll need will be a lot higher than the average. The power supplies, through their reserve capacitors, can usually be able to sustain higher output than their continuous output rating for a short period of time, and are usually sufficient to cover those momentary peaks. Having a separate power supply for each channel, is therefore IMO an overkill with hardly any realizable benefits.

 

[GS430man]

The Perlisten S7t (great speakers!) suggests 100-600 watt amplifiers. You can get excellent amps in that power range that are mono blocks, stereo, or multichannel.

Suggest you use one of the online calculators to figure out your power requirements...depends on the number of speakers, listening distance, and your preferred content, primarily. Once you have your peak requirements sorted out, then you can review amplifiers in your power range. There will be many options, so you want to look at all the other features in detail and decide what is important to your use case.

Great amps can be monoblock or stereo or multichannel with a single or multiple PSU (s). Enjoy the search!

 

[Chrispy]

There's an amp designer by name of Douglas Self who said something to the effect that monoblocks mostly add to the cost of the amplification as so many things need duplicating and that the possible advantage, i.e. reduced crosstalk, is negligible with any decent two ch amp already.

 

[john61ct]

Some using balanced in a large room believe there is a benefit to parking the monobloc close to the speaker so those cables are short.

Or with DIY just want to "go active", put all the electronics internal.

Some just like the way monoblocs look.

I'm running out of reasons...

 

[Sokel]

Dual mono makes sense in separate boxes (so, full mono), where one can do good thermals without going huge on enclosure.
It also makes sense when one PSU's power is not enough for the application (not the norm but neither rare either) .

 

[Nosu]

Thank you for the replies! I decided to go the stereo option with 1 power supply

 

[LTig]

Using 2 ps instead of one identical ps in a stereo power amp in theory doubles the current the amp can deliver. It may make sense if the amp can actually deliver more current with 2 ps in the box and if the speaker load does require it.

One can get similar current delivery with 1 ps if one amp is fed with an inverted signal (180 degree phase) and the loudspeaker terminal is wired accordingly. Doesn't work with bridged amps, though.

 

[Aimarketingbot]

I moved my British Bi-amped setup to a single housing dual tpa3255 chip amp and it drives my 4 way 200W 8 ohm towers to x-max on a 350W/7.3A single PSU... It is about 1/20th the size of the old setup, lower noise floor and makes more power and it's 99 USD excl PSU lol.

There are people on here who have pushed it to 3 amps, one PSU, but on on meanwell LRS they had weird induced line noise (same family of PSU I use, but just for one amp so much cleaner/less crap to deal with).

 

[Ruediger]

Back in the day (before popular class D amps) I always thought monoblocks are all about separating the channels to the max.

The dual mono class D amps (in one case) make sense to me when the two amp modules demand the power of two psu. And/or can't share one psu?

 

[Aimarketingbot]

The dual mono class D amps (in one case) make sense to me when the two amp modules demand the power of two psu. And/or can't share one psu?

They are designed to share one PSU, that's how I see everyone else doing it. Unless they have built one case with 2 independent tpa3255 amps inside.

In short, it's likely not worth the hassle unless you are some weird edge case (test tones/SPL comps perhaps?), they are good enough as dual chip on single board for a vast majority of speaker loads. If you are driving something that needs more power and it can be bi-tri/etc amplified, you can just chain these amps for cheap lol. The affordable accessibility and scalability of hifi with these is incredible.

I have some big mono kits and they are not worth the hassle after these chip amps in most cases IMO. Niches like high damping factor/huge DVC sub driving, electrostatics or gigantic towers is really the only reason I can see for big monos these days.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

Hi guys,

Newbie here, just getting into the whole hifi thing, please go easy!

I recently purchased a Perlisten S7t and trying to decide on an amp to drive the units.

Upon browsing some ready made Purif or Hypex products, I noticed that there are dual mono with individual psu for each amp module or stereo with 1 psu driving both amp modules.

Obviously the stereo version is much cheaper than the dual mono, so I was wondering if it’s worth paying the extra?

Many modern amplifiers use SMPS that are regulated. Classic power amplifiers used big, unregulated PSUs.

Sometimes the peak power from the SMPS PSU can only be sustained for a short period by design. This reduces power delivery. Dual mono or genuine monoblocks, means that one channel's PSU saturation does not negatively affect the other channel.

In practice this is unlikely to be an issue if listening to normal music with normal crest factors with sufficiently powerful amplifier and PSU.

 

[john61ct]

If you're trying to eke out every last mA and watt you should likely step up to an amp with more headroom