This is a review and detailed measurements of the Hypex NCx500 NCOREx reference design amplifier. It was sent by the company and kindly assembled by our local expert, @Rick Sykora.
As you see the sample is a "monoblock" configuration (one channel) driven by Hypex SMPS1200 switching power supply. The only other board is the Ncore standard interface board. The gain as set is almost 12 dB. EDIT: see follow up below review for with buffer (27 dB gain) performance.
Here is a close up:
Note that this board includes a pre-amp (buffer). I am testing per above in unbuffered mode.
During use the amplifier as a whole was extremely stable and never changed its temperature, nor did it go into protection mode. A sole XLR connection is the input to the unit. All fits in this nice compact box.
Hypex NCx500 Buffer Bypass Amplifier Measurements
I let the unit warm up for a while but was not needed as it was stable as soon as powered up:
It did reach a plateau around 11 minutes though as you see. But note that the vertical scale is 0.1 dB.
Now on to our dashboard of 1 kHz tone at 5 watts into 4 ohm load:
Distortion is provably inaudible at -120 dB. A bit of noise sags that down to 113 dB which is still superb performance, landing it at #2 best amplifier every tested:
Noise performance is exceptional:
Even when listening to 16 bit content at 5 watts, you have an extra 10 dB of noise margin! This is one quiet amplifier.
Frequency response is wide and load invariant which is a great attribute not existing in all class D designs:
Multitone test shows off its low distortion yet again:
I must say, I was not prepared for the amp to beat the reference Benchmark AHB2 in noise level in our power test:
EDIT: I re-ran the power sweeps again with tighter load terminals which resulted in much lower distortion levels especially at 4 ohm:
Despite massive amount of power the NCx500 produces, its distortion is now close to the best we have ever measured!
I updated these max and peak measurements again which produced more power:
Company specs this power level even at 2 ohm so I tested that:
This is one powerful amplifier!
Here is our updated 8 ohm power:
I was surprised how much lower its noise level is compared to Purifi 1ET400A reference design. Maybe that amp was not running at such a low gain setting though (edit: correct). Still, this is once again superb performance.
Sweeping with different frequencies we see various distortion mechanisms kicking in (edit: now updated showing much less distortion):
There is some rise in distortion with frequency but this is to be expected.
Finally, here is the pop on and off noises. Keep in mind that this is a reference design and the on/off switch turns the whole unit on and on as opposed to soft power:
Hypex NCx500 Buffered Measurements
As noted, there is integrated buffer (pre-amp) in this module. I activated it which boosted the gain to 27 dB. Maximum power is now achieved at around 2.2 volts which is well within the output of many well designed DACs using balanced out. Here is our new dashboard:
Distortion has gone down a bit but we have picked up a bit of power supply noise. Despite that hit, performance is still state of the art:
As noted, SNR has gone down but still excellent:
Multitone is mostly the same but impacted by the power supply noise:
Frequency response is the same:
As noted distortion is lower:
On/Off noise is impacted a bit:
Conclusions
Hypex amplifiers have always enjoyed great performance in our testing. It is wonderful to see the company innovating and increasing the performance of their high power NC500 platform. You no longer have to compromise between available power and superb technical performance. You can have both.
It is my pleasure to recommend the Hypex NCx500 OEM amplifier module. Cant' wait to see it show up in commercial designs.
----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
As you see the sample is a "monoblock" configuration (one channel) driven by Hypex SMPS1200 switching power supply. The only other board is the Ncore standard interface board. The gain as set is almost 12 dB. EDIT: see follow up below review for with buffer (27 dB gain) performance.
Here is a close up:
Note that this board includes a pre-amp (buffer). I am testing per above in unbuffered mode.
During use the amplifier as a whole was extremely stable and never changed its temperature, nor did it go into protection mode. A sole XLR connection is the input to the unit. All fits in this nice compact box.
Hypex NCx500 Buffer Bypass Amplifier Measurements
I let the unit warm up for a while but was not needed as it was stable as soon as powered up:
It did reach a plateau around 11 minutes though as you see. But note that the vertical scale is 0.1 dB.
Now on to our dashboard of 1 kHz tone at 5 watts into 4 ohm load:
Distortion is provably inaudible at -120 dB. A bit of noise sags that down to 113 dB which is still superb performance, landing it at #2 best amplifier every tested:
Noise performance is exceptional:
Even when listening to 16 bit content at 5 watts, you have an extra 10 dB of noise margin! This is one quiet amplifier.
Frequency response is wide and load invariant which is a great attribute not existing in all class D designs:
Multitone test shows off its low distortion yet again:
I must say, I was not prepared for the amp to beat the reference Benchmark AHB2 in noise level in our power test:
EDIT: I re-ran the power sweeps again with tighter load terminals which resulted in much lower distortion levels especially at 4 ohm:
Despite massive amount of power the NCx500 produces, its distortion is now close to the best we have ever measured!
I updated these max and peak measurements again which produced more power:
Company specs this power level even at 2 ohm so I tested that:
This is one powerful amplifier!
Here is our updated 8 ohm power:
I was surprised how much lower its noise level is compared to Purifi 1ET400A reference design. Maybe that amp was not running at such a low gain setting though (edit: correct). Still, this is once again superb performance.
Sweeping with different frequencies we see various distortion mechanisms kicking in (edit: now updated showing much less distortion):
There is some rise in distortion with frequency but this is to be expected.
Finally, here is the pop on and off noises. Keep in mind that this is a reference design and the on/off switch turns the whole unit on and on as opposed to soft power:
Hypex NCx500 Buffered Measurements
As noted, there is integrated buffer (pre-amp) in this module. I activated it which boosted the gain to 27 dB. Maximum power is now achieved at around 2.2 volts which is well within the output of many well designed DACs using balanced out. Here is our new dashboard:
Distortion has gone down a bit but we have picked up a bit of power supply noise. Despite that hit, performance is still state of the art:
As noted, SNR has gone down but still excellent:
Multitone is mostly the same but impacted by the power supply noise:
Frequency response is the same:
As noted distortion is lower:
On/Off noise is impacted a bit:
Conclusions
Hypex amplifiers have always enjoyed great performance in our testing. It is wonderful to see the company innovating and increasing the performance of their high power NC500 platform. You no longer have to compromise between available power and superb technical performance. You can have both.
It is my pleasure to recommend the Hypex NCx500 OEM amplifier module. Cant' wait to see it show up in commercial designs.
----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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