Hypex NCx500 Class D Amplifier Review

[droid2000]

That is already an old way of doing: Use spades instead of bananas. But don't screw the bare wire into them, there are versions out there with set screws to hold the leads. Crimp or solder them!

I will definitely solder the speaker wires to the spades. But I don't have the connectors he does in the picture... I assume 5-way binders are ok.

 

[BR52]

Hm, spades and bananas I like it, is so nice and not harming and on topic.

 

[AndreaT]

I checked on Parts Express: Neutrik speakon connectors are a few dollars each. I ordered mine and I will see what I can do do modify the speaker connection on the amplifiers. There are plenty of data and instructions on the Neutrik web site. I wonder if any ASR member has experience about 2 and 4 poles connectors: do the latter allow a lower resistance for the connection when used for 2 wires?

 

[pma]

I wonder if any ASR member has experience about 2 and 4 poles connectors: do the latter allow a lower resistance for the connection when used for 2 wires?

I have some experience. Such connectors are excellent for on-stage use. But when your aim is to measure distortions in -90 ~ -120 dB range, at high power, you always have to be careful. IME the so called 4-point (4 wire, 4 terminal) method is to be used.
You guys care too much. These issues are measurable, however completely inaudible.

 

[Class D passion]

very goog review. I have the Purifi 1ET7040SA but this looks great. I found here some pictures and video about the studio N7X by Rouge Audio Design: looks great and well done! I was thinking to make a multiamp using the purifi on low fequencies and the hypex for mid/high.

Hypex NCx500 l'ultimo traguardo della classe D - AF Digitale

Hypex NCx500 l'ultimo traguardo della classe D in anteprima mondiale grazie a Rouge Audio Design e al suo Studio N7x

www.afdigitale.it

look the layout very clean using two NCX500 and two SMPS:

P.s. sorry for the last post not in English!

 

[Piere]

I have some experience. Such connectors are excellent for on-stage use. But when your aim is to measure distortions in -90 ~ -120 dB range, at high power, you always have to be careful. IME the so called 4-point (4 wire, 4 terminal) method is to be used.
You guys care too much. These issues are measurable, however completely inaudible.

True, but here we are doing a review and comparing amps by their distortion! I've seen those interconnect distortion harmonics at -110dB level with a lousy connection, so be careful indeed. It can give a harse edge to the sound with resolving loudspeakers. Those Speakons are quite sturdy and really nice when you change amps regularly, but I didn't check them for distortion. I would do that anyway. With good quality gold plated binding post (i.e. industrial ones) together with gold plated spades I did not experience induced distortion anyway!

[Edit]

Maybe this interconnect distortion discussion deserves it own thread? It's a often overlooked thing.

 

[AndreaT]

very goog review. I have the Purifi 1ET7040SA but this looks great. I found here some pictures and video about the studio N7X by Rouge Audio Design: looks great and well done! I was thinking to make a multiamp using the purifi on low fequencies and the hypex for mid/high.

Hypex NCx500 l'ultimo traguardo della classe D - AF Digitale

Hypex NCx500 l'ultimo traguardo della classe D in anteprima mondiale grazie a Rouge Audio Design e al suo Studio N7x

www.afdigitale.it

look the layout very clean using two NCX500 and two SMPS:

P.s. sorry for the last post not in English!

Grazie! A very positive subjective review with some audiophilia myths about cables and a few hyperboles of language. The asking price of € 1385 is without the TVA tax of 22%.

 

[BDWoody]

very goog review. I have the Purifi 1ET7040SA but this looks great. I found here some pictures and video about the studio N7X by Rouge Audio Design: looks great and well done! I was thinking to make a multiamp using the purifi on low fequencies and the hypex for mid/high.

Hypex NCx500 l'ultimo traguardo della classe D - AF Digitale

Hypex NCx500 l'ultimo traguardo della classe D in anteprima mondiale grazie a Rouge Audio Design e al suo Studio N7x

www.afdigitale.it

look the layout very clean using two NCX500 and two SMPS:

P.s. sorry for the last post not in English!

Do you have any affiliation with this company? You seem to be consistently promoting them.

 

[delta76]

Grazie! A very positive subjective review with some audiophilia myths about cables and a few hyperboles of language. The asking price of € 1385 is without the TVA tax of 22%.

Jeez. after "reading" a "review" like this I appreciate Amir's review even more. Listening test with amp is so lame...

 

[pantherluv]

Hm, spades and bananas I like it, is so nice and not harming and on topic.

Apologize for that. I couldn't resist. Don't know how to scale down the size of picture. I'll shutup, lol...

 

[Endibol]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Hypex NCx500 NCOREx refence design amplifier. It was sent by the company and kindly assembled by our DIY expert, @Rick Sykora.
View attachment 257206
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:
View attachment 257220

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:
View attachment 257208

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:
View attachment 257209

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:
View attachment 257210
Noise performance is exceptional:
View attachment 257211

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:

View attachment 257212

Multitone test shows off its low distortion yet again:
View attachment 257213

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:
View attachment 257988
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:
View attachment 257933

Company specs this power level even at 2 ohm so I tested that:
View attachment 257216

This is one powerful amplifier!

Here is our updated 8 ohm power:
View attachment 257934

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):
View attachment 257935

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:

View attachment 257219

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:
View attachment 257384

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:
View attachment 257385

View attachment 257386

As noted, SNR has gone down but still excellent:
View attachment 257388

Multitone is mostly the same but impacted by the power supply noise:
View attachment 257387

Frequency response is the same:
View attachment 257389

As noted distortion is lower:
View attachment 257390
View attachment 257391
View attachment 257392

On/Off noise is impacted a bit:
View attachment 257393

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/

@amirm : Very nice review again. I really wonder what you think about this kind of amplifiers compared to the Mark Levenson's you own for instance. Would it be possible to post a test of those? And give your subjective opinion as well (even knowing that your company sells Harman gear)?

 

[roog]

Looks very interesting, however I am a little puzzled what is the Nilai series compared to this?

 

[Rick Sykora]

Looks very interesting, however I am a little puzzled what is the Nilai series compared to this?

Nilai is DIY, higher performance, more features and 5 year warranty.

 

[fpitas]

Which is why I use soldered lugs for speaker connectionsView attachment 258318

Good on you. I went to all ring-tongue terminals, for similar reasons. Silly to have state of the art stuff and flaky connections.

 

[restorer-john]

I really wonder what you think about this kind of amplifiers compared to the Mark Levenson's you own for instance. Would it be possible to post a test of those?

Amir's MLs are going flaky and he's too cheap to get them fixed. Kidding.

There's a comprehensive Stereophile of them in any case.

 

[pma]

Amir's MLs are going flaky and he's too cheap to get them fixed. Kidding.

There's a comprehensive Stereophile of them in any case.

Yeah.

Mark Levinson No.532H power amplifier Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

www.stereophile.com

5w/4ohm/1kHz SINAD (the ASR Holy Grail) would be about 86dB.

and 53H monoblocks:

Mark Levinson No.53 Reference monoblock power amplifier Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

www.stereophile.com

Similar 4ohm/1kHz SINAD. So it goes. It would be no breaker in the ASR SINAD chart Holy Grail. This shows the comparison chart nonsense.

 

[Sokel]

Yeah.

Mark Levinson No.532H power amplifier Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

www.stereophile.com

5w/4ohm/1kHz SINAD (the ASR Holy Grail) would be about 86dB.

and 53H monoblocks:

Mark Levinson No.53 Reference monoblock power amplifier Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

www.stereophile.com

Similar 4ohm/1kHz SINAD. So it goes. It would be no breaker in the ASR SINAD chart Holy Grail. This shows the comparison chart nonsense.

1KW per channel,my cup of tea!

 

[amirm]

@amirm : Very nice review again. I really wonder what you think about this kind of amplifiers compared to the Mark Levenson's you own for instance. Would it be possible to post a test of those? And give your subjective opinion as well (even knowing that your company sells Harman gear)?

I purchased the Levinson amps 10+ years ago when such technology was not available. They are also quite powerful with the monoblocks delivering 1000 watts each into 4 ohm load. Even the stereo unit reaches up to 800 watts. So these amps are not yet there as far as power delivery. But yes, today I would opt for these amps than the Levinsons.

I must say though, the Mark Levinson amps do look like serious gear which these boxes lack.

 

[amirm]

Amir's MLs are going flaky and he's too cheap to get them fixed. Kidding.

I wish it was just money. Harman wants me to ship them to some third-party repair place in LA. Shipping these monsters requires putting them in crate and paying good money to send them down -- likely by freight. On top of that, I suspect all these people would do is swap boards and charge a fortune. So I have not been able to convince myself to go down this path. Current hope is to find the time to take them apart and see what is failing.

FYI the above is the issue with monoblocks. The stereo unit works fine. That is what I have been using although lately I switched to using a Purifi amp if the power is not needed for testing.

 

[Vacceo]

I purchased the Levinson amps 10+ years ago when such technology was not available. They are also quite powerful with the monoblocks delivering 1000 watts each into 4 ohm load. Even the stereo unit reaches up to 800 watts. So these amps are not yet there as far as power delivery. But yes, today I would opt for these amps than the Levinsons.

I must say though, the Mark Levinson amps do look like serious gear which these boxes lack.

Can you cook on top of them? On one of the older Denons I had, I could actually toast bread adding foil on the top of the box.

I hate the heat in general, and for not very large rooms, adding a lot of heat to the room is the best way to turn something pleasant (listening to music) into a pain.