Lab Gruppen FP 10000Q 4-Ch Amp Clone Review

[Cbdb2]

We installed dozens of real Lab gruppen amps in casinos and restauraunts, sometimes driving 20+ speakers per channel at near full power 20 hours a day for years and never had one go down. My guess, the clone dosnt have the same protection circuit.

From https://www.soundscenter.com/images/catalog_images/fp4000_en.pdf

"Automatic protection measures engage only at critical thres-
holds. Operating conditions are re-checked every six seconds and, if
a fault is detected, normal operation is resumed when measurements
return to nominal"

 

[NTTY]

I used a Behringer iNUKE NU12000 (funny name) for some time. I replaced the 3 fans by Noctua low speed ones. It made it acceptable in the living room.

Where my McIntosh MC-450 was clipping, the Behringer barely lit up the first of the 4 leds indicating output power

 

[Mike-48]

Noise and distortion stats should somehow include fan noise, IMO.

 

[Short38]

Put on your running shoes and get far away from any amp with a fan and measurements like these b

 

[Nugget_]

I have a clone in use for 5 years now, which i already bought used. I use it for electronic and live music in small to medium venues with 4*18" subwoofers and 2* 12" tops. Even with clipping indicators blinking to the beat, i basically never had a problem (once a PSU capacitor whose soldering joint broke on one side, which meant loud bangs when it charged/discharged when it made contact to the circuit board. Quick renewal of the solder joint made the problem disappear).

Please note the following table from the official lab.gruppen manual. As you can see 115v connector should be 30A. Meanwhile even with 1/4th rated power pink noise on all channels in 2 ohm, total power draw will exceed 50 Amps! Normally you wouldn't use all channels for bass in such an amplifier (if so, you should use another amp), and often bass peaks are shorter than test signals. Meanwhile european 230V type "B" circuit breakers (used in every modern home, at least here in Germany) can take 3-5x rated current for multiple seconds, allowing 18kVA short term.

Meanwhile THD+N performance seems to be in the ballpark measured with this clone (screenshot from same manual) [Edit: Sorry Table didn't show definition of values}:

 

[DREWSASTER]

After years of lurking I had to join ASR to respond to this. I have a real Powersoft K10 if you’d like to test a pro amp? It’s an older model but still an absolute beast.

 

[Keith_W]

After years of lurking I had to join ASR to respond to this. I have a real Powersoft K10 if you’d like to test a pro amp? It’s an older model but still an absolute beast.

Welcome to ASR! Yes please, I would love to see measurements of those.

I think we need more pro amp tests on ASR. They are cheap, they are powerful, and they have all sorts of features - adjustable gain, can usually be bridged, have all sorts of routing options (e.g. duplicate one input to two outputs, or merge two inputs into one output or both outputs, etc), have clipping indicators, and so on. Unfortunately all the pro amps I have seen reviewed on ASR are also dreadful performers. High noise, inconsistent output, often fail to meet claimed specs, and bad fan noise.

It would be great to find ONE that is a good performer and has quiet fans. Maybe Amir could use an SPL meter and tell us how noisy the fans are. That is a not insignificant problem for those of us who want to use pro amps at home. I could live with -70dB SINAD, but I can't live with a fan wailing at 50-60dB. The fan is louder than the SINAD, and that's not being measured!

 

[DREWSASTER]

Welcome to ASR! Yes please, I would love to see measurements of those.

I think we need more pro amp tests on ASR. They are cheap, they are powerful, and they have all sorts of features - adjustable gain, can usually be bridged, have all sorts of routing options (e.g. duplicate one input to two outputs, or merge two inputs into one output or both outputs, etc), have clipping indicators, and so on. Unfortunately all the pro amps I have seen reviewed on ASR are also dreadful performers. High noise, inconsistent output, often fail to meet claimed specs, and bad fan noise.

It would be great to find ONE that is a good performer and has quiet fans. Maybe Amir could use an SPL meter and tell us how noisy the fans are. That is a not insignificant problem for those of us who want to use pro amps at home. I could live with -70dB SINAD, but I can't live with a fan wailing at 50-60dB. The fan is louder than the SINAD, and that's not being measured!

I will admit the fans on the K10 are not silent, but they are blower style so the noise they do make is more pleasant than axial fans in my opinion and they are temperature controlled so they’re not going full speed all the time. I primarily ran the k10 on sub duty and the power capability is mind blowing, the times I’ve run it on full range passive speakers the clarity was astounding compared to Crown iTech. To get full output it needs to be run on 220v though as it can pull over 20 amps at 220v, but even on 110 it’ll do an honest 1200 watts per channel average when driving subs playing EDM with sustained bass notes.

Downside though of most pro amps is idle power draw, the K10 draws like 30 watts in standby and like 100 watts at idle

 

[peniku8]

Welcome to ASR! Yes please, I would love to see measurements of those.

I think we need more pro amp tests on ASR. They are cheap, they are powerful, and they have all sorts of features - adjustable gain, can usually be bridged, have all sorts of routing options (e.g. duplicate one input to two outputs, or merge two inputs into one output or both outputs, etc), have clipping indicators, and so on. Unfortunately all the pro amps I have seen reviewed on ASR are also dreadful performers. High noise, inconsistent output, often fail to meet claimed specs, and bad fan noise.

It would be great to find ONE that is a good performer and has quiet fans. Maybe Amir could use an SPL meter and tell us how noisy the fans are. That is a not insignificant problem for those of us who want to use pro amps at home. I could live with -70dB SINAD, but I can't live with a fan wailing at 50-60dB. The fan is louder than the SINAD, and that's not being measured!

I have measurements of two different Powersoft models and a few other pro amps which I once published on the data-bass forums, which don't exist anymore. I can post them on here some time if I don't forget
Production Partner measured some Powersoft amps too. Unica iirc
M-Drive completely shuts off its fans in idle and is reasonably quiet when they're on, but it gets quite loud under full load.

 

[peniku8]

I will admit the fans on the K10 are not silent, but they are blower style so the noise they do make is more pleasant than axial fans in my opinion and they are temperature controlled so they’re not going full speed all the time.

I don't like 1U amps for that reason. It usually doesn't matter for live shows, but the X4's fan noise is *so loud* it's annoying when you can clearly hear the amps from the stage while standing at FoH.
re: power draw; highest I've seen (on 230V) was the FP-13000 and the M-Drive, which both peaked at around 42-48A, but the M-Drive is PFC, so its real power draw was a bit higher. That's 11KW of power draw from the wall!

One ch test:

 

[Neale]

After years of lurking I had to join ASR to respond to this. I have a real Powersoft K10 if you’d like to test a pro amp? It’s an older model but still an absolute beast.

Here's a link to some pro amp testwork (incl K10) done by @Langston Holland (no longer an ASR member??) a decade or so ago:

Amp Review

Amp Review

forums.prosoundweb.com

 

[Scrivs]

I have measurements of two different Powersoft models and a few other pro amps which I once published on the data-bass forums, which don't exist anymore. I can post them on here some time if I don't forget
Production Partner measured some Powersoft amps too. Unica iirc
M-Drive completely shuts off its fans in idle and is reasonably quiet when they're on, but it gets quite loud under full load.

That would be rad if your could post the results of your measurements here.
Mahalo nui loa!

 

[Geert]

You can find a pretty decent bench test of the Powersoft K10 and 2 competitors here. Don’t know what Hifi enthousiasts expect from these measurements. The main quality of a real pro amp is that it can deliver full power, playing music, 24/24 7/7 in rough conditions. That's something that needs to be proven in practice. How much power ”full power” is is something that's debatable as the last measurement in the test I linked shows. It shows how long the amps can sustain peaks:



Unfortunately not clear what type of testsignal was used for that test, as I can imagine the frequency spectrum of that signal matters.

Amir already explained in the FTC power test thread that he’s not a big fan of doing power tests that can vaporize lend out devices under test. Rightfully so.

 

[Scrivs]

You can find a pretty decent bench test of the Powersoft K10 and 2 competitors here. Don’t know what Hifi enthousiasts expect from these measurements. The main quality of a real pro amp is that it can deliver full power, playing music, 24/24 7/7 in rough conditions. That's something that needs to be proven in practice. How much power ”full power” is is something that's debatable as the last measurement in the test I linked shows. It shows how long the amps can sustain peaks:

View attachment 537172

Unfortunately not clear what type of testsignal was used for that test, as I can imagine the frequency spectrum of that signal matters.

Amir already explained in the FTC power test thread that he’s not a big fan of doing power tests that can vaporize lend out devices under test. Rightfully so.

Thanks dude. I'm just curious as to how they perform vs some of the pro amps I've deployed over the years.

 

[TNT]

clone

Is it really OK of stealing and multiplying others IP? Should we encourage/akcnoledge that by a "review"?

//

 

[Geert]

Is it really OK of stealing and multiplying others IP? Should we encourage/akcnoledge that by a "review"?

If the clone breaks down when hardly stressed, yes

 

[DSJR]

From what I've seen of "pro" amps over the years, this one is typical in having a "forest" of high-order harmonic distortion -- in this case worse than usual. My own, personal conclusion is that a lot of people when back to tube amps from solid state in the '90s because of distortion profile. Of course, today's better s/s amps don't have the problem.

I might be castigated for saying so, but this amp will sound horrible in any audio enthusiast's main system: living proof that all amps DO NOT sound the same.

A late reply and I've not yet read the posts after the above, but may I suggest this distortion profile was pretty NORMAL for solid state amps forty years ago and the valve confections that Martin Colloms absolute wet himself over for sound quality 'effect' in the tech/subjective HiFi Choice books of the mid 80s, often had all manner of THD in the -40s (C-J and ARC as well as the Quicksilver Monos he went crazy over for one issue (only the one issue though I seem to remember - it's all online on worldradiohistory). He was one of the main proponents of the 'measurements don't correlate with what I hear' mantra and stated it in an ARC amp review. he went on to review for HiFi news, which seemed well off the objective rails by this point.

 

[EERecordist]

Maybe in driving a sub, at home or in a large venue, because the speaker is not a perfect piston, the mechanical speaker harmonics will be large and the distortion in the amp and speaker combination not perceptible to the listener?

 

[amirm]

Is it really OK of stealing and multiplying others IP? Should we encourage/akcnoledge that by a "review"?

//

What ip did they steal?

 

[xanalog]

Thank you for the review, @amirm,

Sadly, that did nothing. Not only is that indicator stuck on with the fan going nuts, none of the channels work anymore.

Does the old "You broke it; you own it!" come into play here?

edit: typo