This is a review and detailed measurements of the MAG Theatron TDC-3200W DSP stereo amplifier. It was kindly drop shipped by a member and costs US $2,414.
To paraphrase a common saying, you have seen one commercial amp, you have seen them all. Same commercial look. Same ancient looking LCD. There is no clipping indicator which I wish there was. In testing, I got the impression that it has a limiter so maybe it never comes on.
Unlike commercial offerings, we have RCA inputs:
I was surprised that there is no trigger or IR/serial input control. Do they expect it to be left on all the time in a residential setting? Maybe there is a control protocol over Ethernet.
Here are the specs:
I did not have time to test the unit in Bridge mode or with my reactive load.
MAG TDC-3200W Amp Measurements
Default gain is quite high at 32 dB:
I lowered the input gain to 25 dB but it didn't reduce noise:
SINAD of 67 dB is nearly 20 dB worse than the average of all amplifiers tested which is not good. Then again commercial amps rarely deliver excellent performance in this department.
Noise as noted, is quite high at lower power levels:
I thought it would get much better at full power but it barely matches 16 bit dynamic range.
I checked to make sure all DSP filters are off and the profile is set to "flat" and got this response:
As you see, there is fair bit of load dependency at high frequencies due to rising output impedance. I don't know what explains the low frequency roll off. I could not find a crossover setting so maybe that is built into the profile???
Crosstalk gets worse at lower frequencies which is unfortunate:
Multitone test shows much increase in distortion at higher frequencies:
So naturally, 19+20 kHz tone turns in very poor results:
Distortion dominates our power curve for both 4 and 8 ohms loads:
Surprisingly, we don't see anywhere close to power specs:
And it droops some more at low frequencies:
We can see that in our power vs frequency sweeps:
Commercial amps tend to get used for subwoofer duty so it is very strange to see the power cut back so early. We are talking barely 100 watts!
The amp is stable on power up:
It never shut down or even remotely get upset during testing. It also stayed completely cold.
Conclusions
By residential/consumer standards, the TDC-3200W turns in very poor numbers as far as noise and distortion. It also severely underdelivers its power spec although this tends to be the norm in commercial amps. Speaking of that, it is what you expect in that domain but then again, those amps are not this expensive.
Lack of easy control/trigger is a major miss in my book. Such an amp would go into an expensive theater that will demand full automation/one-click power on-off.
Load dependency is bad in this price category. Yes, you can use DSP to compensate but it will be hard to do so with in-room measurements.
I can't recommend the Mag Theatron TDC-3200W. It neither has the finesse, nor copious amount of power I expect from a commercial amp let alone a consumer one.
------------
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/
To paraphrase a common saying, you have seen one commercial amp, you have seen them all. Same commercial look. Same ancient looking LCD. There is no clipping indicator which I wish there was. In testing, I got the impression that it has a limiter so maybe it never comes on.
Unlike commercial offerings, we have RCA inputs:
I was surprised that there is no trigger or IR/serial input control. Do they expect it to be left on all the time in a residential setting? Maybe there is a control protocol over Ethernet.
Here are the specs:
I did not have time to test the unit in Bridge mode or with my reactive load.
MAG TDC-3200W Amp Measurements
Default gain is quite high at 32 dB:
I lowered the input gain to 25 dB but it didn't reduce noise:
SINAD of 67 dB is nearly 20 dB worse than the average of all amplifiers tested which is not good. Then again commercial amps rarely deliver excellent performance in this department.
Noise as noted, is quite high at lower power levels:
I thought it would get much better at full power but it barely matches 16 bit dynamic range.
I checked to make sure all DSP filters are off and the profile is set to "flat" and got this response:
As you see, there is fair bit of load dependency at high frequencies due to rising output impedance. I don't know what explains the low frequency roll off. I could not find a crossover setting so maybe that is built into the profile???
Crosstalk gets worse at lower frequencies which is unfortunate:
Multitone test shows much increase in distortion at higher frequencies:
So naturally, 19+20 kHz tone turns in very poor results:
Distortion dominates our power curve for both 4 and 8 ohms loads:
Surprisingly, we don't see anywhere close to power specs:
And it droops some more at low frequencies:
We can see that in our power vs frequency sweeps:
Commercial amps tend to get used for subwoofer duty so it is very strange to see the power cut back so early. We are talking barely 100 watts!
The amp is stable on power up:
It never shut down or even remotely get upset during testing. It also stayed completely cold.
Conclusions
By residential/consumer standards, the TDC-3200W turns in very poor numbers as far as noise and distortion. It also severely underdelivers its power spec although this tends to be the norm in commercial amps. Speaking of that, it is what you expect in that domain but then again, those amps are not this expensive.
Lack of easy control/trigger is a major miss in my book. Such an amp would go into an expensive theater that will demand full automation/one-click power on-off.
Load dependency is bad in this price category. Yes, you can use DSP to compensate but it will be hard to do so with in-room measurements.
I can't recommend the Mag Theatron TDC-3200W. It neither has the finesse, nor copious amount of power I expect from a commercial amp let alone a consumer one.
------------
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/
