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PS Audio M700 Monoblock Amplifier Review

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SEKLEM

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NC1200's crush this, so why bother? Willing to bet they choose ICEpower due to margins.

IcePower has been in the game longer and if, as a manufacturer, you're concerned with long service life it's a safe bet to go with the OEM with the longest proven track record. It's come up more than a few times that Hypex uses less expensive capacitors on their modules which could lead to a shorter service life. I believe ICEPower modules typically use Panasonic capacitors, which are generally well regarded.

It's certainly also possible that ICEPower is the lower cost option as you say, but I don't have the cost of OEM parts from Hypex or ICEPower handy, so I cannot confirm that.
 

SEKLEM

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It's not a terrible amp, but it's terribly overpriced. I'd like to compare it to a powerful crown amp in the same price range.

I'd like to point out that Parasound sells the Zonemaster 2350, while not as sexy as the PS Audio uses a 2 channel variant of the 700ASC (700ASC2) and comes at a significantly lower cost. The Parasound is more practical in most ways, however lacks balanced inputs (probably not an issue with performance like this though).
 

EdW

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There are some professional, educated, honest salespeople, but they are the minority. More often than not, I have received better quality advice from internet direct and online sellers than traditional storefronts.
The real difficulty with on line purchases is the choice of loudspeaker (or headphone) you decide to make. It would be a shame to lose dealerships for this transaction as I’m not sure many of here could buy just on the basis of reviews. Electronics can probably best be assessed by reading informed reviews with measurements such as provided here by Amir and the ASR community and many of us will choose this route. But this can be a steep learning curve for those who just want to listen to music: so for these reasons I hope dealerships remain.
 

Rick Sykora

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I wish that is the case but unfortunately mine isn't that quiet at higher frequencies. Can REW, Omni mic and users please share you noise floor graphs please?:D

View attachment 77132

I like your idea. Needs a little setup to make sure everyone measures in a comparable manner.

Also should include a room description AND be done on its own thread!
 
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CDMC

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The real difficulty with on line purchases is the choice of loudspeaker (or headphone) you decide to make. It would be a shame to lose dealerships for this transaction as I’m not sure many of here could buy just on the basis of reviews. Electronics can probably best be assessed by reading informed reviews with measurements such as provided here by Amir and the ASR community and many of us will choose this route. But this can be a steep learning curve for those who just want to listen to music: so for these reasons I hope dealerships remain.

Unfortunately that time may have sailed a while ago in many areas. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and there are not many high end dealers, those that do exist often have very limited inventory to demo, and even less are willing to let you take a pair of speakers home. The problem is without having a home demo, you are really in the dark. In my case, I have bought used speakers for decades, as the transaction cost if I don't like them is pretty low. I recently purchased a new pair of Revel F208s because with the discounting, if I didn't like them, at worst I would be out $500.
 

cistercian

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Unfortunately that time may have sailed a while ago in many areas. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and there are not many high end dealers, those that do exist often have very limited inventory to demo, and even less are willing to let you take a pair of speakers home. The problem is without having a home demo, you are really in the dark. In my case, I have bought used speakers for decades, as the transaction cost if I don't like them is pretty low. I recently purchased a new pair of Revel F208s because with the discounting, if I didn't like them, at worst I would be out $500.

It really is a quandary for those speaker shopping. I can't imagine how bad it would be for high end speakers.
It has to be bad for dealers that have people come in to listen...and then buy online. This factor alone has
made it harder and harder for the brick and mortar stores. Which is why they are vanishing...hard to compete
with free shipping and thin margins.
 

Trdat

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I'm not the in-house expert on interpreting these graphs but from what I gather the results are quite poor and Amir's conclusion is very vague. Usually a device with these results would be on the not recommended list.

Anyone of the experts can chime in and add there worthy 2 cents worth?
 

Matias

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I'm not the in-house expert on interpreting these graphs but from what I gather the results are quite poor and Amir's conclusion is very vague. Usually a device with these results would be on the not recommended list.

Anyone of the experts can chime in and add there worthy 2 cents worth?
These results are "okay" for distortion and quite good for power. The real deal breaker here is the value, as you can get better for less.
 

Feanor

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...
On a larger scale, Emotiva cranks out the 300asc module versions for $299 a piece with similar case quality to PS Audio. Given the small differences in pricing among the Icemodules, there is no doubt they could produce and sell the 700as or even 1200as monoblocks for less than $400 a piece.

https://emotiva.com/collections/amps/products/pa-1
...
Yes, the Emotiva's with 300ASC modules look great and are very reasonably price. PS Audio sells their S300 for about $1500; they have the newer version, 300AS1's, but even so. Amir, of course, reviewed the S300 and recommended it ... hummm.

Recently I DIY'ed a pair of 200ASC monoblocks. I thought they were pretty good ... see my review here ... https://www.audioasylum.com/forums/amp/messages/23/235714.html
 

Matias

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maty

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Recently I DIY'ed a pair of 200ASC monoblocks. I thought they were pretty good ... see my review here ... https://www.audioasylum.com/forums/amp/messages/23/235714.html

Tonality:
I find the 200ASC's midrange to be natural, i.e. NOT lean, "gray", or sterile. However the top treble is a bit bright which is noticeable in case of violins, some brass and woodwinds, and soprano human voice depending on the recording. By contrast the X150.5 is less bright and slightly warm in the midrange. The SDS-258's top end is often shrill.

The usual problem with old class D amplification with treble and recordings with physical instruments and voices without Autotune.
 

Ron Texas

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It's enough power for anything, I suppose. SINAD while not record breaking should be enough for most applications. Those chasing numbers will pass on this one. Thank you @amirm.
 

uwotm8

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I'd like to address two things.

1/ You say you like to see 96db sinad minimum so that it can handle the entire dynamic range of CD at least.

So tell me. Under what circumstances in the real world are you able to reproduce 96db dynamic range? What is your listening room noise floor? What is the peak capable or tolerable sound pressure level in your listening room?

Instead please estimate what real world dynamic range your listening environment can support.

2/ This declared need for high power levels for typical loudspeakers. Please play some music on your own system at your normal loudish listening level (ie what would be the acceptable max under normal conditions for you) put a scope across the speaker terminals, and measure the peak voltage you see.

Convert this peak to an rms voltage and calculate the equivalent power into a nominal 8 ohm load (as the amplifier spec assumes).

Tell us that power.
Doing things that way will bring us to results and facts that will eliminate all the hype and drama, so there will not be the wall of lemming-like OMG WTF HOW THIS IN 2020?! comments:rolleyes:
Yep in most of systems you feed speakers with 1...5W of power (which means 10...50W on peaks) if you listen at moderate volume.
But don't tell anyone, keep drama with us:eek:

Same goes for speaker measurements breaking news and shocking graphs as well:D "How could you mr. Paul Barton I was a fan of u"
 

JohnBooty

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2/ This declared need for high power levels for typical loudspeakers. Please play some music on your own system at your normal loudish listening level (ie what would be the acceptable max under normal conditions for you) put a scope across the speaker terminals, and measure the peak voltage you see.
Unless you have a way of taking high-resolution (in the temporal domain) measurements this isn't going to necessarily tell you the whole story, right?

In any normal residential-type listening room, looking at VU meters or measuring this way will tell you that you're rarely using more than a couple of watts, and almost never much more than 10 watts.

Assuming we're listing to music and not pink noise, I find it's all about a system's ability to play those brief transient musical peaks with no distortion. For example, for some number of milliseconds (microseconds?) the attack of a well-recorded snare drum is orders of magnitude louder than just about anything else likely to be happening in your music. That's the sort of trick that requires efficient speakers and/or absolute gobs of power (and, I guess, an impressive slew rate?) to pull off in a convincing way.

That won't even show up on the average voltage meter, unless you have one that resolves to very very small slices of time.
 

Vasr

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The targets here are engineering goals that set a high enough bar to pass above which there wouldn't be any need to differentiate. Not what is passable now.

You can set a target for a 100m sprint even if no one runs that fast in real life. It is a performance goal to see what engineering can do and remove any possibility of it under performing in any context even if it is good enough in most homes.

I don't see anything wrong with that.
 
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amirm

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I'd like to address two things.

1/ You say you like to see 96db sinad minimum so that it can handle the entire dynamic range of CD at least.

So tell me. Under what circumstances in the real world are you able to reproduce 96db dynamic range? What is your listening room noise floor? What is the peak capable or tolerable sound pressure level in your listening room?
Don't run with that argument please. It is faulty and devoid of science. Peer reviewed papers have been written on this which you can see at the end of my article here: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/dynamic-range-how-quiet-is-quiet.14/

Bottom line, you can have 120 dB dynamic range in a room with respect to what we hear. The noise floor of a room measured with a SPL meter is absolutely wrong.

Just go in a listening room and close the door. Is it quiet? If so, then you have very low perceptual noise floor. Diregard the SPL meter because it is measuring low frequency noise that is well below you threshold of hearing in those frequencies.

As for peaks, that is a personal decision as to how loud you want the transients to be. I have a 1000 watt amplifier and I can tell you that I have turned it up near max volume at times. Granted, the material isn't at 0 dBFS always but in a large space, the last 500 watts makes a tiny difference because it is just doubling just like going from 1 to 2 watts.
 

cistercian

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Doing things that way will bring us to results and facts that will eliminate all the hype and drama, so there will not be the wall of lemming-like OMG WTF HOW THIS IN 2020?! comments:rolleyes:
Yep in most of systems you feed speakers with 1...5W of power (which means 10...50W on peaks) if you listen at moderate volume.
But don't tell anyone, keep drama with us:eek:

Same goes for speaker measurements breaking news and shocking graphs as well:D "How could you mr. Paul Barton I was a fan of u"

There is another horrible truth. I listen to CD's on my system. What do you think the dynamic range of the recordings is?
Here is a hint: MUCH LESS than 96db. (fun with compression)

Having gobs of power and huge efficient speakers is epic though. Very entertaining.
 

Blumlein 88

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There is another horrible truth. I listen to CD's on my system. What do you think the dynamic range of the recordings is?
Here is a hint: MUCH LESS than 96db. (fun with compression)

Having gobs of power and huge efficient speakers is epic though. Very entertaining.
Yes, you'll be hard pressed to find any recordings with more dynamic range than 65 db.
 

Blumlein 88

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Just checking my listening room. SPL reading with UMIK 1 and REW is around 50 db spl. HVAC units in the area running though this is with my own HVAC off. I get about 12 db less noise later at night.

If I look at the RTA with 1/6th octave settings, the 3-4 khz range is at a level that would indicated about 15 db spl which also would drop late at night to somewhere between 5 db spl and 0 db spl. The audio rig in this room could play cleanly to maybe 105 db SPL. So late at night I'd have 100 db range to work with there.
 
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