Sound Town ST-UPDM4C (4 Channel Pro Amp)

[Geert]

You nailed it, that's the target group, which fully qualifies as professional use (source of income).

Yes, and a Toyota Yaris with a big spoiler on the back and stick on exhaust tips is a race car.

 

[PeteL]

That's real funny.


A company installing a certain product doesn't make it a professional product. Otherwise I have a professional automatic garage door at home, although I'm pretty sure if I would use it 100 times a day it wouldn't make it to the end of the week.

For me pro audio is concert and large clubs PA systems and recording studio's, where amplifiers are often driven at 100% continuously for hours. The DUT will certainly not qualify, as it's no were capable of supplying the rated power. 218W is wedding party DJ territory at best.

Smaller fixed systems are most often not installed and operated by real audio professionals, and not stressed to the same extend. So a cheap amp in a 19" chassis might do, but then an amp in a 19" chassis is all it is.

My point was that there are no relationship of dependency between fidelity and being for professionals. Reliability, yes, to some extent, but we don't measure reliability here. Professional just mean which market it is being sold to, who is gonna buy it, there is a consumer network of retailers, and there is a professional segment which consist of AV integrators, rentals, etc. This one was not intended for home use, that's all it means, it doesn't mean it should be good.

 

[Geert]

Professional just mean which market it is being sold to, who is gonna buy it, there is a consumer network of retailers, and there is a professional segment which consist of AV integrators, rentals, etc. This one was not intended for home use, that's all it means, it doesn't mean it should be good.

If the word Pro only means not for home use than for me it's a hollow defenition. Maybe I'm getting old, but pro to me refers to quality and reliability. Overall you expect it to be better than consumer grade quality, and you want to be sure you can trust it to deliver according to its specs when needed (especially in the rental business). So to me it doesn't matter how they market it, it's about how it performs. And given the response of multiple people in this topic the products marketing doesn't seem to be a big success.

Imagine the same electronics put in a beautiful 15 kg silver anodized aluminum case, marketed as "high end". Then this thread would probably already be 40 pages instead of 4.

 

[Lambda]

Yes, and a Toyota Yaris with a big spoiler on the back and stick on exhaust tips is a race car.

If you race it it becomes a race car. if you make money with racing it is becomes a Professional Race car
No spoiler needed.

If the word Pro only means not for home use than for me it's a hollow defenition. Maybe I'm getting old, but pro to me refers to quality and reliability.

The marketing department knows this and (ab)uses you association with the word.

Have you ever seen "Professional" on something "professional"
It is a clear red flag.

 

[Geert]

If you race it it becomes a race car. if you make money with racing it is becomes a Professional Race car

So when a taxi driver uses the car it becomes a professional race car?

The marketing department knows this and (ab)uses you association with the word. Have you ever seen "Professional" on something "professional". It is a clear red flag.

That's exactly what I try to point out.

If you hire a professional, than is it OK for you when he arrives in a van with 'pro services' painted on it or do you expect he's capable of doing the job?

 

[PeteL]

If the word Pro only means not for home use than for me it's a hollow defenition. Maybe I'm getting old, but pro to me refers to quality and reliability. Overall you expect it to be better than consumer grade quality, and you want to be sure you can trust it to deliver according to its specs when needed (especially in the rental business). So to me it doesn't matter how they market it, it's about how it performs. And given the response of multiple people in this topic the products marketing doesn't seem to be a big success.

Imagine the same electronics put in a beautiful 15 kg silver anodized aluminun case, marketed as "high end". Then this thread would probably already be 40 pages instead of 4.

I am not sure why we keep debating this over what should be your own definition from your own opinion. We have the proof here with numbers that pro labeled products don't necessarily perform better. This product, but many others, just read the reviews and measurments here, you will conclude that there is no relation. What you would expect is one thing, but that's why I was at first saying sorry to burst your bubble, and that make you laugh, but in the end OK you are allowed to continue expect this from professional labeled products, what can I say, you'll keep seeing results like this that are not to your expectations, I am not sure what more to say the examples are too numerous.

 

[KSTR]

If you go on the Sound Town website you'll immediately see what this company is about and what the customer base will be. El cheapo far-east PA stuff for the masses.

 

[PeteL]

Have you ever seen "Professional" on something "professional"
It is a clear red flag.

Of course, look at this Denon Blue Ray Player from their professional line. What makes it pro is the LAN port, The RS-232 control port, the rack ears and the balanced outputs. It is used in professional environment. It's written Professional on it. Doesn't mean the technical specs will be better than their other ones tough.

 

[Geert]

I am not sure why we keep debating this over what should be your own definition from your own opinion. We have the proof here with numbers that pro labeled products don't necessarily perform better.

I'm pretty sure thousands of colleagues in the industry share the same opinion. The product is 'labeled' as a pro product, which actually means nothing. Even better, as @Lambda said, for people who know better that label is a red flag. It's a product from an entry level product line or brand created to serve a very specific audience. It can have pro features, like in the Denon CD player you just mention, but in pro use the first requirement is usually for the thing to work. If not, it's a toy.

25 years ago these entry level product lines didn't even exist (at least not in this amount), and there was no discussion about what pro meant. Then we saw these cheap ass far-east products flooding the market, and most reputable pro audio brands responded with their own entry level product line. I can assure you, when you need to use these products at the limits of their capabilities you'll quickly learn to appreciate the qualities of the real stuff.

So I guess it all depends on where you've been.

 

[Spkrdctr]

For what it is advertised and sold for it gets the rating that Amir seemed to polite to give, JUNK. Lying advertising (Rip Off) and almost every single test showed failure or near failure to perform to any modern specification. Another item for the Junk designation. Great review!

 

[Prana Ferox]

Yes, and a Toyota Yaris with a big spoiler on the back and stick on exhaust tips is a race car.

If you race it it becomes a race car. if you make money with racing it is becomes a Professional Race car
No spoiler needed.

The Yaris literally has its own racing series could y'all pick a worse example

And Peavey built its rep on sounding good enough and being indestructible. There are a lot of 40-year old Peavey lead sleds still soldiering around out there, ratfur-clad in lager-soaked stage corners. Somehow I don't see this Sound Town thing sharing such glory.

 

[PeteL]

I'm pretty sure thousands of colleagues in the industry share the same opinion. The product is 'labeled' as a pro product, which actually means nothing. Even better, as @Lambda said, for people who know better that label is a red flag. It's a product from an entry level product line or brand created to serve a very specific audience. It can have pro features, like in the Denon CD player you just mention, but in pro use the first requirement is usually for the thing to work. If not, it's a toy.

25 years ago these entry level product lines didn't even exist (at least not in this amount), and there was no discussion about what pro meant. Then we saw these cheap ass far-east products flooding the market, and most reputable pro audio brands responded with their own entry level product line. I can assure you, when you need to use these products at the limits of their capabilities you'll quickly learn to appreciate the qualities of the real stuff.

So I guess it all depends on where you've been.

we both agree it's a junk product, I don't care which distribution channel, pro or consumer it's aiming for. My only point was to not make this label mean more that it's suppose to mean. You think it means nothing, I think I told you what I think it means from my experience in both pro and consumer market. I just don't think pro should mean good, pro should just mean pro IMO.

 

[H-713]

I am sorry to burst your bubble. but professionals install crappy products all the time, probably a good amount more than Hi fidelity products. Remember the last time you flew and you couldn't hear a word what the flight attendant was saying because how distorted it was? I am afrad that this PA system was purchased in a pro products catalog, trough a professional integrator. And yes, there where amps somewhere in this chain. They where pro targetted amps.

Usually those PA systems sound like crap for other reasons. A lot of them use reasonable quality products (very often Crestron / QSC / Crown / other name brand) amplifiers targeted towards that application. Usually they're small 1u (sometimes half-width) amplifiers, or possibly the modern equivalent of a Com-Tech or CMX amplifier. You don't want to risk that kind of stuff blowing up. Very often it's an issue with the microphone, or the preamp for it, or the idiot using it, that results in unintelligible speech.

I'm sure there are "professional" install companies that install crap like this, but none of the reputable ones do - they don't want to deal with all the service calls when it takes a crap in six months. Now maybe this amp is a reliable amp, but we have no way of knowing that, and most decent install companies won't risk their reputation on something like this.

 

[PeteL]

Usually those PA systems sound like crap for other reasons. A lot of them use reasonable quality products (very often Crestron / QSC / Crown / other name brand) amplifiers targeted towards that application. Usually they're small 1u (sometimes half-width) amplifiers, or possibly the modern equivalent of a Com-Tech or CMX amplifier. You don't want to risk that kind of stuff blowing up. Very often it's an issue with the microphone, or the preamp for it, or the idiot using it, that results in unintelligible speech.

I'm sure there are "professional" install companies that install crap like this, but none of the reputable ones do - they don't want to deal with all the service calls when it takes a crap in six months. Now maybe this amp is a reliable amp, but we have no way of knowing that, and most decent install companies won't risk their reputation on something like this.

I don't disagree with this, but whatever they choose in many cases have nothing to do with what is measured here. Fidelity.

 

[H-713]

I don't disagree with this, but whatever they choose in many cases have nothing to do with what is measured here. Fidelity.

No, but some of the issues here are pretty major design issues.

I'm honestly not one to complain about distortion. In fact, I am quite a fan of several power amps that are average at best in that regard. I really like my Crest 3301, CA9, 4801, etc, but they're about 0.02% at 1 kHz. Honestly, if it's below 0.05% in a power amp, I probably won't say anything about it. I like to see below 0.01%, but it's not a deal-breaker.

That noise spike, while I'd really like to see it gone, is at -80 dB or so. Again, it shouldn't be there, but it probably won't cause major issues in practice.

The frequency response is pretty sad - worse than the average tube amplifier. That said, there are plenty of applications where this isn't a big deal, and it doesn't (to me) suggest design incompetency - in some applications, this is good since you don't want to be dumping low frequency energy into small speakers. Won't sound good full-range, but not all applications are full-range.

The thing that I find very disturbing, and the reason I gave it a headless rating (which I don't usually do), is what appears to be a very serious issue with limiters that mean this amp has almost no power (50 - 60 W) down below 500 Hz. That's not a good situation. It tells me that one of two things is going on:

-The power amp has issues with low frequencies, and they're using the limiter as a band-aid fix to stop it from blowing up.
-They have failed pathetically at designing a limiter (one of the most important things to get right in a pro amp.)

I don't really care which one it is - that's a design flaw that absolutely will cause problems in most of the applications this is designed and marketed towards. You might get away with it for high-pass filtered speech in a conference room, but depending on how many speakers you have connected, I wouldn't bet on it. It means that for all practical purposes, this amplifier should be rated at about 60 watts per channel.

 

[PeteL]

No, but some of the issues here are pretty major design issues.

I'm honestly not one to complain about distortion. In fact, I am quite a fan of several power amps that are average at best in that regard. I really like my Crest 3301, CA9, 4801, etc, but they're about 0.02% at 1 kHz. Honestly, if it's below 0.05% in a power amp, I probably won't say anything about it. I like to see below 0.01%, but it's not a deal-breaker.

That noise spike, while I'd really like to see it gone, is at -80 dB or so. Again, it shouldn't be there, but it probably won't cause major issues in practice.

The frequency response is pretty sad - worse than the average tube amplifier. That said, there are plenty of applications where this isn't a big deal, and it doesn't (to me) suggest design incompetency - in some applications, this is good since you don't want to be dumping low frequency energy into small speakers. Won't sound good full-range, but not all applications are full-range.

The thing that I find very disturbing, and the reason I gave it a headless rating (which I don't usually do), is what appears to be a very serious issue with limiters that mean this amp has almost no power (50 - 60 W) down below 500 Hz. That's not a good situation. It tells me that one of two things is going on:

-The power amp has issues with low frequencies, and they're using the limiter as a band-aid fix to stop it from blowing up.
-They have failed pathetically at designing a limiter (one of the most important things to get right in a pro amp.)

I don't really care which one it is - that's a design flaw that absolutely will cause problems in most of the applications this is designed and marketed towards. You might get away with it for high-pass filtered speech in a conference room, but depending on how many speakers you have connected, I wouldn't bet on it. It means that for all practical purposes, this amplifier should be rated at about 60 watts per channel.

Yes.
I was not saying that this particular amp is an ok choice for pro, or for anybody. The discussion you jumped in was a side track about what a professional product is. What is the meaning of. This is a bad product, you won't find me arguing against that. My point is I don't care if it's labeled pro or not, it is just bad whatever the application it was thought of for.

 

[Xyrium]

I was really, really hoping for this amp to test well, because I absolutely love the idea of a killer amp being sold under a brand name as dumb as Sound Town.

Alas, the dream is dead.

Meh, Schiit's doing ok.

 

[tmtomh]

Meh, Schiit's doing ok.

Well played sir.

 

[H-713]

Meh, Schiit's doing ok.

Schiit is less dorky sounding than Sound Town though... At least they tried to be creative with the name "Schiit". There's no play on words, or clever (not really, but still) spelling or anything in "Sound Town".

 

[Geert]

My point is I don't care if it's labeled pro or not, it is just bad whatever the application it was thought of for.

Your message was received clearly from the start. No one suggested you said something else. But can others be allowed to have another opinion please.