D class Amp comparisons advice
 

for Fresh water use only, boat stored in ventilated garage year around, how would the D class amps below compare to the brand name amps of JL,WS, Exile, ArcAudio, etc.?

http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_...-JAD800.4.html

http://www.sonicelectronix.com/cat_m...mplifiers.html

Any other recommendations?

The Precision Power amps are VERY good for the price. If you're tight on cash, I'd recommend going that route.

I run a PPI Phantom P600.2 for my tower speakers (Kicker HLCD KM6500.2 6-pack).

I run a PPI Phantom P1000.1 for my pair of 10" Infinity Subs at a 2 ohm load to the amp.

I run a PPI Phantom P900.4 for my six inboat speakers (Polk DB651)

I'm really happy with them and the value for the money.. they are super efficient too and I can run them for at least a couple hours at full tilt off 1 of my regular deep cycle lead acid marine batteries (Walmart) without the boat being on and they just keep on playing.

Love em.

I noticed the site can be rather misleading when it comes to you they figure the RMS and Watts.

http://www.sonicelectronix.com/cat_m...-speakers.html

I have a p900.4 bridged to my two tower speakers (apt6.0pro) and love it. I can run it for hours when it is 95 degrees out and it never gets hot. I do have dual batteries, but blasting music for 4 hours never wears down one battery. I am going to buy another p900.4 this winter to hook up to my 6.5 infinity inboat speakers.

How do you want to compare them? Those two amps in your links use basically the same chassis along with the polk. None of them are in the build quality arena with JL, Wet Sounds and Arc. Likely on par with the exile. Those amps seem to make the RMS that is advertised, but theres more to it then just wattage. If you plan to run in simple stereo mode, those amps will likely serve you well. If you plan to bridge one, then you will begin to see/hear the difference between them and the higher end amps like JL, Wet Sounds and Arc. During tuning, you will also see the difference in the accuracy of the frequency POT between those 3 hi-end amps and the others.

hahahaha where is dave that was a nice passive aggressive statement. LOLOLOL Whats next Kraco comparison. bahahahahhaa lololol

Honest comparison from Mike... I don't see anything wrong with it... Oh your a Exile fan boy?

Much cheaper , decent power , do the rated claims. Not all the bells and whistles either.

Tigemike is sound guy, Dave is also a sound guy. I am sure these two professionals could pick out the differences by ear in a perfect environment. No doubt in my mind there is a difference in quality.

Now let's factor in open air, wind turbulence, engine noise and take it back 80ft. Can You really hear the clarity difference? I would venture to say for those who are not audiofiles and just want good sounding, easy on the pocketbook gear to keep their times on the lake upbeat those Amps would satisfy a ton of people.


Throw the Soundstream Tarantula Nano series and the Polk series in there with the PPI amps as well. All are the essentially the same boards.

Ditto on the soundstream tarantula nano's. I'm running 4 of them in my boat. 1 running my 12L7, 1 running my pair of Rev 8's, 1 running my 6 6.5's coaxials, and one running 1 pair of 8 coaxial and a 10" sub.
I agree that the pots are not the best and hard to set without any tuning instruments. I have the smd dd1 and cc1 to take care of the tuning. My system sounds great, especially for the price.

Here's my amp board prior to installing in the boat.

Attachment 39568

WHAT?$#!? You can't hear the difference at 80 ft?

oh and your a WS fanboy. Calling names is fun. I have WS product as well as Exile. So yeah I am. :banghead:

Honestly I had a Syn 4 on my old boat pushing Rev10's and sold the amps with the boat and put my pro 80's up there. My new boat I didn't have the cash for Syn 4 (hindsight probably shoulda just threw 2 of the PPI's in there and yanked out the (2) Syn 4 amps, but they were huge selling point for must potential buyers). went with the PPI 900.4 for the new boat and while riding at 24 mph with wind in my face they still sound good enough to me not to go yank up a Syn 4 at retail

Again I truly believe there is quality difference, but as someone who doesn't tune stereos for a living or judge competitions the PPI gets me good sound on the water for fraction of the cost and hasn't overheated or clipped once. I only really hammered on it two times though for about 3 hrs each time so take that for what it's worth. I think if you're the guy railing on your stereo at party cove for hours on end you would benefit and need the higher end gear.


PRESTON

THAT LOOKS AWESOME

No I carry many products.. Just dogged the 420BT on another thread compared to using a 420SQ with BT added.. Product quality is what we are a fan boy of.. Lol
I've carried product I don't recommend purely for the fanboys of certain brands.. It's just life..

Point is:
When you guys see a post without someone raving or saying Exile is #1 you pounce.... No matter how it's stated... We do this for a living, we hear all kinds of stuff and get to play with all kinds of equipment. When someone ask for a comparison we will give it. WS wasn't even mentioned first in TigeMike's post of top amplifiers, JL was.. I am sorry that some of us think Exile hasn't hit that top tier product yet, someday maybe. They are trying it seems... But you guys make a bad wrap for them to be honest.... Peace/love/wakes...

Well, I was kidding of course. No one can hear the difference at 80 ft. with noise, motion and exhaust.

But on a serious note, there can be audible differences when at rest, especially with an HLCD that so ruthlessly reproduces everything including amplifier shortcomings. Also, think about how the amplifier sounds to the near-field in-boat occupants while you are trying to project to a rider at 80ft. Some amplifiers sound noticeably warmer when pushed hard and definitely clip more gracefully than others.
It's about much more than what an amplifier can do into a non-reactive load, with only one of four channels driven, strictly at 1kHz, and with no less than a 14.4V supply.
Many of the Class D China platform amplifiers are switching at slower speeds, have lower filter frequencies, and feature very basic circuitry. As an importer, you can change the configurations somewhat such as power and the aesthetic chassis, but you are taking pretty much what the China builder gives you. There's no domestic engineering influence because there are no domestic engineers working for these importers. They are primarily made to meet one spec. The first thing I notice is the horribly cheap front ends. Crossovers that are not only inaccurate but also have terrible quality HP & LP filters.
In contrast, that's where the domestic designed amplifier tend to shine.

^I couldn't agree more.

I had Zed class D in my boat and ran into some issues. The SQ on the Zed's was great, but the support from the manufacturer not so much, and there have been many who had issues with their amps since the latest series came out. I recently tried out a RF 600.4 on my 8 Exile in boats. After a pretty decent sound test on my in-boats I put to 2 XM9's on the amp and can tell you that I could live with that amp for the price on my in boat speakers, but I could not get the SQ tuned out to what I'm used to on the tower. It wasn't terrible, but the output and clarity just weren't giving the tower speakers everything they could handle IMO.

Has anyone thought of making an attenuation button for stereos? This may sound lame or exist. But instead of having to dial down your stereo after a rider falls and then back up when they get back up. You hit a button it immediately attenuates the sound down to a very low volume. Once the rider is back up you thit the same button or maybe another and it slowly brings the music back to the previous level say over 10 seconds. I know there are the units that will auto do it as the boat slows etc but this just seems easy.

Sure, a trolling motor footswitch to a latching relay set which engages/disengages in-line RCA resistance. A PAC LC-1 acting as the variable resistance. Once the attenuation level is ideally set you never touch the LC-1 again, just the footswitch. Keeps both hands totally free. I did this before the auto level controllers. Everyone liked the concept BUT not enough to buy it.
Or, using the JL Audio 3-in/1-out audio source selector switcher with an independent gain level for each input. Now a pushbutton instead of a rotary control BUT still manual.

I wouldn't spend money on something like this when the difference is going to be the time it takes to push a button vs. the time it takes to turn down the master volume on the WS420SQ. Like the difference between a tenth of a second and a quarter of a second. not a big enough deal to matter.

NAILED IT!

People that work in this industry get to install or play with all the brands. We see how they're built, how the company is structured and ran, and see most fail, or be bought out by other companies. We also see how they're corporate greed knocks down the dealers that don't do $10M/year. If we diss a product on here, it's for DAMN good reason.

On the other hand, it blows my mind how some of the guys on here can judge what they want by another consumer's comments - "I love mine", "I've never had any problems". Then we're over here like "dont get me started on that ****!"

I have a WS but to have a quick push button near the throttle or something to me would be awesome just a thought. Thanks Dave.

ooohhhh now I see why everything else sucks besides JL and WS. Now I feel soooo stupid now. :banghead:

My comment about greed was actually about JL, but there's a lot more to the story isn't in the reply. I'm not going to type a novel on here explaining it all.

They aren't the only ones Jonyb.... Oh how things happen and it's no ones fault... Lol

Care to elaborate? I know they aren't the only ones.

No, its not that it sux, its just nut built to the level of quality that people have been lead by the manufacturer, to believe.

If someone asks if Smirnoff is as good a vodka as Goose and the answer is no. Thats doesnt mean Smirnoff sux as you put it, it simple means its not as good as a premium label.

Whoever mentioned the ATT button, I'm with you there. This is one function that my factory head unit had in my Supra, and I lost that when I went to the WS420SQ with a BT dongle from JL. Besides losing my transom remote, this is the other item I miss most... my ATT button was awesome. They definitely exist though.

I know just seems way better than adjusting the two dials. Did not even think of the foot switch idea. how much were you gonna sell them for dave??

They're marketing works. well. I won't say it sucks, but for a lot of reasons, I think there's better.

I worked in a store in the late 90's, early 2000's. We sold JL Audio. A store from Evansville, IN opened a sister store in our town. We had just spent more than $10K on an order to be some kind of high level dealer. They pulled the line from us because the other store came to town. That's the kind of company that can suck me.

Aside from that, they're equipment is mediocre, IMO.

https://scontent-atl.xx.fbcdn.net/hp...48895991_n.jpg
https://scontent-atl.xx.fbcdn.net/hp...58&oe=55712533

Yeah they pulled some crap like that with the old shop I was with.. Was JL for 3 years... Someone new comes to town, flashes money, BOOM gone... Lol now they are moving less product.. Haha...
The guys that start off strong to take a dealer, get crap sales down the road...

Another story about another company will be a personal PM.... Roflmao

I may have one of those myself :D

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