The new matrix amp !!

Xti's[img]smileys/smiley36.gif[/img]

andy have you got any ready? we have a massive gi planned and would love to give ur amps a caining...

we would need 5 or 6.

i can pick them up and drop them off

need them for friday

Still beta testing,there will be a xp5000 in London in 3 weeks or so.

OK so no smoke or thunder so how did they fare?

First off a couple of things to get straight, when I agreed to Beta test the amps Andy made me promise that I would be totally honest and report them, WARTS and all. This I was perfectly happy to agree too.

With regards the XTi,s I think that they are a perfect example of current SMPS amps in that dynamically they perform a lot better than the bench tests suggest. At no time when I was using them did I think that they were the limiting factor.

Andy's design brief for the SMPS is simple, that is he designs it to provide the same amount of Balls as if it had one of his toroid's * in place.

The 15" bass bin that I used with the amp with are pretty unusual in that because of the driver they are tuned pretty low 41Hz and given the high Xmax (10mm calculated) can produce a fair amount of sub bass and do not sound one notish at all. The downside is that they are fairly low in efficiency at just 97db/w. They are capable of very high resolution for a P.A. type speaker.

It was agreed last night that one pair of bass bins would be sufficient (120 pepes) so they were connected in parallel and used with a bridged amp to give a 4 ohm bridged loading.
The sound to my ears was exemplary, at no time during the evening did the DJ get more than the -12db light lit on the amp ** and subsequently it ran cool.
When I did the original setup to check LMS limiter settings I can confirm that the amp clips very gracefully just like Andy's conventional amps.

In a couple of weeks time I will be using a pair of the new amps with a Deep Purple tribute band so expect to push them much closer to the limit.

So my report at the moment is that in terms of sound quality they are I think above reproach, power delivery is very impressive indeed, as for ultimate reliability we will see but nothing to me suggests that they will not be up to the usual Matrix standards.

* Which themselves are oversized compared to many competitors
** Bear in mind this amp does well over 3K into 4 bridged.

Tony

p.s. I can confirm that the 5k amp is a complete monster but will let someone else let you in on that one. The wife keeps asking me why the top of the case keeps getting sticky!!!! Just joking[img]smileys/smiley2.gif[/img]


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Edited by: AJW

5kw over sized smps lightweight amp[img]smileys/smiley20.gif[/img] spot on. i will have to buy one when their out and thats that.

mykey wrote: it won't win any beauty competitions
<div>lets hope hope it sounds better than it looks </div>

its just an old shell for a previous oem manufacturing contract; its inside that counts

nineleaves wrote:

mykey wrote: it won't win any beauty competitions
<div>lets hope hope it sounds better than it looks </div>

its just an old shell for a previous oem manufacturing contract; its inside that counts

Funny how that picture still shows those crap leds :lol: never mind one day andy......

I hope all this goes well for Andy. His customer service was such a strong point, but he did seem stressed/slower when getting involved with the new stuff/new partners.
I also noticed on Ebay the NEW amps were photographed balancing on a bucket outdoors....Come on smiley21
Never had any complaints about the older stuff, however the Tim/Bespoke issues with the new WERE for real, I promise. Issues that never occured with years of Opus amps and now Labs.
Anyhow, new ventures always cause headaches and many seem happy. So good luck in your ventures Andy.