Phoenix Gold Phorum

Was emailed this and saw the PG Ti800.4 review in one of the links. Here's CA&E's review on it.

http://caraudiomag.com/articles/phoenix ... amp-review

Woot finally a magazine review about an A/B amp! Definitely quite technically thorough! I am pleasantly surprised.

The mismatched gain issues are nothing new for PG amps... pretty much any PG amp line seems to have this problem. On the whole the amp tested very well! Quite impressed!

I've said it before but the only thing this amp is lacking in my opinion ar 24dB/oct crossovers. If the monoblocks can have them, why not the multichannels? Although I am surprisingly happy to hear that it's 12dB/oct instead of 18dB/oct, because at least that would be in phase with the 24dB/oct crossovers on the monoblocks

stipud wrote:Woot finally a magazine review about an A/B amp! Definitely quite technically thorough! I am pleasantly surprised.

I also agree about the article. It looks to be pretty thorough with a ton of data.
PG rates it at:
115x4@ 4ohms @1%THD at 1kHz
150x4@ 2ohms @1%THD at 1kHz

By CEA standards it was tested at:
100x4@ 4ohms @1%THD at 50Hz
139x4@ 4ohms @1%THD at 50Hz

I like the idea of a standard rating system for all amps. That would give the consumer a great baseline for comparison shopping. Granted some "high end" models will want to stick with higher standards, but the average amps could all go to this.

But, it looks like it makes what PG says it will make.

so pg is rating it higerh then the ces ratings?

The ratings are pretty comparable. There is a small difference that can be attributed to the testing frequency.

ttocs wrote:so pg is rating it higerh then the ces ratings?

Yes, according to the last couple articles posted on here their amps are likely to not make the power listed on the box/owners manual when the CEA standards are applied.

that is disappointing, I would not call %15 a small difference.

While the CEA-2006 standard is a good step in the right direction to creating some sort of standardized testing procedures it still has its shortcomings. This was touched on in another thread regarding the Ti1500.1. It makes very little sense to test a huge mono amp at the standard of 4 ohms when it is designed to perform at a 1 ohm load. Same thing applies here. Why should anyone be concerned with how much power a Ti800.4 can output on each channel when tested @ 50 hz?

dedlyjedly wrote:While the CEA-2006 standard is a good step in the right direction to creating some sort of standardized testing procedures it still has its shortcomings. This was touched on in another thread regarding the Ti1500.1. It makes very little sense to test a huge mono amp at the standard of 4 ohms when it is designed to perform at a 1 ohm load. Same thing applies here. Why should anyone be concerned with how much power a Ti800.4 can output on each channel when tested @ 50 hz?

I agree with you on the 1500.1 being measured at 1 ohm with high distortion figures. My opinion is that class d amps are just for spl heads, and that is how most will be running them ...like i said my opinion

But i think the 800.4 should be measured at cea-2006 standards, if i was to buy it i would be bridging the rear channels to sub duty and running a set of components off the front. It would be nice if it said in the manual that it was measured at 1khz... when i first read it i assumed that the rms rating was cea-2006

All and all not that big a deal, but i will be looking closer at the specs in the future

I still think the ti600.4 and ti800.4 look like a nice solid build and would like to check them out when i get a chance, I will check out the class d amps as well ...i try and keep an open mind about class d amps, but i havent heard one i like yet

how hard would it be to show both?

dedlyjedly wrote:While the CEA-2006 standard is a good step in the right direction to creating some sort of standardized testing procedures it still has its shortcomings. This was touched on in another thread regarding the Ti1500.1. It makes very little sense to test a huge mono amp at the standard of 4 ohms when it is designed to perform at a 1 ohm load. Same thing applies here. Why should anyone be concerned with how much power a Ti800.4 can output on each channel when tested @ 50 hz?

I think the idea is to have a standard benchmark to apply to all amps equally. The companies know this standard will be applied, so they can easily build their equipment to meet these standards and still be able to meet whatever standards they have.
Going with an industry standard allows the consumers to more easily review products since now they will have more common factors.

I personally don't worry so much about the frequency picked by CEA. I just think companies should build their equipment to meet or exceed the current market testing standard.