I stumbled upon a good deal on this guy, so I decided to buy it and see what it could do. Ever since Peavey announced this line of amps, they had my attention. 7lbs and 530w @ 4 ohms, I figured it would be a winner. I've taken the liberty of beating the piss out of it over the past month to see what it could do.
When the amp arrived, I opened it up and sure it enough, it was as light as some of my processing gear. The built quality is pretty good. No rear rack rails, but I imagine they wouldn't be needed for something so light. The body is made of a light weight, very thin aluminum. It's not super sturdy, but since it's going to live in a rack all it's life, it's really not a concern. I just wouldn't want it to sit out in the open and have someone use it as a foot step.
I plugged the amp in, and the pretty blue Peavey logo lit up on the front. I engaged the amp, and the whole thing lit up like a Christmas tree. YIKES! This thing screams ''DJ GRADE'' when you fire it up. I buy amps to power my speakers, not to light up the stage... The front LED's are also very bright(not so much of a bad thing), but the internal lights are not very forgiving.
Well, a little gaff tape later, and the amp has gone dark.
The amp looks a lot better without those annoying LED's, and while it's not a deal breaker for me, if I buy anymore of those amps, I'm going to have to gaff over the internal lights again...
Now, how about performance.
First, 8 ohms stereo, running full range. Nothing out of the ordinary here. I ran some tracks, and cranked the amp up until the DDT lights were starting to flicker, and I let it sit there for a bit. No signs of strain, and it ran cool. I figured there wouldn't be any issues here. Alright, how about a single sub on 1 channel, and a top on the other. Again, crank it up until light clipping, and let it sit. Everything sounds fine, and the amp isn't having any issues. So, 8 ohms is a breeze for the amp, just like I was expecting.
So, 4 ohms. I start with a pair of speakers per channel. Crank it up, and let the amp sit. It's getting a little warmer, but still running just fine, as I expected. Ok, how about a pair of 18's, 1 per channel. Yup, you guessed it. The amp is running just fine with DDT just starting to flicker. And surprisingly, the amp sounds good on subs. It's beefy sounding, and sounds better then an XTI on subs. I was expecting the amp to whimp out driving subwoofers, but it's holding it's own.
Ok, I'm not having any fun yet... I pull out the dance music with the crazy LF sweeps and go to town. I want to see this amp struggle. I'm railing this thing into clip. The kick drum is lighting the DDT lights up pretty brightly. The amp handled things just fine for about 1 minute. The kick drum hits are sending it into protect. Ok, the amp isn't liking hard clipping. I don't plan to run my rig like that, so I move on.
One thing I want to note: The amp is still running pretty cool. The fan is running fast and is not annoyingly loud.
2 ohms: 2 dual 18 subs on 1 side, 2 4 ohm tops on the other side. I crank it up, and the amp gets hot quick. I was able to send both channels into thermal protect just about every minute. However, it also recovers very quickly. The amp would spend about 10 seconds in protect, and then try to kick back in.
So, with my testing done, it was time to hit the road and do some local gigs. I decided the amp would be happiest on monitor duty, so that's what I used it for. First gig was the typical loud rock show. 2 monitors one channel 1, 1 monitor on channel 2. Monitors were high passed around 100hz, and limited accordingly. No issues at all during the night, and I was hitting the amp hard at some points. I ran it like this for a few other gigs, and the amp held up just fine.
For this last show, I changed things up a little. I had 2 4 ohm monitors on 1 channel, and the other channel sat idle. Things were fine all day, until the final act. They wanted things SUPER loud. I was hitting the compressor on the monitor output pretty hard, and the amp was working hard. No clipping going on anywhere, but about 4-6dB of GR before the amp. So, the signal was a little more compressed. About 15 minutes into the performance, I started losing the amp. It would come and go in and out of thermal. I tried swapping to channel 2(since it was not in use), and surprising to me, it shut right down. I thought channel 2 would have been cool since it wasn't in use, but I guess I was wrong. I ended up pulling the monitor mix back about 10dB to get through the rest of the gig.
So, overall, the Peavey IPR1600 is a great value. At $300, you're really not going to find a better amp in the 500 watt range. It's rock solid at 8 and 4 ohms as long as you keep it in it's operating limits, and will do ok at 2 ohms, as long as you don't push it too hard. It sounds good on subwoofers, and the higher power models should do a great job of replacing heavier amps. I think it'll give the QSC GX, XTI and XLS amps a good run for their money. If you don't mind the DJ look, and some LED lights, then they should treat you just fine. I am very satisfied with my purchase, and I'll probably buy another for monitors.
Evan
When the amp arrived, I opened it up and sure it enough, it was as light as some of my processing gear. The built quality is pretty good. No rear rack rails, but I imagine they wouldn't be needed for something so light. The body is made of a light weight, very thin aluminum. It's not super sturdy, but since it's going to live in a rack all it's life, it's really not a concern. I just wouldn't want it to sit out in the open and have someone use it as a foot step.
I plugged the amp in, and the pretty blue Peavey logo lit up on the front. I engaged the amp, and the whole thing lit up like a Christmas tree. YIKES! This thing screams ''DJ GRADE'' when you fire it up. I buy amps to power my speakers, not to light up the stage... The front LED's are also very bright(not so much of a bad thing), but the internal lights are not very forgiving.
Well, a little gaff tape later, and the amp has gone dark.
The amp looks a lot better without those annoying LED's, and while it's not a deal breaker for me, if I buy anymore of those amps, I'm going to have to gaff over the internal lights again...
Now, how about performance.
First, 8 ohms stereo, running full range. Nothing out of the ordinary here. I ran some tracks, and cranked the amp up until the DDT lights were starting to flicker, and I let it sit there for a bit. No signs of strain, and it ran cool. I figured there wouldn't be any issues here. Alright, how about a single sub on 1 channel, and a top on the other. Again, crank it up until light clipping, and let it sit. Everything sounds fine, and the amp isn't having any issues. So, 8 ohms is a breeze for the amp, just like I was expecting.
So, 4 ohms. I start with a pair of speakers per channel. Crank it up, and let the amp sit. It's getting a little warmer, but still running just fine, as I expected. Ok, how about a pair of 18's, 1 per channel. Yup, you guessed it. The amp is running just fine with DDT just starting to flicker. And surprisingly, the amp sounds good on subs. It's beefy sounding, and sounds better then an XTI on subs. I was expecting the amp to whimp out driving subwoofers, but it's holding it's own.
Ok, I'm not having any fun yet... I pull out the dance music with the crazy LF sweeps and go to town. I want to see this amp struggle. I'm railing this thing into clip. The kick drum is lighting the DDT lights up pretty brightly. The amp handled things just fine for about 1 minute. The kick drum hits are sending it into protect. Ok, the amp isn't liking hard clipping. I don't plan to run my rig like that, so I move on.
One thing I want to note: The amp is still running pretty cool. The fan is running fast and is not annoyingly loud.
2 ohms: 2 dual 18 subs on 1 side, 2 4 ohm tops on the other side. I crank it up, and the amp gets hot quick. I was able to send both channels into thermal protect just about every minute. However, it also recovers very quickly. The amp would spend about 10 seconds in protect, and then try to kick back in.
So, with my testing done, it was time to hit the road and do some local gigs. I decided the amp would be happiest on monitor duty, so that's what I used it for. First gig was the typical loud rock show. 2 monitors one channel 1, 1 monitor on channel 2. Monitors were high passed around 100hz, and limited accordingly. No issues at all during the night, and I was hitting the amp hard at some points. I ran it like this for a few other gigs, and the amp held up just fine.
For this last show, I changed things up a little. I had 2 4 ohm monitors on 1 channel, and the other channel sat idle. Things were fine all day, until the final act. They wanted things SUPER loud. I was hitting the compressor on the monitor output pretty hard, and the amp was working hard. No clipping going on anywhere, but about 4-6dB of GR before the amp. So, the signal was a little more compressed. About 15 minutes into the performance, I started losing the amp. It would come and go in and out of thermal. I tried swapping to channel 2(since it was not in use), and surprising to me, it shut right down. I thought channel 2 would have been cool since it wasn't in use, but I guess I was wrong. I ended up pulling the monitor mix back about 10dB to get through the rest of the gig.
So, overall, the Peavey IPR1600 is a great value. At $300, you're really not going to find a better amp in the 500 watt range. It's rock solid at 8 and 4 ohms as long as you keep it in it's operating limits, and will do ok at 2 ohms, as long as you don't push it too hard. It sounds good on subwoofers, and the higher power models should do a great job of replacing heavier amps. I think it'll give the QSC GX, XTI and XLS amps a good run for their money. If you don't mind the DJ look, and some LED lights, then they should treat you just fine. I am very satisfied with my purchase, and I'll probably buy another for monitors.
Evan