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SpeakerPower Torpedo SP1-4000 Plate Amp
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<blockquote data-quote="Langston Holland" data-source="post: 31634" data-attributes="member: 171"><p>Re: SpeakerPower Torpedo SP1-4000 Plate Amp (1 of 3)</p><p></p><p>I received a pair of Torpedo SP1-4000 amp modules from Brian at SpeakerPower almost 5 weeks ago and finally had some time to measure and listen to them driving my TH118's. They happen to be a perfect drop-in replacement for the NL4 panel that Danley installs on their TH115's and TH118's (maybe others) given that Danley has OEM'd SpeakerPower modules for their powered loudspeakers.</p><p></p><p>The first surprise I got when taking them out of the box was their weight - I measured only 6.5 lb each. Brian mentioned these modules are pretty much half a QSC PL380 power-wise, thus I was expecting approx. half the PL380's weight of 24 lb - turned out to be a quarter of the weight. No fans and a very low profile heat sink combined with that kind of weight and power rating made me wonder about how these things would handle themselves under high power continuous use.</p><p></p><p>Art did a good job covering the background behind these amps so I won't bother repeating stuff, I'll just do my thing. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p><p></p><p><strong>Features</strong>:</p><p></p><p>Have you ever considered what it's like sitting down and trying to figure out how to please the largest possible market with a single production template? Back in the day before I knew about Radial, I designed, built and used several Jensen transformer based DI's. I seriously considered taking it to market and bought over $500 worth of switches and all kinds of gizmos to build the "ultimate-best-sounding-bulletproof-but-not-too-expensive" DI. I finished it and started shopping fabrication. "So buddy, you want to start with a small run of 500 at $200 each per enclosure, or drop the cost down to $50 each (where I can actually sell the thing) with a minimum run of 5,000?" That, folks, was the beginning and end of Soundscapes manufacturing. I lost a little under a grand with that idea. There are many, many who went further that would trade a functioning part of their anatomy to have only lost the time and money I did.</p><p></p><p>So, where am I going with this (other than probably breaking Bennett's wimpy 10k character limit on a post)? For one, the Radial DI's make me mad as stink they have so many SS's (stupid switches) on their Jensen transformer based DI's. Yeah, I've pulled off the caps to make doing something stupid like engaging the pad more difficult. Jensen DI transformers can handle +30dBu or more with almost all music signals BTW. Switches have a date only they know about that they'll go high impedance and make you look like a toad. I could go on, but suffice it to say I own a bunch of Radial DI's.</p><p></p><p>So what about the SP1-4000?</p><p></p><p><u>Front</u>:</p><p></p><p><img src="http://soundscapesweb.com/files/PSW/AmpTests3/SP1-4000_Front.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p><u>Back</u>:</p><p></p><p><img src="http://soundscapesweb.com/files/PSW/AmpTests3/SP1-4000_Back.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>I'm probably not the average end user of something like this, I want a feature set more like what you see on the Meyer and EONA ADRaudio products, i.e. nothing you or a fair amount of rain can get into. Thus, the following comments are geared in that direction. My negatives may very well be your positives, but this is <em>my</em> review. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p><p></p><p><u>Stuff I like</u>:</p><p></p><p>1. The LED's. Power, Clip (actually limit and clip), Protect, and Signal. The cool and unusual thing about signal LED is that it reads the voltage prior to the gain knob, so even if you have the thing turned all the way down, you can still get a feel for how hot the incoming signal is.</p><p></p><p>2. XL in/out are locking and gold plated. No matter what Ivan says, the latter doesn't improve the sound, just keeps it from degrading with time.</p><p></p><p>3. Neutrik PowerCon input. Neutrik rules planet connector.</p><p></p><p>4. No latency. The bandpass filter, polarity switch and gain potentiometer are in the analog domain.</p><p></p><p>5. Very powerful, very lightweight, very high efficiency, purpose made for LF power allowing normally unacceptable engineering compromises to work in our favor to reduce costs, required supply current and weight while increasing output.</p><p></p><p>6. The Molex type connector for powering the loudspeaker's internal driver(s) has dual negative and positive cables. This makes for easy dual-driver connections or doubles the copper feeding a single driver. I'd prefer a high current NL4 instead of the Molex, though it would probably make things too expensive.</p><p></p><p>7. Both Polarity and bandpass switches work without the need to power cycle the amp.</p><p></p><p><u>Stuff I don't like</u>:</p><p></p><p>1. Power switch. Evil. If it's plugged in to power it should go unless it's broke. Period.</p><p></p><p>2. NL4 out instead of PowerCon loop out. This is an interesting idea, and I've found that this amp can drive a 2Ω load at full tilt until tomorrow. Still, it's just not workable for portable sound where consistency in hookup is key to everything working every time.</p><p></p><p>3. External circuit breaker. I'd like it to be internal and self-resetting once the load is corrected.</p><p></p><p>4. Gain knob. One more thing to go wrong, especially with time and (mis)handling. It has a nice strong detented feel that requires a proper amount of effort to adjust, on the other hand, the 1dB indications are only accurate through its middle range. Even if it were perfect, it doesn't need to be there - we live in a world with +20dBu max, +10dBu average drive levels when things are full-tilt. Adjust the amp gain where it's maxed out at these drive levels (32dB would be nice) and lose the knob.</p><p></p><p>5. The XL connectors are widely separated from the PowerCon connectors. Folks like me that use combined power/audio cabling for self amplified loudspeakers must then have large tails at the end of the cable for both types of connectors to reach their destinations. The XL terminated audio cable is somewhat fragile. Keeping it short is very important. Keep the connectors close and shield the internals as needed.</p><p></p><p><u>Stuff I want</u>:</p><p></p><p>1. Fix the things above.</p><p></p><p>2. If it doesn't exist, get Neutrik to make a PowerCon that includes (4) pairs with shield of either Ethernet or (4) channels of audio. Readily available "active speaker" cable that combines power with twisted pair line-level audio works beautifully without a hint of audible crosstalk. How beautiful life would be to have <em>everything</em> included with a single PowerEtherCon!</p><p></p><p>3. Florida we-may-die rainstorm proof.</p><p></p><p>4. XL output programmable to loop through or processed signal out.</p><p></p><p>5. Ability to handle up to +28dBu levels without clipping analog input circuity with the stupid output circuity of many (most?) consoles.</p><p></p><p>6. I know this is bad, but I really need an amp module like this to take care of everything so that I can rent or cross-rent the sub with no instructions other than "plug it in, feed it a full range signal from your console and adjust delay (if you want to bother - she's only rock 'n roll) on your tops as needed.</p><p></p><p>7. The ability to use 208v to 240v as well as 120v. Dropping current use in half by doubling voltage is always a happy thing. Automatic switching is not necessary, but loved and appreciated.</p><p></p><p>That means I need a single channel of digital processing with a waterproof EtherCon connection on the panel for programming. I need delay up to 200ms for use with delay towers, polarity, a handful of parametric EQ's, high pass and low pass with the usual suspects for slopes, gain, amp clip limiter, separate RMS and peak limiters with adj. threshold, attack, release and ratio. Xilica offers OEM processing modules that would probably fit the bill nicely.</p><p></p><p><u>Listening</u>:</p><p></p><p>This is a short section. The amp modules work extremely well. They are approximately as powerful as half a PL380 - possibly more so as impedance decreases, which seems to have been a competitive design goal. They don't get very hot at all with full-tilt <em>music</em> - actually it's weird how cool they run - they really don't seem to need a fan. Powering (2) 4Ω TH118's to the amp's max was fine on a single 20 amp circuit for about 3 minutes before tripping. From the sound of things, TH118's could have taken a bit more power, but not much. This is probably louder than you'd ever drive them if you had the right amount of rig for the gig™. Powering a single TH118 all day would have been no problem on a single 20 amp breaker.</p><p></p><p><em> Continued in part (2 of 3)</em></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Langston Holland, post: 31634, member: 171"] Re: SpeakerPower Torpedo SP1-4000 Plate Amp (1 of 3) I received a pair of Torpedo SP1-4000 amp modules from Brian at SpeakerPower almost 5 weeks ago and finally had some time to measure and listen to them driving my TH118's. They happen to be a perfect drop-in replacement for the NL4 panel that Danley installs on their TH115's and TH118's (maybe others) given that Danley has OEM'd SpeakerPower modules for their powered loudspeakers. The first surprise I got when taking them out of the box was their weight - I measured only 6.5 lb each. Brian mentioned these modules are pretty much half a QSC PL380 power-wise, thus I was expecting approx. half the PL380's weight of 24 lb - turned out to be a quarter of the weight. No fans and a very low profile heat sink combined with that kind of weight and power rating made me wonder about how these things would handle themselves under high power continuous use. Art did a good job covering the background behind these amps so I won't bother repeating stuff, I'll just do my thing. :) [B]Features[/B]: Have you ever considered what it's like sitting down and trying to figure out how to please the largest possible market with a single production template? Back in the day before I knew about Radial, I designed, built and used several Jensen transformer based DI's. I seriously considered taking it to market and bought over $500 worth of switches and all kinds of gizmos to build the "ultimate-best-sounding-bulletproof-but-not-too-expensive" DI. I finished it and started shopping fabrication. "So buddy, you want to start with a small run of 500 at $200 each per enclosure, or drop the cost down to $50 each (where I can actually sell the thing) with a minimum run of 5,000?" That, folks, was the beginning and end of Soundscapes manufacturing. I lost a little under a grand with that idea. There are many, many who went further that would trade a functioning part of their anatomy to have only lost the time and money I did. So, where am I going with this (other than probably breaking Bennett's wimpy 10k character limit on a post)? For one, the Radial DI's make me mad as stink they have so many SS's (stupid switches) on their Jensen transformer based DI's. Yeah, I've pulled off the caps to make doing something stupid like engaging the pad more difficult. Jensen DI transformers can handle +30dBu or more with almost all music signals BTW. Switches have a date only they know about that they'll go high impedance and make you look like a toad. I could go on, but suffice it to say I own a bunch of Radial DI's. So what about the SP1-4000? [U]Front[/U]: [IMG]http://soundscapesweb.com/files/PSW/AmpTests3/SP1-4000_Front.jpg[/IMG] [U]Back[/U]: [IMG]http://soundscapesweb.com/files/PSW/AmpTests3/SP1-4000_Back.jpg[/IMG] I'm probably not the average end user of something like this, I want a feature set more like what you see on the Meyer and EONA ADRaudio products, i.e. nothing you or a fair amount of rain can get into. Thus, the following comments are geared in that direction. My negatives may very well be your positives, but this is [I]my[/I] review. :) [U]Stuff I like[/U]: 1. The LED's. Power, Clip (actually limit and clip), Protect, and Signal. The cool and unusual thing about signal LED is that it reads the voltage prior to the gain knob, so even if you have the thing turned all the way down, you can still get a feel for how hot the incoming signal is. 2. XL in/out are locking and gold plated. No matter what Ivan says, the latter doesn't improve the sound, just keeps it from degrading with time. 3. Neutrik PowerCon input. Neutrik rules planet connector. 4. No latency. The bandpass filter, polarity switch and gain potentiometer are in the analog domain. 5. Very powerful, very lightweight, very high efficiency, purpose made for LF power allowing normally unacceptable engineering compromises to work in our favor to reduce costs, required supply current and weight while increasing output. 6. The Molex type connector for powering the loudspeaker's internal driver(s) has dual negative and positive cables. This makes for easy dual-driver connections or doubles the copper feeding a single driver. I'd prefer a high current NL4 instead of the Molex, though it would probably make things too expensive. 7. Both Polarity and bandpass switches work without the need to power cycle the amp. [U]Stuff I don't like[/U]: 1. Power switch. Evil. If it's plugged in to power it should go unless it's broke. Period. 2. NL4 out instead of PowerCon loop out. This is an interesting idea, and I've found that this amp can drive a 2Ω load at full tilt until tomorrow. Still, it's just not workable for portable sound where consistency in hookup is key to everything working every time. 3. External circuit breaker. I'd like it to be internal and self-resetting once the load is corrected. 4. Gain knob. One more thing to go wrong, especially with time and (mis)handling. It has a nice strong detented feel that requires a proper amount of effort to adjust, on the other hand, the 1dB indications are only accurate through its middle range. Even if it were perfect, it doesn't need to be there - we live in a world with +20dBu max, +10dBu average drive levels when things are full-tilt. Adjust the amp gain where it's maxed out at these drive levels (32dB would be nice) and lose the knob. 5. The XL connectors are widely separated from the PowerCon connectors. Folks like me that use combined power/audio cabling for self amplified loudspeakers must then have large tails at the end of the cable for both types of connectors to reach their destinations. The XL terminated audio cable is somewhat fragile. Keeping it short is very important. Keep the connectors close and shield the internals as needed. [U]Stuff I want[/U]: 1. Fix the things above. 2. If it doesn't exist, get Neutrik to make a PowerCon that includes (4) pairs with shield of either Ethernet or (4) channels of audio. Readily available "active speaker" cable that combines power with twisted pair line-level audio works beautifully without a hint of audible crosstalk. How beautiful life would be to have [I]everything[/I] included with a single PowerEtherCon! 3. Florida we-may-die rainstorm proof. 4. XL output programmable to loop through or processed signal out. 5. Ability to handle up to +28dBu levels without clipping analog input circuity with the stupid output circuity of many (most?) consoles. 6. I know this is bad, but I really need an amp module like this to take care of everything so that I can rent or cross-rent the sub with no instructions other than "plug it in, feed it a full range signal from your console and adjust delay (if you want to bother - she's only rock 'n roll) on your tops as needed. 7. The ability to use 208v to 240v as well as 120v. Dropping current use in half by doubling voltage is always a happy thing. Automatic switching is not necessary, but loved and appreciated. That means I need a single channel of digital processing with a waterproof EtherCon connection on the panel for programming. I need delay up to 200ms for use with delay towers, polarity, a handful of parametric EQ's, high pass and low pass with the usual suspects for slopes, gain, amp clip limiter, separate RMS and peak limiters with adj. threshold, attack, release and ratio. Xilica offers OEM processing modules that would probably fit the bill nicely. [U]Listening[/U]: This is a short section. The amp modules work extremely well. They are approximately as powerful as half a PL380 - possibly more so as impedance decreases, which seems to have been a competitive design goal. They don't get very hot at all with full-tilt [I]music[/I] - actually it's weird how cool they run - they really don't seem to need a fan. Powering (2) 4Ω TH118's to the amp's max was fine on a single 20 amp circuit for about 3 minutes before tripping. From the sound of things, TH118's could have taken a bit more power, but not much. This is probably louder than you'd ever drive them if you had the right amount of rig for the gig™. Powering a single TH118 all day would have been no problem on a single 20 amp breaker. [I] Continued in part (2 of 3)[/I] [/QUOTE]
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