Live Performance & Production > Sound Reinforcement

Cheap Power Amps

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samkokajko:
I may be recommending a power amp for a few small speakers to be used as front fills (Peavey Impulse 6). The speakers are rated for 100W program and are 8 ohms.

At the moment there will be 3 but might add a 4th in the future. So in looking for an inexpensive amp I cam across several below the $300 mark.

The cheapest piece I would consider looking at is the Crown XLS202 at $200

Anyone have any thoughts on that amp? Seems to have good reviews, and does carry a brand name. It would be 300W into 4 ohms so that would be 150W to each box (2 per channel). That being said I'm not worried about over powering the boxes because what they will be doing is WELL within their limits SPL wise and they won't be driven anywhere near a level that would damage them.


There are also several amps to be considered at the $300 price point. Peavy IPR1600, QSC GX3 and Crown XLS1000 leading the charge there.

Thoughts?

RoadRanger:
Amp choice sounds good - but you do realize these little guys are really inefficient and the 100db rating on them is not at 1 watt but at 100 watts :o ?

samkokajko:
I always manage to overlook one big detail because it's plain as day in my head.

These front fills are for a theatre and only need to cover about 15 people 3 rows deep with moderate level dialogue. I've worked with the speakers before and they'll cover what they need to well. Thanks for the heads up though. These definitely wouldn't cut it if I was trying to use them for frontfills on a dance floor or something similar.

BillESC:
You might consider using a commercial 70v distributed system.   Amps are less expensive and offer more interface abilities like priority, phone, music, etc.  I usually spec EV's Evid ceiling speakers but know the Peavey 6's and either can do the job.  Nice feature of a 70v system is you can tailor each speakers gain at the speaker.  Think of a restaurant, given the same ceiling height, levels over the bar will be loudest, dining area less, bathrooms even less.  All this off on one amp and one two wire speaker cable.  With power (gain) taps at 1.88 - 70 V only), 3.75, 7.5, 15, 30 watts you have a lot of volume choices.

samkokajko:
I don't know that a 70v system is really needed in this scenario. There will only be 4 speakers tops, probably 3 at the moment. The center 1 (or 2) will be on one amp channel, the two on the outside on the second amp channel to give me a little level control in "zones". The send for these is coming off of a matrix send from the console (M7CL-32) and will have processing as needed in the board (HPF, EQ and Delay).

HOWEVER, for my ever increasing list of gear, what 70v amps would you suggest? I recently helped installed a 70v system in the backstage area consisting of 13 speakers in different rooms with wall controls and an amp hidden upstairs that also gets a send from a matrix off the console. I had a hard time finding cheap 70v amps that were of decent quality. Maybe I was looking in the wrong places or using the wrong search terms.

A lot of what I was finding was in the $700-1300 price range which seems ridiculous when you can get standard power amps any day for $300 at 10x the power rating from good name companies.

I understand how 70v systems work and how to wire them, I'm just not involved enough on that side to know the gear available.

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