Is this 2000W amp claim deliberately misleading?

[agedhorse]

If you want your rig to do 110dB at 0.1% distortion, you better start looking for some unobtanium speakers.

 

[JimChjones]

Neodymium was pretty much unobtanium when we were kids, so never say never...

 

[agedhorse]

Neodymium was pretty much unobtanium when we were kids, so never say never...

Rare earth magnets were well known and understood for decades, the costs made it impractical.

0.1% broad-band distortion at high levels from a dynamic speaker is a much bigger challenge than you understand.

 

[Jeff Scott]

...0.1% broad-band distortion at high levels from a dynamic speaker is a much bigger challenge than you understand.

We have full confidence in you, Andy. Let us know when they are ready to go to market.

 

[KJMO]

Thing is, Andy knows how to make distortion sound good, so his amps are perfectly usable at 10% distortion. "Clean" amps might be .1% ugly distortion, 0% good distortion. If you don't want color, then it's not your amp, I guess, but you can't compare the .1% to the 10%. One is good distortion, the other is bad. Just remember that if you can't have distortion, you're stuck with a keyboard bass set to produce a pure tone, and nobody wants that. Color has to come from somewhere, and I don't know why one source (bass, strings, preamp, effects, amp, etc.) is inherently better or worse than another.

 

[agedhorse]

We have full confidence in you, Andy. Let us know when they are ready to go to market.

That's a bigger challenge than I'm capable of addressing, it's a real ball-buster actually.

Thing is, Andy knows how to make distortion sound good, so his amps are perfectly usable at 10% distortion. "Clean" amps might be .1% ugly distortion, 0% good distortion. If you don't want color, then it's not your amp, I guess, but you can't compare the .1% to the 10%. One is good distortion, the other is bad. Just remember that if you can't have distortion, you're stuck with a keyboard bass set to produce a pure tone, and nobody wants that. Color has to come from somewhere, and I don't know why one source (bass, strings, preamp, effects, amp, etc.) is inherently better or worse than another.

Everybody is fixated on a static THD number, but it can (and does) vary with both level and frequency. That's part of the sculpting, the right amount of distortion, the right harmonic spread, varying with level and frequency.

An amp that's designed to be very clean, and one that uses a large amount of global feedback can in fact be startlingly sterile BUT when such an amp clips, the action of removing and re-introducing the global loop control each and every cycle that the amp clips can become horrendous sounding. There's only one type of distortion that sounds worse and less musical and that's VI protection limiting into a reactive load.

 

[pcake]

to me, the entire watts thing in amps is like megapixels in cameras. it makes people who aren't passionately involved in playing or shooting pics feel good that they get "more". most of those people never use their amps or cameras to anywhere near their potential, so they're perfectly happy. my ex sister-in-law has what might be the worst digicam made in years, but despite the fact that so many megapixels on such a small sensor means grainier pics, she loves it and is happy to tell those who ask just how many megapixels it has.

lots of people i know personally have bought cheap amps that they're very happy with, and one even brags to friends that his bugera is 2000 watts. the friends play guitar and drums with him, and they're equally impressed and say "wow!", so everyone's happy.

 

[Jeff Scott]

to me, the entire watts thing in amps is like megapixels in cameras. it makes people who aren't passionately involved in playing or shooting pics feel good that they get "more". most of those people never use their amps or cameras to anywhere near their potential, so they're perfectly happy. my ex sister-in-law has what might be the worst digicam made in years, but despite the fact that so many megapixels on such a small sensor means grainier pics, she loves it and is happy to tell those who ask just how many megapixels it has.

i feel that to make a significant difference in image quality, the megapixel count should quadruple (for the same size pixel). These, 20MP vs. 22.3MP types of debates (for example) are pointless really. When I was photographing with film cameras I found a 4x5 to be the perfect compromise between physical size and image quality (I owned and or used everything between 35mm and 11x14 cameras over the years).

Same with watts - doubling the output of an amp (say, from 300 watts to 600 watts; note: I didn't say whether those are RMS or peak ) produces a fairly small real world difference volume level, most it just provides a bit more headroom. I say quadruple the output to start hearing a significant difference in output. We all know (right?) that a doubling of perceived volume level requires about 10 times the output power.

Edit for missing information.

 

[pcake]

i feel that to make a significant difference in image quality, the megapixel count should quadruple. These, 20MP vs. 22.3MP types of debates (for example) are pointless really. When I was photographing with film cameras I found a 4x5 to be the perfect compromise between physical size and image quality (I owned and or used everything between 35mm and 11x14 cameras over the years).

Same with watts - doubling the output of an amp (say, from 300 watts to 600 watts; note: I didn't say whether those are RMS or peak ) produces a fairly small real world difference volume level, most it just provides a bit more headroom. I say quadruple the output to start hearing a significant difference in output. We all know (right?) that a doubling of perceived volume level requires about 10 times the output power.

well, if you're talking about full frame or medium format cameras, yeah, you can fit a lot more megapixels without a loss of quality and get a lot more detail in your pics. but i'm talking about the small sensor cameras most digicams have - they're about 1/6th of the size of a crop sensor DSLR - come to think of it, most micro four thirds cameras also give grainy pics when their smaller sensors are packed with megapixels.

i found that with small sensor cameras, 12 megapixels give much less grainy pics than 24, especially in low light. it's easy to see the difference even if you shoot raw and process yourself. since i have wrist issues, a medium format camera is way out of my realm of possibility for a hand-held camera, but wow, do they get nice quality images

 

[Jeff Scott]

...since i have wrist issues, a medium format camera is way out of my realm of possibility for a hand-held camera...

Handheld? Even with 35mm cameras I almost always used a tripod.

 

[pcake]

Handheld? Even with 35mm cameras I almost always used a tripod.

i shoot macros and low light on a tripod, but i love shooting birds in flight handheld, and i like the spontaneity of shooting handheld in good light.

 

[agedhorse]

well, if you're talking about full frame or medium format cameras, yeah, you can fit a lot more megapixels without a loss of quality and get a lot more detail in your pics. but i'm talking about the small sensor cameras most digicams have - they're about 1/6th of the size of a crop sensor DSLR - come to think of it, most micro four thirds cameras also give grainy pics when their smaller sensors are packed with megapixels.

i found that with small sensor cameras, 12 megapixels give much less grainy pics than 24, especially in low light. it's easy to see the difference even if you shoot raw and process yourself. since i have wrist issues, a medium format camera is way out of my realm of possibility for a hand-held camera, but wow, do they get nice quality images

It's the same in video projection, if you don't need the pixel size due to close up viewing, the overall picture is better quality with the MINIMUM resolution required for those sitting close. It means that there is less lost image area due to more borders between pixels on a lower resolution versus higher resolution. I lost a good installation job because the client wanted 4k yet the closest viewing position was like 16 feet from the screen. 2k gave a much nicer, richer image for all of the viewers, especially those from about 20 feet and beyond (the seating area was 80 feet deep). This client was educated way beyond their own intelligence. They got the bone from the better salesman once the system was installed, the loss of brightness alone going to 4k was an issue (you typically lose about 25% of the brightness with the same imaging engine type and lamp type going from 2k to 4k) which was important for this installation (way more important than resolution) since it wasn't a dark room.

 

[gumtown]

Video projection is my current favourite subject, setting up a 3 projector extended desktop wide screen format (3072 x 768) project for a shoestring budget festival,
using 3 projectors in 1024 x 768 letterbox mode horizontally aligned, which seems to give me the best lumens on screen that 4000 lumen projectors will give.
In this case a fancy laser projector would be nice, but I make do with what I already have and use it.

With the Behringer/Bugera gear, the old saying applies "you get what you pay for",
any owners worst fear should be the SMPS fails fatally on power up, happens a lot with the Behringer stuff (and other cheap gear).

 

[Al Krow]

If you think this is bad, you should see low to low-mid budget

to me, the entire watts thing in amps is like megapixels in cameras. it makes people who aren't passionately involved in playing or shooting pics feel good that they get "more". most of those people never use their amps or cameras to anywhere near their potential, so they're perfectly happy. my ex sister-in-law has what might be the worst digicam made in years, but despite the fact that so many megapixels on such a small sensor means grainier pics, she loves it and is happy to tell those who ask just how many megapixels it has.

lots of people i know personally have bought cheap amps that they're very happy with, and one even brags to friends that his bugera is 2000 watts. the friends play guitar and drums with him, and they're equally impressed and say "wow!", so everyone's happy.

I'll have to confess that photography is another interest of mine, so I really like you making this comparison with megapixels as I agree it's been one of the biggest cons by the photography industry!

However if I were going to try to put some parallels down, I'd probably go with:

• lens quality => main connection to the outside world = quality of the cab we're using
• sensor size => overall available (processing) power = RMS watts of power-amp and available headroom
• pixel size => quality of picture / broad tone = quality of pre-amp
• pixel count => graininess of picture / fine-tuning the tone = amp EQ

So for me the RMS watts measure is still going to be a very useful measure.

 

[nomaj]

The fact they are also claiming that it is "ultra high power" and 2000W in the same ad, says to me this wasn't an innocent oversight when they "forgot" to mention they are using a peak rating (unlike most other manufacturers who use RMS) on their ad.

The fact that this is a Behringer product makes all this deceptive B.S. completely understandable. This is a company that became a giant by taking the low road at every possible turn.

 

[JimChjones]

0.1% broad-band distortion at high levels from a dynamic speaker is a much bigger challenge than you understand.

Actually I just picked a number out of the air to contrast with the 20% number to attempt to make a point. Obviously I abjectly failed, but to make another attempt, I was attempting to suggest that comparing even RMS watts ratings is fraught with complication. My theory is that a properly measured 200W RMS head that delivers a "sterile" clean sound, and is unusable as soon as distortion becomes audible* will in practice deliver very different effective volume to an equally properly measured head that's usable at 20% distortion.

*assuming such a thing exists, and I'm not going to try another number!

 

[J.Wolf]

without reading 6 pages:

1. Theyre allowed to claim it
2. The internet is allowed to rake them over the coals for being intentionally deceiving in order to sell more amps.

Ultimately a short sighted strategy, but hard to say what the long term repercussions are.

 

[nomaj]

without reading 6 pages:

1. Theyre allowed to claim it
2. The internet is allowed to rake them over the coals for being intentionally deceiving in order to sell more amps.

Ultimately a short sighted strategy, but hard to say what the long term repercussions are.

Behringer's strategy is hardly short-sighted.

From the beginning, Behringer's strategy of "engineering-by-photocopier" - to completely rip off the designs of others, especially Mackie and Peavey, while taking advantage of the relatively weak copyright protection laws afforded to circuit designers, and then employing semi-slave labor in China to produce the knock-offs at minimal cost, and then selling to consumers at rock bottom prices - has worked brilliantly for them.

Unethical, you bet, and many people (including myself) are loathe to buy anything from Behringer, regardless of price, so as not to get the stink of tainted business practices on them, but theirs is hardly a short-sighted strategy. It's been working extremely well for them the last 25 years - so well, in fact, that now Behringer is in the market position that Peavey was in the '80s and '90s.

 

[J.Wolf]

^ for sure. I meant specifically from a reputation management perspective. Not that they, or the majority of their customers will care.

 

[nilorius]

Behringer's strategy is hardly short-sighted.

From the beginning, Behringer's strategy of "engineering-by-photocopier" - to completely rip off the designs of others, especially Mackie and Peavey, while taking advantage of the relatively weak copyright protection laws afforded to circuit designers, and then employing semi-slave labor in China to produce the knock-offs at minimal cost, and then selling to consumers at rock bottom prices - has worked brilliantly for them.

Unethical, you bet, and many people (including myself) are loathe to buy anything from Behringer, regardless of price, so as not to get the stink of tainted business practices on them, but theirs is hardly a short-sighted strategy. It's been working extremely well for them the last 25 years - so well, in fact, that now Behringer is in the market position that Peavey was in the '80s and '90s.

Behringer should be destroyed.