The Gods invented physics, but laws are made to be broken. A pro audio amplifier like the ones for sale on these pages has a 10 guage input power cable rated 2KVA. In contrast, the cables going to speakers would be expected to be 12 guage. Maybe they won't carry 2000 watts, but then again, we have powered up to 32 speakers in parallel without any series connections or crossovers or dummy loads and not melted any wires. That particular design, the rocky I believe it's called, sounded pretty good too. There is a world of difference hidden in actual development of sound systems. The most beautiful things in nature are hidden. That is why hybrid digital has had nothing but complaints in Europe. The obvious solution is to cable the cabinets each in a series and parallel configuration so that the resistance stays high. No amplifier can supply 2000 watts when the standard house outlet only has 2200 to 2400 watts and a good amplifier is 75 percent energy efficient. So the transformer goes into saturation and distorts, that is why the sound would not be acceptable. Even at 8 ohms the sound could be very bad, making claims for 500 watts into 8 ohm a very suspicious kind of claim, especially for a stereo amplifier. Lets try the math: For ONE channel 75 volts AC (from transformer) / 8 ohms = 9.375 amperes. 9.375 amperes times 75 volts = 703 watts peak 703 time .7071 = 497 or about 500 watts RMS continuous power.
I suppose the suspicious once burned twice shy think the rating of the Kennedy single channel amplifier is suspect. Not really, because we start with a 1000 watt transformer. For a very well designed amplifier, the output can reach 18 amperes and then 18 times 75 volts is 1350 watts output peak, or about 950 watts RMS, and considering losses due to efficiency and power transfer we think about 700 watts of copper flow is about the most any 120 volt AC powered amp is capable of delivering in what engineers would call 'real' wattage. This is due to large expensive capacitors or 'tanks' that keep the transformer running in saturation but with enough time to supply catch up power. You won't find any capacitors on eBay or Google like the ones used in our amplifiers. If you found any that have half as much capacitance at the voltage that tests as acceptable, I frankly would be very surprised. Because we target parallel speaker topology, we also have to make unusually good speakers. The voice coils in series being driven by any configuration other than parallel suffer from the transient or fast impulses of peak outputs not being fully passed through to the second speaker, as voltage in series tends to be dropped into the first device in the chain; that is depending on the direction of the alternating wave at that instant. Well, if you can imagine....
A system integrated properly can be adjusted for almost any speaker set, if the variables are known. But in the real world, a lot of things are not known. The worst case is that the ground connection and integrity of the house or automobile or truck battery will be permanently affected, often making it unreliable but still working at a shadow of it's former capacity. The power company can actually have serious problems at the generator station for those installations with no isolation transformer.
Some people prefer to just pay the electric bills and put in a few 'power buffers', usually with crossovers in each cabinet, to play it safe and make their speakers sound good too. This makes the amplifier run hotter and magnifies the transients problems, reducing quality and loudness or in the case of poor quality crossovers, complicating the resistance to the point where ferro-magnetic fluid is needed to maintain proper phasing of the speakers. I like the idea, but people differ on how 'tight' an image the component soundstage should project and how the speaker investment should be voiced or put to risk. Let it be understood at the very least that there are professional standards as well as the laws of physics to consider, when selling on the internet and into and over international water. Punn intended. At least our web pages try to educate and inform and keep prices so that the 5 thousand dollar sound system becomes a fad thing of the past century, as we believe it should. Even in the last few years, the Kennedy amplifier has changed from a design that switched from class A to class A/B depending on requirements to a full Class A amplifier with computer chip control of bias. In case anybody is wondering, this type of technology is normally never even offered to the general public, and certainly not as stereo or home theater related equipment. We are talking beyond anything ever seen in the world consumer marktets. It is my belief that markets do what they want, but that someone just may push them in the right direction. The time may be right for theatrical intensity to move along with high definition visuals and industrial strength computers. Its all a matter of gaining the understanding and appreciation of those who will support the efforts over the very long term of capital improvement. The digital people want to double the bandwidth of each channel, eliminating standard FM and then putting 10 channels into what used to be half an FM channel. The public already knows that there were not enough good FM stations in any given area other than very large standard metropolitan statistical areas or SMSA, and such a change would only benefit the already saturated but not yet effectively finely segmented big markets at the expense of everyone else. This change would also be made at the extreme expense to listening quality as these new tuner types drop out of one channel and into standard FM mono unless the FM is eliminated completely. I don't even want to start talking about the damage to our culture, for that see our thermal site.
Back To the kennedyaudio.com Home Page