Axe-Fx III w/ Integrated ICEPower Amp

deathbyguitar said:
Could you expand on that? Do you have any experience with Quilter amps and how they perform? I know they're all in on Class D.
Click to expand...
Quilter is current feedback so it's damping factor is intentionally very low. This makes them a poor choice for products like ours. They would work well as a tube amp substitute (though I'm not so sure about the clipping behavior).

I could see using a Quilter with a dedicated preamp, either tube, solid-state or digital, but not with a product that fully models a tube amp.

I've been hearing good things about the newest Hypex and Purifi modules.
 
FractalAudio said:
Class-D has gotten much better recently so we'll probably look into it again at some point.
Click to expand...
Oooo Reaction GIF
 
FractalAudio said:
Very cool. We evaluated the ICE modules and weren't super impressed. The damping factor at high frequencies is poor. The Hypex stuff measured much better but reliability was suspect at the time.

Class-D has gotten much better recently so we'll probably look into it again at some point.
Click to expand...
Wow, thanks for the info! I'd never even heard of Hypex, and I'm checking them out now. The spec sheet for the NCX500 is pretty impressive.

You're definitely right about the damping factor on the 300AS1 in particular. It falls off pretty hard above a few kHz in the specs. Early on in the build I did a phase cancellation test by summing the signal going into the amp with a tapped signal coming out with a speaker connected, and they phased out to ~-30 dB which seemed good enough for pushing a stage cab. The residual was definitely in the high end of the frequency range.
 
touch33 said:
And just for grins: how does it actually sound ?
Click to expand...
Ha! Good question. It sounds to me very transparent, with a small but perceptible amount of signal compression when you really push the output to the cab (some high-frequency rolloff at very high volumes) - I'm talking 'pissed off soundguy' stage volumes, but definitely there. I actually have yet to find a power amp solution that completely has the 'roar' of a 100W tube amp at high volume from the cab. There's a ton of nasty high-frequency content from the real amp that gets pushed out that I haven't quite gotten from a solid state power amp yet.

For a lot of people, this subtle high-frequency rolloff might be welcome, but it definitely feels like something is missing if you've played real tube heads at ear-splitting volume for most of your life.
 
BSawyer said:
For a lot of people, this subtle high-frequency rolloff might be welcome, but it definitely feels like something is missing if you've played real tube heads at ear-splitting volume for most of your life.
Click to expand...
So you've got the high frequency rolloff built into your ears by now, and you need extra highs to compensate, right? ;) j/k
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom