News

Aside from a segment of the population that is anti-government on general principle and that there's all sorts of political considerations associated with this kind of rule changing, you have to ask why companies would want relaxation of this one. Companies, or at least one company, are behind this, after all.

Obviously, the initial testing may be somewhat of a nuisance, but in general that's done once or twice and that's the end of the time and cost associated with it. So, it must be something else.

I'm going to presume that it's the cost of the metal used for heat sinking and the follow up additional cost for shipping a finished product with more mass found in the heat sinks.

But, here's the thing.

An awful lot of consumer electronics products have marginal thermal designs. I'm specifically not speaking of audio amplifiers. All the products that use processors and SOCs generally dissipate a fair amount of heat in a small area, or at least try to. This leads to poor performance and often melted plastic. Or worse. (I won't tell you how I know this from a professional standpoint...)

So, it could be a safety issue in the end.

I'll also note that although they tend to generate less heat, all the switching type amplifiers and switching power supplies I've looked at have specific requirements for heat sinking. Go look at https://www.hypex.nl.

>>Companies, or at least one company, are behind this, after all.

And yet, it's worth noting that when, in the past, this rule has come up for review--and it comes up periodically--*some* audio companies have been among the commenters on the rule change advocating against dropping the rule.

Jim Austin, Editor
Stereophile

Misguided and unnecessary is all I can say. Waiting for the anti-skating police to show up any day now. If they knew how much jitter was going on in my house there would be a congressional summit I would think.

OK, I'm not a Ludditte.. I do have an assortment of various Class D amps from several manufacturers... even an NCore. Plus some monster AB solid state receivers from the 70s!

But, honestly, those of us with tubes and Class A stuff in the main room just won't care much. Come to think about it, I don't recall seeing any heat sinks in my Audio Research amp... and my FET Class A amps, well, let's say they dissipate 300 watts each at idle. I think they always heat the room that way! Talk about heat sinks on those babys!

Will this actually affect the High End world anyhow? High End speakers tend to be beasts in terms of impedance and power demands. Put 100 watts into a Maggie.. Pfft... just warming up the sound! And no High End aficionado will put a 200 watt beast on a LS3/5. We tend to be a bit, ahem! more careful about system matching.

IMHO, no High End consumer will buy a "300 watt" SS Class AB amplifier that weights 15 lbs and costs 200 bucks. Part of being in the High End is to understand these things, so I don't think it will affect our little World of Audio. I expect the manufacturers and designers will be honest about things -as they tend to be most of the time...

I figure it will likely result in Exploding Watts Numbers in the low end consumer world with concomitant Flaming Results in the dens of America!

And yeah, those Home Theater ratings have been a joke for a long time. Specially in those mass consumer receivers that are rated for a Kilowatt yet have heat sinks smaller than my old Sansui G7500 or the Marantz 2125 in the closet shelf.

@JA ,

Many in the business at the time felt the original 1hr @1/3 power output was an attack against phase linear which was the hot amp at the time and was way under built by Carver .. I do suspect Mcintosh will love the new rule, god only know why they hate to size heatsinks correctly for good SOA ..

Regards

Perhaps we do or should/could we describe it as a Loudspeaker Rated Impedance mystery .

Tube amps struggle with nominal 8 ohm loudspeakers that might perform nicely with SS Amps.

It's probably just an Audiophile issue that our Professor J.Atkinson willingly & judicially solves for us Stereophile Readership ( which constitutes close to 100% of the astute & literate Audiophile Caste )

The rest of the larger world will have Class D devices making their noises ( like most of the sounds we had to endure watching this latest Super Bowl ).

Perhaps we, as a citizen population, should require the FTC to contract the services of Stereophile's world famous testing lab. conveniently located in NY,NY! and pay enough to supply him with a Bently Drop Head Electric Car & a Yachtmaster Rolex in Ocean Blue & Gold!

Amplifier ratings seem like marketing sizzle if Nelson Pass's "first watt" concept is as important as it seems to be with the majority of the DIY group.

I was required to wear the JVC lapel pin for the two years in the 1980s that I represented the Japanese Victor Corporation, Amplifier Watt Rating was a big thing to those people, but it was a sort of "fake" rating system that NO-body embraced.

If we lose John Atkinson, we might need FTC standards but I still doubt it. ( we'd still have Mike Moffat, J.Stoddard & Paul McGowan for gods sake )

Tony in Venice Florida with 82F Air and 84F pool temps.

Although it seems that we have no shortage of government regulations, stereo and home theater equipment is difficult enough to compare even when standardized measurements are used.

During the mid 1960's I was the Chief Engineer of Atlanta's only commercial classical music station, WGKA AM-FM, which had common ownership with a music and component stereo equipment store, Baker Audio. Both occupied the same building. Many new solid state components were being introduced to the market then along with some impressive claims for their performance. Knowing that I had high-end audio test gear and the skills to use it, the store owners asked me to put those new equipment performance claims to the test before agreeing to stock and sell it.

One of my requirements, to which the manufacturers or distributors had to agree prior to testing, was that if their claims were inflated and my tests caused equipment failure we could return the component without any liability for its damage. Not surprisingly some of the power amplifiers failed during my 10% rated power stress test or during tests for upper frequency response.

The issue came up before Phase Linear. I think the legit manufacturers, who rated their products honestly, were tired of cheap Japanese stuff that underpriced them significantly and also claimed oodles of power output.
In those days, 50 watts per channel was a lot, either from transistors or tubes. The problem was that the wildly popular "acoustic suspension" speakers from people like Acoustic Research ("AR") were power-hungry, and consumers were desperate for enough power to get realistic SPLs from these guys, not to mention the original Bose 901, whose equalizer put something like a 10 dB boost at 40 Hz. Oddly, AR came out with a 60 watt/channel transistor amplifier; but it had a tendency to go into thermal runaway and self-destruct.

A lot of people love to dump on "Stereo Review's" Julian Hirsch, but he did measure these amps carefully and reported the news -- good or bsd.

If the news was bad Stereo Review would usually not publish the review.

Welcome back, my old friend PMPO! It's been a long time.

I bought a Phase Linear amp and preamp in the 80's.... they looked awesome... but the amp malfunctioned either right out of the box or in the first 24 hours (can't remember which, but effectively it was immediately useless). I returned them for a full refund (and bought an NAD 3155 that faithfully served me for many years).

I dearly hope the FTC doesn't weaken the amplifier guidelines. It only opens the door for the potential for amps that just aren't up to the performance they claim. The change would hurt us consumers and the FTC is supposed by about protecting us.

-Chris Hart, Connecticut

No one here seems to be aware of the fact that their speakers are producing far more distortion than any amplifier. At least ten times more. Especially in the case of typical dynamic drivers in wooden boxes. And that to claim to hear amp distortion thru speakers like these is absurd given the fact that any distortion created by an amp would be eclipsed completely by the speaker distortion.

.... or at least unenforced. Some years back I worked at a chain electronics retailer whose name most of you would recognize. I remember '650 Watt' HTIB systems that listed power consumption as 275 watts. Even taking two-channels-driven into account, it still seems like there was some 'creative accounting' going on.

Ok before everyone starts yelling hear me out.
Unless the amplifier is used in a few commercial sound applications the FTC 1/3 power soak is a far more extreme condition then high fidelity music reproduction will ever present. As safety and EMC approval testing all require operation at 1/8 power the 1/3 power test rule seems out of place.
Ok so everyone agrees a really over designed audio amplifier must always be a good thing after all who doesn't like the look and feel of a big heavy amplifier?
Myself a high end audio designer for over 40 years (think Camber acoustic, Definitive Technology, Golden Ear) I spent most of my working life on how to turn X amount of money into X++ amount of audio performance. The path to price point leading audio performance is to spend design time and money ONLY on that which results in improved sonic performance.
All other stuff is just bling and can be left behind if sonic performance is what you are really striving for.
So if I add unnecessary heat-sinking to the amplifier (one of the most expensive parts) then there is simply less money to be spent on the parts that are truly critical to sonic performance. The performance difference that re-deploying the cost saving of the over sized heats sinks into other sonic critical parts of the system is often not small and can change a chosen price point product from a so so performer into a category leading performer. I consistently chose to spent the product's budget on what had the largest sonic return and that was not over sized heat sinks. Just my perspective from the design lab.
Bob J.

and so here I am

It advertises either 60w or 40w of power, depending on whether you want output power or FTC output power. All other variables are stated as the same. Even the "ohm rating" is shown as 4-16. Can I see some hands raised for who thinks ANY amp will deliver the same power into 4 ohms as with 16 ohms? Is this new math?

We're a long way from the SA-1000 and others in the "receiver wars," but at least back then they competed on common ground.

When I got into this hobby in the '70s, RMS power was a comparable claim of strength in many ways. Later, we learned that continuous power is a good starting point but if you had something capable of meaningful short-term power, that was even better.

Ask me how many NAD 3225PE 25WPC amps we demoed against some crappy '80s 100WPC receiver. That Power Envelope did seem to mean something. The earlier 3020 was a first salvo in that fight.

40 vs 60 watts. Gosh, it's only a 1/3 difference. Imagine if cars were advertised as either 200 or 260HP, your choice. You, the consumer, gets to decide how much power it has. Enjoy!