amplifiers for Kappa 9's

Those speakers would suck a Carver Pro ZR1600 dry. You need BIG power with those if you really want to raise the roof and keep things relatively clean. Sean
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There's an Agon member here running two Sunfire Signature's for his Kappa 9's. At the low impedances that these speakers present, he has 1200+ wpc for the top end and 1200+ wpc for the bottom end. These ratings are based on a 4 ohm load. If you wanted to consider this speaker closer to a 2 ohm load, which may be somewhat conservative over much of the range of operation as it drops to below 1 ohm i think, he's got 2400+ wpc for the top end and 2400+ wpc for the bottom end per channel. This is without bridging, so damping factor is not compromised.

Having said that, i don't think that two ZR1600's could do the job here. The limited testing that i've seen on these amps wasn't very favourable. Most all of this can be found in the archives though as this speaker is notoriously hard to drive, hence the subject coming up a couple of times before. Sean
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John Curl measured a Carver Pro ZR1600 and it was so distorted at 180 wpc @ 8 ohms, that he was afraid to push it any harder than that. Much of the distortion that he was seeing was high frequency artifacts from the very poorly designed power supply, but none the less, the amp wasn't performing up to rated spec. Since most amps produce measurably more distortion as impedance is reduced, trying to run such an amp with a very demanding low impedance speaker would only aggravate the problem.

From what i know, this amp was given to him by Brian Cheney of VMPS to test. Brian had verified that the amp was working and sounding "quite good" when Curl received it. As such, one can only speculate that this wasn't a defective model or anything like that.

Supposedly, "Carver Pro" ( who is reallythe car stereo company known as "Phoenix Gold" ) have made some design revisions to these amps based on "audiophile feedback". Given that i've never seen any follow-up on the amps after that point, i don't know if they will actually meet and possibly exceed spec or if they are still in the same boat. As such, buying another model that is rated for more power from Carver Pro may get you more power, it may not actually get you the amount that they are rated to produce with a reasonable amount of distortion. This is strictly conjecture on my part though, as i've stated that i've not seen any further follow-ups on this brand. Sean
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I challenged statements made in a Berning based thread where both David Berning and one of his cohorts responded. After a series of exchanges that built upon the foundations of where we were all coming from, i asked further questions / made further statements pertaining to the Berning amps and how they would interact with various loudspeaker loads. For some reason, those questions went unanswered even though the other parties continued to post in that thread. Somehow, the points that they couldn't refute or explain were conveniently overlooked.

As to bringing a Ford to a Chevy dealership, etc... Curl has designed gear for dozens upon dozens of manufacturers. Believe me, from his point of view, a design or circuitry that is new to him is a chance to learn about something that he may not be familiar with. Nothing more, nothing less.

As to high frequency artifacts not affecting what we hear, this isn't completely true. High frequency response above the audible band can directly alter in-band response in the ways of transient response, phase shifts, various types of distortion, etc... This is why i've said that spec's ARE important, but you have to look at ALL the spec's and be able to interpret them effectively. Looking at a few individual spec's here and there can be phenomenally misleading, good or bad. Sean
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