Attack of the Clone Amplifiers

I bought a set of ICEpower 250's from Parts Express, I traded all my Parasound A23's out after listening.  I couldn't hear a difference and the ICEPower units cost a lot less to run in a smaller space.  I think that spoke well for Parasound AND ICE. :)

If you are interested in buying nCore from Hypex which is also being heavily used you can buy a kit directly from them at their webshop.  The 400 watt model is 650 euro's including everything you need to build a monoblock.

Also, you can buy very nice aluminum cases from Ghent Audio.  Pleasure to deal with them, but don't expect overnight arrivals!

Best,

Erik

I’m not sure it’s an input resistor or a 2:1 isolation transformer actually. The latter makes more sense and is more likely to warm up the sound. Good one’s are around $75 each from Jensen Transformers. I believe this is similar to what JR was doing. I’m not at all sure what Bel Canto is doing.

Also, galvanic isolation of the input signal is a beautiful thing. It can get rid of issues you didn’t even know you had. In addition, ICEPower and Hypex amps expect a truly differential input.  If you want to offer XLR and RCA inputs including an input transformer is a natural way to do it, and if it warms up the sound, bonus!

I thought about adding them to my custom ICEPower builds, but never got around to it.

Best,

Erik