Power Rating

The result of adding the APM to our amp design was significant in multiple ways.
On the listening side of things, we managed to produce an amp that behaves very much like a
tube amp in the sense that it creates a similar ‘tube compression’ sensation by reducing peaks
and pulling up lower signals, achieving performance that matches the ear sensitivity discussed
earlier.
What’s more, in i.e. our RH450 this means a higher energy output density than that of a
conventional 500 watt solid state amplifier.
On the measurement part of things, we had to sacrifice. In order to give the APM room to work
and guarantee no hard clips, opposite of traditional solid state designs, we chose to limit the max.
output peak voltage to 46V.
The differences between the two different approaches can be seen in the comparison of the
RH450 and a traditional 500W solid state amp (fig. 7).
Fig. 7
The comparison between RH450 and a 500W solid state amp clearly shows how peaks are
higher on the solid state amp (red arrows), while average energy and density is higher on the
RH450 (green arrows).