Its good to see people still engineering stuff rather than taking an off patent Korean circuit, putting a different case on it and slapping a name on it.
I love the staggered power Alpine offers. Their 12ch amp is expensive as fluck, but the space you save plus the capabilities got my attention. Powering an entire system with a single amp is huge.
I have the XA-90V and XA-90M running my X Series setup including X series Subwoofer...The reproduced Hi-Res sounds is amazing, its like my car is a professional Music Studio
Great video as always, one of the kings you said that was important to me is that you could get an amplifier that sounds just as good for a fraction of the cost. I’d appreciate some suggestions as I’m currently looking for them 😊
I have a MRD-M605 great little 600watt amp. Hooked up it plays fine for a few months then it pops a code on the readout screen. I disconnect it and let it sit for months at at time. Hook power back to it and its good to go again, i dont get it. But nice little amp sounds great too while it does lol
ECU is logic level, low stress, low thermal cycle environment, very relaxed operation. Surface mount parts are much more prone to failure in the opposite.
@@Bradimus1 what I noticed is at moderate volume the lower frequencies would make the higher frequencies sound gurgled. Almost like distortion as a matter of fact I thought it was speaker distortion(not clipping distortion) at first but switching to the class a/b fixed the problem and gets quite louder too while remaining clean. I still have the alpine hooked up to two speakers and a different class a/b hooked to the other two speakers and you can here the difference when fading back and forth. I know Sam says you don’t need a lot of power on your vocals, but I disagree. The best amp I ever had on vocals was a fosgate power t8004 way over kill but sounded phenomenal! I really liked the idea of the compact class d amp for full range and assuming alpine would make one of the better sounding full range class d amps, I’m still not sold on class d technology for full range sound. I’m not a sq fanatic either. I just like loud clean powerful music.
Fyi, thats a older class d design. Class D has come so far since those. Purfi/Hypex/ and ganfet pushes the envelope on sq amps home and car audio wise. Wanna hear a class d that kills class ab? find a soundigital gan amp or better yet try to hear a arc audio 1000.6 trust me you will never worry about a class ab amp again. I suspect these new alpines are atleast on par with the newer above average class d amp. And this is coming from a guy who competed in sq events back in the 90's with class ab phoenix gold ms amps and ppi art series amps and canton 3 way active components. I recently sold all my class a amps and will now be running the top class d amps.
@jord I totally agree, class D should be kept for midbass/Subwoofer application only. For full range, tweeters, vocals etc high biased class AB for sure. BTW I think the Rockford sounded great because it's a very good amp 😂 rather than because it was so powerful lol.
You're just not going to find amps with this level of high quality components, design, sound, or longevity in a budget amp. This series of Alpine amps have been discontinued and replaced by the Alpine STATUS series amps, so see if you can find any of these older X-series amps second hand (used) at a good price.
If that skar RP 5 channel is on the same level as that alpine x. Then I got robbed. I highly doubt it I can be heard coming and I have no upgrade to my electrical but a AGM battery under the hood in a Honda accord. I’m just saying
@gregorywhite3511 Well, the SKAR Audio RP-600.5 will be hard to beat from a price/power/channel perspective at its current $195 Summer Sale price! SKAR is a well-established company at this point with a good following, and the majority of the reviews are very positive for this amp. So, if that's your budget and it meets your system's channel and power requirements, there is little risk in giving it a try at that price. I'll just say that "being heard" or "they can hear me coming" has nothing to do with SQ or the internal build quality and longevity of an amplifier. And, if someone is using that Skar RP5 in their system, there is little chance that they are also using it to power top of the line high-end Focal Utopia M or similar components or subwoofers and DSP with a truly pro-level tune on it that would actually reveal the differences between the Skar amp and a known high-end SQ amp. So there's that. However, a few years back, I installed a NVX JAD-900.5 5-channel amp (discontinued now, but it had nearly identical power specs and was similarly priced to the Skar RP5) in a friend's 2015 Fiesta ST SQ system to power a set of NVX XSP6ACT 6.5" 2-way components (extremely good speakers made by SB Acoustics) with a JL 13TW5v2 sealed shallow subwoofer going through an older but very capable Rockford-Fosgate 3Sixty.3 DSP, and the system sounded absolutely fantastic. So there is definitely a place for "budget" amplifiers like the Skar and NVX that will get the job done and will provide years of enjoyment.
@@bbfoto7248 I’m was saying that I’m loud and I sound good. I’m not breaking no spl records but everyone that hears me coming say all the other cars they hear passing buy don’t sound like mine they say my bass has a different tone to it. I’m not sure what they mean because I can’t hear my self coming. But most people are Impressed with how detailed my music sounds. Im not breaking no sound quality competitions either. Im just saying it was a huge difference from the 300-400$ pioneer 5 channel and the 800-900$ alpine x. My experience. I don’t know nothing about skar but I don’t believe a 200$ 5 channel RP amp is going to sound as good as a higher end JL Alpine Kenwood etc…. Maybe it’s compatible with there alpine S entry level amp but a 200 amp sound like a 1000 amp I doubt it. I have only heard those 2. I’m talking 5 channels as well not spl amps.
Hey barevids, I've got a question if you have time or to anyone. My friend bought a new $250k wakeboard boat with an insanely nice factory Wetsounds speakers but there are NO gain or crossover settings whatsoever on wetsounds amp or built in headunit. There's not even a custom EQ, only pop, rock ect. BS. Is there something that could make the system tuneable without replacing amp? Head unit replacement is not an option. Thanks
You can't tune an amp unless it's a DSP amp. They just have gain/crossovers. Sometimes bass boost. You need either a EQ or a DSP. You can add one in between the radio and amplifier in any system.
Hey me… can i send you my hifonics colossus 3200.1 for fixing?? Ive had it for over 10 years and i havent been able to send to anyone to get fixed . I believe the problem was low voltage .. i didnt know any better
No, I don't see that at all. The Alpine techs can probably repair these with ease. Its more likely they are engineered to last a long time so they won't need to be repaired.
One thing I like about Alpine vs cheaper brands is you are pretty much guaranteed true balanced inputs. The signal chain is very well engineered and the noise floor is incredibly low as a result.
@v12alpine While they are not "True Balanced Inputs", because that would require 3 conductors on each input channel (like the new Alpine F # 1 STATUS' balanced XLR connections, or the mini-XLR I/O connections on the old ORION DEQ30)... But they ARE "Differential" RCA inputs and not the more common Single-Ended RCA inputs (where common/negative is tied to ground). The Alpine's "Differential" RCA inputs do help to reject or cancel inducted noise via "common mode noise rejection," but it's not a "fully balanced" amp.
Can't hate on Alpine. I currently have a PDX-M12 stacked on a PDX-F6 that has been in my truck since new in 2011 and they have been absolutely flawless. Expensive? Yes. Cheap big power? No. But they are built great, sound great, and have been crazy reliable.
Alpine has an OEM car audio department, and they have rigorous environmental testing and reliability testing. The experience gained from satisfying the strict requirements of automakers has helped keep their car audio amplifiers well built and very reliable. Some amps may even be made in Japan.
Appears to be H-bridge switching power supply, which can approach efficiency of close to 100%. Pretty impressive for Alpine here! The last H-bridge PS I have seen for car audio was in PPI PC-2350 and its variants (Esoteric/Diamond audio 7402)
Finally something new that seems designed with modern techniques. The power supply seems a full bridge type maybe the third inductor is used to make it resonant, non sure about it. From the waveforms it seems to operate in zvs mode at least at idle. Class D is a classic half bridge type. 0115 fet is Infineon BSB165N15NZ3. International Rectifier does not exist anymore, many of their former products are now labelled Infineon
My Alpine 3541 and 3522 I used in my 89’ Honda CRX in High School on Kicker 10” subs and Alpine mids & highs sounded magical! Lasted for life of car!#🔊❤️#Alpine
based on the vent design, the rail caps is most likely coming from Chemi-con. i like the parts choice but those final stage mosfets are son of a mother to work on!. *lol yea there's Chemi-Con brand during A90V part
I just remember back when I was in my teens and just starting getting into car audio, You couldn't go wrong with Alpine amps and head units... same with Rockford Fosgate amps and subwoofers. You couldn't beat their reliabilty, durability and performance for that price point. Well, I wouldn't say they're total crap nowadays, but they definitely don't make them like they used to.
Great video. TBH car audio has very much fell to the waistside for me lately. Even though I have the most powerful system I've ever had in my daily. I've had 6 15's and purchased a dedicated vehicle for audio they have both been setting for a year now. Though I still have my love for the tech, my enjoyment of the squirt has kind of subsided. Hopefully it will return
i have one car still running a full set of the pdx series of amps (250's, 450's, 1000's etc that system has 5 amps in it). never had a single issue with them and being one of the original full range class d amps they still sound great
Awesome video. I still buy the old duo b and mrv V12 alpines. I will NEVER buy their newer stuff where they started installing Anaview/able IC gate drivers in the amps. Which on 99% of the amps IS the failure! Of course you CAN’T buy one to repair the amp. A $2 part makes these amps TRASH. Forcing people to buy a NEW amp over a $2 part is greedy! I’ve been a huge Alpine fan since the mid 90s. Have 4 mrv-1507s, 4 old school cda 4volt out Cd players and an Alpine 3558, that I absolutely LOVE. I’m done with alpine forcing people to buy new amps, because their custom ICs fail so often. Good for Alpine, bad for customers and land fills. I hope they go back to making their amps repairable again….. until then I’m done with Alpine.
Why would the amp need an additional microcontroller? as the TL4949CN does provide short circuit and temperature protection as well as PWM control. You are right this amp is well over engineered, more circuitry to go wrong.
@@crtgamer2355 yep haha. That doesn't work for RU-vid etc tho sadly. People want info fast and don't want their time wasted with long pauses and uhhhh etc. If i was doing a public speech it would be a LOT different
Don't know about Sony and Alpine but, JL's designs are proprietary. Which means they probably pay their Chinese build house extra to prevent them being copied.
For those wondering about Boom or Bust - I do plan to continue it, however I got absolutely crammed with repairs to the point that I had to turn one of the other rooms in my house into purely incoming repairs storage; and also the videos arent really doing as well as i'd hoped with relatively low views, and it isnt covering my expenses and time making each episode. :( In the meantime I've actually been making loooads of videos on TikTok, really fast paced snappy repair overviews and theyre doing really well, so if you're on the app search Barevids and check it out!
@@kiklop8362 Hello, mate. These amps are owned by Nerijus Kochanskas (@RAW-CAt on RU-vid and @Pixerix on DIYMA) in the UK and will be used in his SQ competition car when they are returned to him.
@@bbfoto7248 Yeah I know his work :). Why is it disassembled? Some upgrades or just for check? I am running 2 A70F, one for each side 3 way so that is why I am asking :)
@kiklop8362 Check with Nerijus or Sam @barevids here. But it looked like there may have been a burnt and replaced FET on one of the boards, so maybe in for repair and Nerijus had Sam check the other amps as well just in case before installing them in his car. I use a pair of the X-A90V 5-channels in one of my installs and have been very happy with them...and no issues so far. Same configuration as your X-A70F...one for the 3-way Left side and one for the Right side plus mono channels on a 2-ohm DVC sub.
