Audio Research and Power Supply

[nonesup]

Originally Posted by Barry1

Nones up: It appears low, but that's ok. Look at the formula again. PS rail voltage for a typical 200watt per channel solid state @ 8 ohms amplifier is only about 70-80 volts. The ARC supply has 6times the voltage and that value is squared when calculating the energy storage. It doesn't need the same amount of capacitance as a solid state supply to produce equivalent amounts of energy because the voltage is so much higher.

Barry1 Hi thanks for your information.
Now it is clear. I had not considered that ss Amp work with less voltage.
Now we can calculate the energy of a power supply
"Monster" as the Gryphon Mephisto having 500000 microfarads. Considering 75v, gives a result of
1406 joules.

Ref 110 has 520 joules
Ref 150 has 1040 joules
Ref 250 has 1900 joules

[microstrip]

When comparing solid state amplifier, the value of the capacitance is somewhat directly related to the current and period of time that the power supply can supply this current. However since the tube amplifiers have an output transformer that decreases the voltage and increases the current this comparison would be unfair - it is why tube amplifiers generally refer to stored energy, not capacitance. Then energy is more closely connected to the transient power that the amplifier can supply.

Typical power supply voltages for transistor amplifier can go from 40 to 80V, tubed ones from 300 to 600V. But we can have much higher voltages - some SET amplifiers have up to 2 kV supplies ...

[nonesup]

Originally Posted by microstrip

When comparing solid state amplifier, the value of the capacitance is somewhat directly related to the current and period of time that the power supply can supply this current. However since the tube amplifiers have an output transformer that decreases the voltage and increases the current this comparison would be unfair - it is why tube amplifiers generally refer to stored energy, not capacitance. Then energy is more closely connected to the transient power that the amplifier can supply.

Typical power supply voltages for transistor amplifier can go from 40 to 80V, tubed ones from 300 to 600V. But we can have much higher voltages - some SET amplifiers have up to 2 kV supplies ...

Well, it looks complicated. So it seems impossible to compare the ability to handle difficult loads of tube amp and ss amp reading PS values