KAM KXD7200 1U Rack mount Digital Power Amplifier

0:01 Now first off, Jerry

Alright guys, now first off, Jerry. You cease to amaze me my friend. Right, amplifiers. Now, a lot of people are always saying, what amplifier should I buy? What do you need? What's it all about? Why do you need a powerful amplifier? Is it better to spend 20 quid and get some really fantastic amplifier with like three components in? No. Enable the sound from your mixer to get louder. So, to put it in very simple terms, you have your CD player, your turntable, your PC program, etc. And then what you'll have is you will have, let's say, your mixer, for example, a band mixer or a DJ mixer. So you'll go from your CD player to your mixer, then from your mixer to your external... Amplifier. The external word is very important because from then, from there, from that amplifier you will go to your non-powered speakers. Very important because you can have powered speakers. Excuse me. So in other words then you will go from your mixer into your powered speakers as opposed to mixer, external, amplifier and then into your non-powered speakers.

Now, very quickly, let's say for example, have you been in this scenario where you've got your amplifier full on and you've got your mixer, you're cranking your mixer slowly up and up and up and eventually you get to the stage where you look at your amplifier and you see these little lights and those little lights telling you that you're clipping your amplifier. Now you're not giving it, it hasn't got an ear so you can't clip it around here and say you know what your amplifier is, you shouldn't be giving it a bloody eye. What's happening is your amplifier is saying, excuse me, I'm only 500 watts a side or 600 watts a side, this is as loud as I can go. And if you put more power into me, or put more signal into me from the mixer, guess what? I can't physically push any more out. I can't push any more power out. Now what eventually happens is you'll get maybe a square signal, in other words, a normal signal.

2:46 It's not because the amplifier is too powerful for the speakers

That will go into your speakers. It's a nice and curvy sort of thing. You put a square signal and you're actually putting electricity into the coils of your speakers. And this is when you get that sort of nasty sound. In other words, you'll get a boom and you'll just get a buh. And that's it. And then when you open your speakers up and you press the diaphragm, you'll hear... And that's telling me and telling you that you've blown your speakers. Now, it's not all the time. It's not because the amplifier is too powerful for the speakers. It's because quite often the amplifier isn't powerful enough for the speakers. Let's say, for example, your amplifier is 500 watts a side. And let's say your speakers, for argument's sake, are 300 or 400 watts a side. So in other words, you're probably thinking, well, guess what? There's loads of power to go into the speakers. But what happens is if you crank your amplifier up too much...

You'll be putting far too much power into your speakers. Now, I've got here this amp from Cam. It's the KXD7200 and that is it. I mean look at it, it's tiny, alright? It's only one unit, it's about the same weight as, I don't know, a few bags of sugar. It's around about 6 kilos but this is known as a digital amplifier. Let's say your speakers are 500 watts a side RMS. That's the important bit. Always look for RMS. I would recommend you get an amplifier that is more than 500 watts a side RMS. In other words, what will happen is, let's say for example your speakers are 500 watts a side. So maybe try and get an amplifier that's 700-800 watts a side. Push the amplifier too hard. In other words, the amplifier is ticking over quite nicely. Now the reason I'm talking about this is because, right, I'll probably put a tiny clip and you'll be able to see a newspaper sort of wobble along the floor. It's quite funny because I plugged this in earlier on to the RCF Event 6000s I've got and they're whopping great big speakers. And I was trying to see if I could make this amplifier clip. No, I couldn't do it.

5:12 Them and you think, you know

This particular model, if I go to the destructions, get this. Bearing in mind it's only 6 kilos and it's one unit, 19 inch rack mount, will push out 1800 watts RMS per side. So that's 1800 watts per side RMS. That's a lot. So in other words, it'll push out a lot. And there it is. The thing is with power amps... Quite often you look at them and you think, you know, where's the buttons? Where's the knobbly bits? I want to push, press, poke and prod and do things. Well, a power amplifier is a bit like a donkey, alright? No disrespect to donkeys, but what do donkeys do? They go ee-aw, ee-aw, and they carry heavy loads. That's all they do, you know? It's not like a horse where a horse will jump, run and do things and gymkhanas. A donkey, if you put lots of stuff on it, it'll go that direction for a long time.

A power amplifier is exactly the same. You put a signal into it and it will push out power for a long time. It doesn't have to do loads of other different things. And that's what this does. It does exactly what it does on the tin, that kind of thing. It's got four small fannies. We'll stop that there. Right, hold on, let me just... If I go over here so you can have a closer look. We have channel B, channel A. We have this guy here which is bridge output. Now we've got this button here, alright, 30Hz, alright, what's that for? Right, now let me explain. Bass will go down to 30Hz and below, but the trouble is, when you get to about 30Hz it's very difficult to hear that particular sound unless you've got huge sort of 21 inch bass cabs. But also what happens is when you get to about 30Hz or below, the amplifier is using up a lot of power.

And around about 30 hertz, it's not necessarily inaudible, but there's a lot of power that's sort of going nowhere. So by pressing that in, you're cutting the amplifier off. So it will only do 30 hertz and above. So in other words, the amplifier will be running more efficiently. There you go. Right, that's that bit. The next one here is a little button there for bridge, stereo or mono. And then this one here is for the input. So we have 32 dB, 26 dB or 1.4. This guy here is for, if we look there, you've got output and this guy here is for input. Now you'll notice this is just XLR. Right, output and input, what does that mean? Well you go from your mixer into here or from your active crossover into here

8:07 Believe me I tried but I couldn't do it

And then what you can do, you can go from this guy, output, and you can link into another amplifier. Now again, people are always asking me, how do you plug two amplifiers into a mixer? Simple. You go out of your mixer, into the input of an amplifier, and then if you have output, you just go from the output into the input of the second amplifier. Simple. Right, on the front of it, there you go. Nothing fancy, we've just got two dials and we've got a buttony bit to turn it on. And these guys here, we have bridge, we have mono, signal which is green, and what happens is when the amplifier is turned on and it gets a signal from your mixer that will go green. Now what I tried to do earlier on was to make it clip and couldn't do it. Believe me I tried but I couldn't do it.

When you get to clip, that's the amplifier saying, you know, I've just about covered as much as I can and I'm happy with this but please don't push me anymore. Yeah, I'd better stay there, sorry. No, it's alright because I could sort of digress there but I won't. And then we've got protection which of course is a bit like a condom and that is, I could say what I want, it's marvellous isn't it? That's red, that'll go red. So in other words, maybe you've pushed it too hard, which is highly unlikely with something like this, and it goes into protect mode. In other words, it's a bit like the amplifier saying, hold on a minute, I'm just going to stop, I'm going to go for a coffee, I'm going to calm down, and then I'll carry on in about half an hour. But not necessarily this half an hour, it's just I doubt very much whether it'll ever go into protection because it's rather powerful.

So there you go, this is video number one on this guy from Cam. This is the KXD7200. To give you some spec as well, they do a 3200 which is 800 watts side RMS, they do a 4400 which is 1100 watts RMS, they do a 6000 which is 1500 watts RMS per side and that is around about the same power. As a Makrotech VZ3600, which probably costs considerably a lot more. And then this one here, which is 1,800 watts per side. Nightmare. Right, video number one on this guy from Cam. I will put a lickable link in the description. And let's go and watch paper jumping about all over the place. Practice and enjoy, won't you?

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.