Amps for a new build

[Brian Mendelssohn]

Hi all. We are building a new theater screen, and I wanted to get opinions on amps for speakers. I feel like the amplifier industry seems to be moving away from cinema's. My odd feeling is even QSC is trying to get away from cinema. Before I make an investment, I just want to buy great amps from a brand that will still make cinema products 10 years from now.

Thanks for you opinions.
Brian
Row House Cinema

[Steve Guttag]

In this world, 10-years is an eternity for any prediction of who/what will be there. Without a doubt, QSC is thinking QSYS is the hammer and all problems are nails. That said, if you are looking for straight up analog amplifiers, you won't do better than QSC's DCA line of amps. They are well proven, quiet, reliable, serviceable. You are worried about 10-years...typical QSC amplifiers go more than double that.

Cinema was "blessed" by QSC to keep the DCA line of amplifiers to retain the dataport connector that has been used by the DCM, DCP, and DPM line of monitor/crossovers and cinema processors. The A/V side of the world lost their "CX" line this past year (same amp but with different front and back plus input sensitivity).

With the DCA amplifier, the only thing you lack are crossovers for biamping or triamping (QSC has discontinued their XC-3 and now the DCM line of crossovers and monitor crossovers). AKM burning to the ground put the DCM on such a long hold (and who was really buying new sound systems?) to cause people to look elsewhere, already. The DPM 300 and DPM 300H remain active. The realities are, if you look at what cinema processors are out there, they are all DSP based and have crossovers as part of the processor (Dolby CP950, Trinnov OV2, Datasat AP25, QSC DPM 300)...so, the market for external crossovers is very diminished.

If you are thinking QSYS, it will perpetually evolve (it is DSP based, it pretty much has to as chips come and go). With QSYS (or other DSP based processing) you would tend to use the CX-Q amplifiers as it makes connectivity just a network cable. Note, QSYS operates on AES67 (and has Dante options) so there are other amplifiers like LEA and Powersoft as options (it's a new world out there for audio).

Dolby is a reasonably stable company and if you go full Dolby, then you have the option of a simple installation where you plug your CP950 (or IMS3000) into a DMA amplifier with a single network cable...done. The Dolby DMA amplifier also works with AES67 so a DSP solution like QSYS can use the DMA too.

I think anyone that tells you that a company that you know today will be the same company with the same support or people in 10-years is making a claim that they cannot back up. The world evolve and companies will evolve with it (or go away).

[Leo Enticknap]

Shameless sales plug alert: we are a dealer for LEA Professional amplifiers, which is a relatively recent entrant into the cinema market. We offer the Network Connect series if you do not need Dante/AES67 input and balanced analog is OK for you, and the Dante Connect series if you do (essentially the same models, but with a Dante card added). If you'd like to learn more, and/or be put in touch with a customer who is using them to discuss, please feel free to contact sales [at] movingimagetech.com.

[Sam Chavez]

PowerSoft out of Italy has some excellent but not so cheap power amps. Tom Atkinson ex of USL and QSC is doing distribution in the USA. 805 295 9995 cell or text.

[Brian Mendelssohn]

thanks for the feedback so far, this is why I love these boards. We will have a Dolby CP950 as our processor.

[Steve Guttag]

Then I'd use the QSC DCA amps, without a doubt. I just did a system at The Star theatre in Berkeley Springs, WV...CP950 feeding QSC DCA amps (mix of QSC and JBL speakers).

[Marcel Birgelen]

There is nothing inherently special about cinema that would make amps for cinema a real niche. Maybe if you jump on the Dolby train and go for their multi-channel amps, but otherwise, any amps that deliver up to the specifications are fine...

My recent personal experience centers around the QSC series and both the CX (Q-SYS) and DCA amps are fine choices for cinema application.

[Brian Mendelssohn]

This is great feedback! Steve, I just saw a movie this summer at the Star!!!! I loved it

[Leo Enticknap]

We have had good experiences and satisfied customers both with QSC DCAs and the LEA amps. An advantage of the LEAs is that they are configurable via a web interface, have an API that would enable automated power up/down, have built-in crossovers, and a cloud monitoring feature, which the QSC DCAs do not.

Keep in mind that to use the CP950's built-in crossover, you have to create a Dolby Atmos Designer file, a process that is a little more complex than the setup would otherwise be, including the requirement to take room measurements. Doing the crossover in the amps would bypass the need to do that.

[Steve Guttag]

Leo, you are merely trading setting up a single DAD file (and not having to do much in the way of measuring the room...it isn't Atmos...it is just for surround timing, which can be done on the processor, if desired). Regardless, you do it once, push the design and the CP950 can be set up locally, if one doesn't want to fool with DAD beyond that. This, versus having three separate DSP systems, individually set up and requiring one to consider where the DSP is if an amp goes down. Do you really want to compare the service life of the DCA line to most others? I'm not trying to pick on LEA and even mentioned them in my post above but the more things you put into a box, the more failure points you put in there with it.

As for cloud monitoring, I'm all for it. Other than if the amplifier is on or not...how much monitoring does a DCA amp really need?. Again, Q-SYS is my goto system and I really like full monitoring, including being able to hear the amplifier outputs via the net...it helps. But those are more complex systems depending on networks and the peculiarities of DSP based equipment. Linear amplifiers like the DCA are pretty rock solid. Again, I'm not saying Brian or anyone else should not consider LEA, or Powersoft, or Dolby (which would get you web monitoring and crossovers in the amplifier, plus redundant power supplies...etc.). There are lots of choices but the DCA amplifiers tend to rise to the top of the list and are Made in USA.

[Marco Giustini]

Personally I think a good amplifier should not have a coloured LCD screen on it and firmware that needs updating every time you connect to them with a different revision of software
QSYS is kind of an exception as it's a full DSP speaker management system but unless you go with QSYS I'd really prefer an amplifier which has an ON/OFF switch and that's it. No software bugs, no smoke and mirrors.

I can also vouch on the quality of the DCA series. Only issue I saw with them was with the gain potentiometers which would get dirty and would stop the audio. But those were old DCA's, not sure if the issue has been resolved over time. My hands on experience with 55 of them over 6 years has been brilliant: 3 failures, 2 within 2 weeks and 1 after 6 years. 10 hours a day, fader set to 7 or whereabouts.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I agree, the perfect amp only has a power button... And I still have a bunch of old NAD amps that only have a power button and maybe a trigger input... Technically, there aren't any perfect amps though, only those that come close.

As for QSYS-enabled and other "Digital" amps: The nice thing is that you now can run low-power, low gage, cheap Cat5E or Cat6 to your amps and be done with it. You can keep the \cables to your speakers short by putting the amps where you need the power.

[Marco Giustini]

I would also like an amplifier which can withstand some abuse without switching itself off or - even worse - stop playing sound with no error messages shown on the fancy LCD screen. That is just so unacceptable. I know for experience the DCA's can be abused and they won't budge.

Indeed the Ethernet connection is so convenient, particularly for Spatial sound. Still, I'd like the amplifier block to be a solid and reliable piece of kit. The Ethernet block should output analogue to the amplifier block and that's it.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

I would also like an amplifier which can withstand some abuse without switching itself off or - even worse - stop playing sound with no error messages shown on the fancy LCD screen. That is just so unacceptable. I know for experience the DCA's can be abused and they won't budge.

Indeed the Ethernet connection is so convenient, particularly for Spatial sound. Still, I'd like the amplifier block to be a solid and reliable piece of kit. The Ethernet block should output analogue to the amplifier block and that's it.

Agreed. I have had DCAs that have been dropped, exposed to extreme heat and dust, gotten rained on (while running!), ran on dirty generator power, driving a 70.7 volt speaker array (which they are NOT rated for without using a transformer) and never had a failure under any of those conditions. Out of the 2,000 or so I have installed over the decades, only 4 failures come to mind: 1 had a defective capacitor in the power supply that blew after a few hours running, 2 had the gain control issues, and the other failed after years in a screening room at the beach, and was not repairable at the component level (QSC swapped the entire guts at a VERY reasonable cost, AND gave me the old boards to try to fix for fun.)

My intro to QSC was at Knott's Berry Farm in So Cali. I had a Series One (1400) that also got rained on, while powered up, on a roof for the Halloween event sound FX. It survived, the two Yamahas I had up there died fatally and couldn't be repaired. BTW that Series One had the older chassis with the vent slots on top, above the output transistors. Which makes its survival even more amazing.