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My test: Ampere Audio 3800.1

7K views 12 replies 10 participants last post by  vetkilr 
#1 ·
I've actually tested one of these a while ago. It was a quick test thrown in with a bunch of others and I didn't do a write up at the time, but it was solid so I thought I'd revisit it since I got one from Ampere at finals.

Ampere Audio 3800.1

1k @ 4ohm
2k @ 2ohm
3.8k @ 1ohm

Bonus... 18v stable.

Overview. Very clean. Nice beefy sink. I like the look alot. They also make a matching 125x4.


Standard stuff here. Strappable. RJ11 bass knob port.


Bass knob is nice. Small and solid with a nice action to it. No clip light, but I don't trust those things anyway.


Single 1/0 power and ground. That's fine. Two sets of 8awg speaker outs. Appreciate that.



Guts. These might look familiar. This is a really solid and proven board.



On to the testing...

Unloaded. 64.3v clean. Right where it should be. And yes.... that's a B2 amp the meter is sitting on.


First up.... 2.5ohm resistive. Remember... this is like the AD-1 amp dyno. There's no "rise" and the voltage and amperage are in pahse here. I like this load because it's a pretty real world reactive (rise) from a 1 ohm nomnial like most sane people would run.



What you see there is 64v @ 2.5 ohm and a 145A draw. That's 1,640w @ 2.5ohms and 14.2v with 80% efficiency "certified".

Moving on to 1ohm resistive.



That's 3,600w @ 1 ohm and 14.1v with 68% efficiency. You can see here how efficiency dips the lower you wire. It's a good indication of why it's not always a great idea to wire below 1 ohm.

Clamp on subs. This is .25 nominal beating the snot out of an HDD12.



3,950w clean rising to .9 at 13.7v. You can see that I probably have a little left on the knob before I got into even a soft clip. So there's some left in this amp but that's for the TermLab to tell me. For this test, this gain and volume position is just fine. And safe.

So, recap.
Rated 2k @ 2 and 14.4v... Did 1,640 @ 2.5 and 14.2v.
Rated 3,800 @ 1 and 14.4v... Did 3,600 @ 1 and 14v resistive, 3,950w @ .9 and 13.7v.

Conclusion... this amp is rated accurately. You pay for 3.8k and that's what you get. It's a very well built amp that didn't protest .25 nominal and rising to under 1 ohm. I've tested it on lower voltage than this and it still performs, but I wanted to try to test it as closely to rated voltage as possible. It's also 18v stable. I'm not set up for high voltage testing at the moment, but I have no doubt the output would scale up.

Ampere could have played the under rating game on this amp, but they didn't. Most companies would call this a 3k and people would go bananas that it actually does 4k. So, keep that in mind when reviewing the numbers.

Ampere Audio 3800.1... T-Fade approved. :thumbsup:
 
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