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.

@lavidaesmejorenelagua

Ай бұрын

Are Korean circuits bad or better than Chinese circuits ?

that is why my mrv's v12's and my mrp still working perfectly.. more than 20 years old

@mohsinaly

10 ай бұрын

Using Alpine MRV-407 and a pair of MRV-500 for JL subs, cant be more happier with the sound quality.

@sergiobisonte

10 ай бұрын

@@mohsinaly I have MRV-F400, MRV-T500 and MRP-F200

@Fleecejonhson

10 ай бұрын

Yup Been playing my mrv f545 for years no issues at all..good amps

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.

@bbfoto7248

10 ай бұрын

@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.

It’s really good to see a well thought out design and quality engineering

Those are Nippon Chemi Con caps. High quality Japanese caps, these are built to last DECADES if taken care of.

Nippon Chemicon bulk caps? Very nice! Those are very good quality electrolytics.

Alpine have always been great and I’m glad they are staying that way.

Man I been looking for a review of the newer alpine amps this week. This video is right on time

Good stuff Alpine. Pleased they are still quality after all these years. Now just need to bring back the chicklets

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)

@7Little701

10 ай бұрын

I got 2 big class G house amps same company and series one has the H power supply and it's way better than the other. It runs cooler when not flexing it runs cold like a class D. It's also way lighter. At least on AC that H will save you 7 or 8 pounds of weight.

This is a cool video, it would be nice if you could do this with each brand you get across your bench.

I absolutely love your vids man!!

Love these type of videos

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.

Great video Sam!

I loved my Alpine 3527 back in the day. It was great for a pair of door speakers and a sub.

Nice to see an amplifier again on this channel👍

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

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

WooHoo! Love to see you paying more attention to the Safe Operating Area of the FET rather than the extremes listed in the specs!

I have an Alpine MRD-M301 from around 2004 still running strong. Not a lot of power and not sure of the design in it but sure is reliable.

@JohnDoe-le8fy

10 ай бұрын

Still got a Premier Pioneer CD head unit from 97*? did have a few years of shelf life but works same as always.

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

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 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

I need to hear these and that 6 channel especially

My 2001 pdx.1000 is still going strong.

Yes alpine are for sure a solid design.

9:45 the 0115 is the marking code for a Infineon BSB165N15NZ3 its a Vds=150V, Rds(on )16.5mR, Id 45A Ptot 78W N fet.

@barevids

10 ай бұрын

Thank you! Only spent a few mins looking while I was filming and it wasn't obvious 😂

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.

@barevids

2 ай бұрын

They are technically repairable with an IRS20956S from china which is a restamp of the proprietary part, but yes very annoying!

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

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

yeah im and Alpine kind of guy,,,, since 1998...

Sam what's your openion on Jonathan price class a b amplifiers?

0115 FETs are Infineon BSB165N15NZ3

GOOD GEAR . ESPECIALLY THERE HEAD UNITS

On the mrd alpine digital models they come only 2ohm stable if u removed the protection circuit will it stop it from orotection being wired to 1 ohm.

A long time dealer in my area said that alpine specializes in circuit board design that’s their bread and butter not car audio

@barevids

10 ай бұрын

I can agree

Hopefully you can compare these amps to the new HDA series from alpine. I would definitely watch that video.

@RAW-CAt

10 ай бұрын

Apparently they are identical, just use a black PCB.

Conformal Coating comes in blue?

These would be efficiency champs given the parts they use !!! Hell, the outputs are not directly on the heatsink, that is new.

@barevids

10 ай бұрын

They are on the heatsink lol 😁

@toma.cnc1

10 ай бұрын

@@barevids yes but through thermal pads, pretty thick at that.

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.

I’ve noticed that Alpine, JL Audio and Sony have their own amp circuit designs. No copies from Korea or China.

@msh6865

10 ай бұрын

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.

You would be hard pressed to find a through board component in a modern ECU. Why would surface mount be an issue in an amplifier?

@barevids

10 ай бұрын

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.

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

@dlcarburetor

10 ай бұрын

Most likely will need to change the amps out to something that can be tuned.

@mitchwolos6758

10 ай бұрын

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.

Why not measure the multi tone distortion or something useful? Why bother measuring the switching waveform and such?

@RAW-CAt

10 ай бұрын

Cause I'm gonna do that when they will come back😊

@bbfoto7248

10 ай бұрын

​@@RAW-CAt THANKS Nerijus!

how can I join the discord server? is it still a thing?

What amps is this good for the fraction of the price

@bbfoto7248

10 ай бұрын

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.

@gregorywhite3511

10 ай бұрын

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

@bbfoto7248

10 ай бұрын

@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.

@gregorywhite3511

10 ай бұрын

@@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.

Hi, do you have service manual / schrmatics of these amps? Thank you

@barevids

10 ай бұрын

No sorry

@kiklop8362

10 ай бұрын

@@barevids no problem. I would like to make direct input but I do not want to without schematics. Anyway what is your plan about them?

@bbfoto7248

10 ай бұрын

​@@kiklop8362 Hello, mate. These amps are owned by Nerijus Kochanskas (@RAW-CAt on KZread and @Pixerix on DIYMA) in the UK and will be used in his SQ competition car when they are returned to him.

@kiklop8362

10 ай бұрын

@@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 :)

@bbfoto7248

10 ай бұрын

@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.

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

@JasonWW2000

10 ай бұрын

Yes, if you live in the UK. If not, you need to keep things in your own country to avoid high tariffs, taxes and shipping fees.

Now do a R-A90S lol

I have found my pdx-f6 four channel though immensely powerful does not sound as good as a mediocre class ab amps.

@Bradimus1

10 ай бұрын

I had a PDX 5 channel. Great power, sound was just okay. Never could quite place my finger on what it was.

@jordanciaramitaro6351

10 ай бұрын

@@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.

@ericperry72

10 ай бұрын

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.

@jordanciaramitaro6351

10 ай бұрын

@@ericperry72 will try one of those. Thank you

@barevids

10 ай бұрын

@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.

What happend to boom or bust ?

@barevids

10 ай бұрын

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!

Your videos are like amp crack bro. 🫢🤷🏻‍♂️

I think all class D amps are not worthy of my ears.

Engineered to make sure repairing is a nightmare if not impossible

@JasonWW2000

10 ай бұрын

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.

Why do you sound like you're being chased? Relax dude.

@barevids

10 ай бұрын

Attention span of the average viewer is low.

@crtgamer2355

10 ай бұрын

@@barevids I hear what you saying , just I'm from the old school when people spoke with calm. Nice video.

@barevids

10 ай бұрын

@@crtgamer2355 yep haha. That doesn't work for KZread 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