Surge 4k or Taramps Smart 8k?

[Bass911 10+ year member]

The trophies aren't anything...a db meter showing a half bridge vs full bridge would be the proof...can't argue decibel readings

He does plenty of competitions. I'm pretty sure he saw a higher score with the Korean. All of it can't be in his head.

 

[Doxquzme Premium Member]

He does plenty of competitions. I'm pretty sure he saw a higher score with the Korean. All of it can't be in his head.

Well, actually, it can. I will say that there can be differences, yes. Are the differences better or satisfying a predetermined notion that just won't die. I have a Surge SP-2000.4, Korean. I have hooked it up to my test bench and done A/B comparatives between the Surge, A Focal FDP 600.4, Helix M FOUR, Pioneer PRS 4200FD and a Stereo Integrity SIQ 125.04 very clean direct to signal class A/B amp in a pretty quiet sound deadened room and while their may have been slight nuances in sonic signatures, not me nor my 3 musician buddies could muster better than a 50/50 split on consistently picking which was which. I play Drums, Keyboards, Cello and bass guitar and think I have a halfway decent ear for those nuances you'd typically be looking for between them.

That said, I will point out something that all four of us did notice on another A/B test. When comparing the Taramps, soundigital full range full bridge multi channel amps with the Pioneer and the Focal FDP 600.4, we all felt that the Taramps was slightly duller than the others. Just seemed to lack a certain sparkle in the upper registers. It's entirely possible that was a result of the rather high noise floor present in the Taramps as opposed to the others.

Now when we compared the taramps BASS, the Soundigital EVOPS and the Surge 4K monoblocs, we had an even worse score that with the other test only nailing the differences probably 25% compared to 50% on the first test.

In conclusion, we thought the biggest differences here were not due to class or topology (except for the Taramps full range and that is still subjective) and likely it had more to do with the cost and quality of the product. The more expensive units got picked more often than the others, pretty regularly. in that sense, I would say that any of the monoblock amps would do equally great in most everyone's daily driver and even in comp systems. We could not hear a difference in the dual Si SIQ 12s in a my friends box tuned to 29 hz. At the end of the day, looks like, to a point, you still get what you pay for.

 

[spokey9 5,000+ posts]

He does plenty of competitions. I'm pretty sure he saw a higher score with the Korean. All of it can't be in his head.

There's no magic in the surge 4k watts that'll make it louder than a taramps that does double the power

 

[Bass911 10+ year member]

There's no magic in the surge 4k watts that'll make it louder than a taramps that does double the power

It might not be magic but it is something. The guy responded to me, and he said he metered higher with the DC 7.5k Koreans than the 2 15k Taramps. There is another guy on YouTube that said his Salt 12k was way better than his Taramps 12k. I think the Salt does more on the dyno, but his setup didn't need more power.

 

[Doxquzme Premium Member]

I found that the price had a lot to do with the differences in performance too. Let's be real, you can get a taramps 30k and still have enough left over for a KILO110 sodium bank! What you can spend matters too. Nobody is going to deny you that the Salt or any high end Korean board design amp is a great product AND liley built more stout, If you really want the marginal differences that the Salt 12k provide you for $3000 dollars more than the Taramps 12k, hey, it's just money, right?

 

[Bass911 10+ year member]

I found that the price had a lot to do with the differences in performance too. Let's be real, you can get a taramps 30k and still have enough left over for a KILO110 sodium bank! What you can spend matters too. Nobody is going to deny you that the Salt or any high end Korean board design amp is a great product AND liley built more stout, If you really want the marginal differences that the Salt 12k provide you for $3000 dollars more than the Taramps 12k, hey, it's just money, right?

I understand the price thing, but I'm struggling to believe power is power? It is probably all in my head, but my 3k Korean seemed stronger than my sfb5000? I still need to run test to prove my theory.

 

[shredder1 10+ year member]

I understand the price thing, but I'm struggling to believe power is power? It is probably all in my head, but my 3k Korean seemed stronger than my sfb5000? I still need to run test to prove my theory.

My 4K korean was a tank, running .5 daily in Tucson and it survived dead shorting the power/grounds once.
It put up some fairly good numbers for a lower power class.

I've seen too many fullbridge amps die to take a chance myself.