I had a bit of an experience in ordering and getting these amp kits assembled and working. The amp modules themselves seemed to have been damaged in shipping (vibration caused several caps legs to fatigue via vibration and break off). Hypex (and my retailer, Deer Creek) did a great job taking care of the problem, totally painless. They sent back either my repaired modules or new ones (I can't tell).
If you can assemble a PC, you can put this kit together. I was prepared to do a bit of soldering for speaker terminals, but they have done away with that in this generation (perhaps earlier, I don't know). After seeing some thermal camera shots of the modules under heavy load producing a fair bit of heat, I decided to carefully clean both mating surfaces (alcohol) between the modules and the base plate of the amplifier chassis and apply some thermal paste. It's neither suggested or mentioned in the manual, but decided even if it's not necessary or effective, it should be harmless.
Medium gain set on amp modules. MiniDSP SHD operating as my preamp. Pair of KEF LS50 Meta (additionally 2x KC62 subs). 110Hz High pass on to speakers (ports plugged). While I haven't yet ran any further room correction or crossover/eq adjustments yet, the output volume seems like a pretty good match. At -10db on the SHD it's about as loud as I can stand. Not going to attempt pushing it to distortion as it's ridiculously loud for me.
I'm finally moving on from my Parasound hca-1500a I've had since the late 90's. It is rated for about 205W @ 8 ohm. Nilai 500 is rated for 260W @ 8 ohm. Unsurprisingly the Nilai has significantly more output at volume levels I often used with my previous amp.
Whether or not "break-in" is a real thing in amps, I'm going to listen to them for a week or two before saying too much about what I think. I will say that if they never change a bit they are already as enjoyable as my Parasound is. I am moving to class D primarily for practical reasons (heat, size, power draw, etc) so if they sound as good as that old honker, then this is a success for me.
Anyway, for others thinking of trying these out, ask me anything. I'll update this with anything I think is useful as it occurs to me.
If you can assemble a PC, you can put this kit together. I was prepared to do a bit of soldering for speaker terminals, but they have done away with that in this generation (perhaps earlier, I don't know). After seeing some thermal camera shots of the modules under heavy load producing a fair bit of heat, I decided to carefully clean both mating surfaces (alcohol) between the modules and the base plate of the amplifier chassis and apply some thermal paste. It's neither suggested or mentioned in the manual, but decided even if it's not necessary or effective, it should be harmless.
Medium gain set on amp modules. MiniDSP SHD operating as my preamp. Pair of KEF LS50 Meta (additionally 2x KC62 subs). 110Hz High pass on to speakers (ports plugged). While I haven't yet ran any further room correction or crossover/eq adjustments yet, the output volume seems like a pretty good match. At -10db on the SHD it's about as loud as I can stand. Not going to attempt pushing it to distortion as it's ridiculously loud for me.
I'm finally moving on from my Parasound hca-1500a I've had since the late 90's. It is rated for about 205W @ 8 ohm. Nilai 500 is rated for 260W @ 8 ohm. Unsurprisingly the Nilai has significantly more output at volume levels I often used with my previous amp.
Whether or not "break-in" is a real thing in amps, I'm going to listen to them for a week or two before saying too much about what I think. I will say that if they never change a bit they are already as enjoyable as my Parasound is. I am moving to class D primarily for practical reasons (heat, size, power draw, etc) so if they sound as good as that old honker, then this is a success for me.
Anyway, for others thinking of trying these out, ask me anything. I'll update this with anything I think is useful as it occurs to me.
