New from AVA, the Synergy 450 and Synergy 300 power amplifiers.

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avahifi

We have two great new power amplifiers for you.  Both are all solid state, both have twelve active regulated power supplies, including active regulated power supplies for the output circuits.

These provide nearly the same amazing dynamics, transparency, and sense of "you are there" live presentations that have made our new Fet Valve hybrid amps so successful.  Better yet, there is not a hint of "solid state" sound, just music.

The prices are reasonable for these amplifiers packed with new technology, $1999 for the 225W/Ch Synergy 450 and $1499 for the 150W/Ch Synergy 300. Note that the Synergy 450 includes double die Exicon mos-fets.  These are available for the Synergy 300 as an $99 option.

Upgrades are available for any older AVA 440 or 260 series solid state amplifier for $995.  The upgrades require stripping the back panel heat sinks to bare metal and installing all new circuits, a major rebuild.

We can build you a new Synergy amplifier right now.  Finally, solid state amplifiers that make no excuses at all.

Please call us at 651-330-9871 for more details.

Frank Van Alstine

P.S.  Our black faceplates are standard on the Synergy series.  The thick silver faceplates with electronic AC switching and the blue LED is a $300 extra cost option.  Silver faceplate option is available on new chassis only.  Older chassis are not configured for these faceplate hardware changes.
« Last Edit: 6 Apr 2012, 06:24 pm by avahifi »

WC

Silver or black faceplates?

Mary

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Here are some photos :D




aln

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99 Dollar upgrade
« Reply #3 on: 6 Apr 2012, 06:46 pm »
It may be a thought to just make the double die standard and keep it simple.
Still, a wonderful amplifier which will make many people happy.
Happy Easter!

avahifi

In as much as we have never lost a standard Exicon power mos-fet device in an Insight 260 or older medium power amp we have ever built, we feel that the double die devices are pretty much redundant at this power level.  They still are available as an option.

Frank

kip_

Is a 3 channel synergy series amp in the works as well?

avahifi

If you notice that the audio circuit boards for the Synergy amplifiers are much larger than our previous generation solid state amplifier circuit boards, and there is one board per channel, it is kind of hard to see where we could fit a third circuit board and output devices in this chassis.

So no Synergy three channel amplifier at this time, unless we can learn to manage available space a lot better than we can now.

The fine Insight+ 240/3 remains the best we can do in packing three solid powerful channels into one rational package.

Regards,

Frank Van Alstine

pardales

Very nice. So these will replace the Insight series of amps?

avahifi

The new Synergy 450 and Synergy 300 amplifiers replace the Insight+ 440 series and Insight+ 260 series amplifiers.

The smaller Insight+ amplifiers remain the best we can do at a lower price as there is no way to pack 12 regulated power supplies on the smaller audio boards used in these amps and no room for more boards either.

Note that all older AVA chassis 440 and 260 amplifiers can be upgraded to Synergy amps for $999 including new audio boards, new ground plain boards, new output networks, new regulators, and nearly complete rewiring, and of course a new three year parts and labor warranty.

We sold three of the new Synergy amplifier already by today and promised another one for a reviewer.

We will demo the new Synergy amps at the upcoming AKFest in Novi, MI the end of this month along with Jim Salk's speakers.  We will have the new Fet Valve equipment there too.

Frank Van Alstine


charmerci

Frank,

So how will this affect (or not) your integrated amp?

avahifi

The Insight+ Control Amp is not affected at all, it remains in production as a great musical value as is.

Regards,

Frank

PJam1995

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I'm wanting to get my first amp and thinking about getting the Synergy 450. I have a few questions I hope someone can help with. I have Salk Songtowers and Salk center channel. I have 5 total channels and a sub. I currently have a onkyo tx-nr3008 and want to add the Synergy amp to that. My question is would I still be able to use my onkyo for the center and 2 back speakers for movies etc. with the amp connected to the songtowers? My Onkyo has stereo mode ,direct mode and thx modes. Would the Synergy amp and my onkyo work together? Like I mentioned earlier, I have never used seperates and not sure how they would work together.  I really like the way the new Synergy are described and want to improve my soundstage and clarity. Thanks.

srb

Sure, the Onkyo has preamp outputs for all channels.  Just connect the Front Left and Right Pre Out to the power amp inputs and the front speakers to the power amp.

Steve

oneinthepipe

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Frank:

Is the $995.00 upgrade from the Insight 440 for the Synergy 450 or for the Synergy 300?

Regards,
Henry

Lefty052347

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Insignt 260 to Synergy 300 or
Insight 440 to Synergy 450.

Regards,
Dean

Minn Mark

I have an Insight 440H. Will the Synergy 450 have the same power curve and stability into lower impedence loads?

M

Lefty052347

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I have an Insight 440H. Will the Synergy 450 have the same power curve and stability into lower impedence loads?

M

FYI:
The 440H came standard with 6 single die exicons per channel.  The Synergy comes with 4 double die devices per channel.  Both amps use same transformer. 

So the answer is yes, the 450 will drive any load the 440H can drive with equal stability.

Regards,
Dean

avahifi

The Synergy 450 will work even better into lower impedance loads because the regulated output supplies won't sag at all under dynamic conditions.  In addition, the amp will run cooler as the output devices are not seeing full rail voltage, just the regulated voltage, dialed in by plus and minus 20 turn precision pots on each supply rail for each channel to set up symmetrical clipping and make sure the outputs clip before the power supply does.  The audio boards run cooler now too. No heat sinks required on any of the audio board devices.

Regards,

Frank Van Alstine

guest1632

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We have two great new power amplifiers for you.  Both are all solid state, both have twelve active regulated power supplies, including active regulated power supplies for the output circuits.

These provide nearly the same amazing dynamics, transparency, and sense of "you are there" live presentations that have made our new Fet Valve hybrid amps so successful.  Better yet, there is not a hint of "solid state" sound, just music.

The prices are reasonable for these amplifiers packed with new technology, $1999 for the 225W/Ch Synergy 450 and $1499 for the 150W/Ch Synergy 300. Note that the Synergy 450 includes double die Exicon mos-fets.  These are available for the Synergy 300 as an $99 option.

Upgrades are available for any older AVA 440 or 260 series solid state amplifier for $995.  The upgrades require stripping the back panel heat sinks to bare metal and installing all new circuits, a major rebuild.

We can build you a new Synergy amplifier right now.  Finally, solid state amplifiers that make no excuses at all.


Please call us at 651-330-9871 for more details.

Frank Van Alstine
 
Hi Frank,

ok, here are some questions. I hope these are not considered to be to dumb.

I realize this first question will be of a subjective nature, so an absulute answer most likely can't be given.

Comparing the Insight line to the Synergy line of amps, what would you figure the per centage of improvement to be. Likewise, since the Synergy and FET Valve are now close together in sound, what would you figure the difference to be. "If you have one of our Symergy amps, you will have approximately XX percent of the newer FET Valve amps in sound."

Second question: I don't know for real how many Output transistors are used in each amp, but this double dye thing, isn't this like having two transistors in one package? So then why not just use half the amount of transistors, reduce/simplify the whole output circuit and maybe the amp will sound even better? lol, You will just have to work those puppies a little harder. just curious there.

Last question, so are you going to upgrade the Insight preamps to the Synergy line too?

Thanks.

Ray Bronk

avahifi

Hi Ray,

It is really hard to assign numbers or percentages to the difference between amplifiers.

We now have a drastically improved and very transparent A-B comparison box built and in daily use here.  It allows us to connect two preamps, two power amps, and two sets of speakers all at once and switch between any combination from a remote control.  Levels between any two components are matched when switching and switching is dead silent.

Using this box has taught us a few things.

For example, different amplifiers react quite differently to different speaker loads.  The speakers we have connected now are a set of original Salk HT3 three way units with ribbon tweeters and a set of older B&W 801 Series Two speakers, with our crossover fix of course, and damped housings for the tweeters.  Both are really good speakers and each has an easy to identify sonic signature.

The new switch box is now transparent enough to not mask differences between amplifiers or preamplifiers.  It is easy to tell one design from another now.

Interestingly, when using the 801 speakers, the difference between the Synergy and Fet Valve amplifiers is more obvious.  Using the HT3s, the differences are minimized.

What this means of course is that what you hear is really going to depend somewhat upon what speakers you use. The Fet Valve always comes across better, but "better worth the extra cost" is a lot less obvious if you are using B&W 801s.

Thus, my "percentages better" have no absolute meaning when the equipment is used with different speakers.

Anyway, we would suggest that the Synergy is probably 50 percent better than the Insight series.  The Fet Valve amps are more like 100 percent better than the Insight series.  The Fet Valve is probably 30 percent better than the Synergy driving the 801s, but 20 percent better driving HT3s.  These are really wild ass guesses here, remember that.

Regarding number of output devices here is the scoop.  Our heat sink sections each hold three TO3 output transistors.  The big amps all use four heat sink sections, two per channel.  Thus max capability is 6 TO3 devices per channel.  The Fet Valve amps all use double die devices, thus adding up to 12 Exicon mos-fets per channel.

However, in the new Synergy and Fet Valve amps, two of the output devices per channel are used for output regulators.  Thus these amps use four mos-fets per channel, double die devices in the Fet Valve 400 and 600, and in the Synergy 450.  The Synergy 300 uses standard devices.  Our long term experience with powerful mos-fet power amplifiers over many years of use tells us that our choice and number of output devices have proven to be very durable in service.

Note that using double die devices does not add to the complexity, actually it makes the layout less complex as there is less wiring needed for the same results.  All of our amplifier will perform as rated with the use of single die devices only.  The double die devices just add an additional safety margin to amplifiers that are rugged and quite fault tolerant in the first place.

Note also that the regulated power amplifiers all run cooler.  The output devices no longer are attached directly to the high voltage power supplies.  They are connected to the regulated power supplies which operate at a significantly lower voltage.  The regulated power supply voltages are set to regulate up to and just past clipping.  The active regulators also do not work very hard.  At idle, when the see full raw supply voltage in, the are passing very little current.  At full power, when the regulators must pass lots of current, the voltage across them is very low as the raw supply voltage drops with high demand.  The regulators and the output devices are always run well within their safe operating windows.

No, there is no upcoming upgrades to the Insight series preamplifiers.  The solid state preamps use completely different technologies than the power amps and there are no common circuit configurations.  They work really well as is and would take completely new design ideas to make them better than they now are.  That will be tough to do.

Finally, the new Fet Valve and Synergy amplifiers we think will make very useful improvements to your audio systems.  Try one.  Remember we offer a 30 day satisfaction guarantee if they do not meet your expectations.

Best regards,

Frank Van Alstine