REVIEW: Enlightened Audio Designs PowerMaster 500 Amplifier (SS)

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Well, EAD has come up with a new product. the little brother of the highly rated Powermaster 2000. after waiting about a month due to the production delay, i finally got my unit, the very first production of the powermaster 500. in silver faceplate to match my EAD Encore.
today is the 4th week i've been living with this amp, and i can say that it has made me happy eversince i got it.
The design of this amp mirrors the big brother, PM2000. in other words, it is a scaled down version of PM2000 for those who does not require a mammoth power for their aplication.
It has the typical 5 ways gold plated binding post. but the tightener nut is plastic. it also does not come with balance input like the PM2000 but EAD retain the 12V DC trigger to be used with the Theatermaster or whatever component that has DC output.
from the manual, the power in RMS is listed as 100Wx5 into 8 Ohms and 150Wx5 into 4ohm. the peak current is only 25Amps. however , this amp has the dynamic energy steering which will turn the amp into 300W x2 into 4 ohms load for stereo listening. this is one advantage of the single power supply where other channels can always tap the power from others during peak level.looking under the hood of the amp reveals one big toroidal power supply, and 2 soda can size capacitor bank with heavy gauge wire.
the first time i look at this amp, i doubted this little 40lb amp can drive my big paradigm s-100 as good as my old ATI 1506 Bridge which gave me 450W x3. with a little hope, i connected the speaker cable to the amp, biwiring the fronts with cardas quadlink 5c. then i fisrt try the DC trigger features with my EAD theatermaster encore. everthing works fine except you can't trigger it to off until there's no signal sent to the amp. ie: all sources are turn off or in "stop" status.
then i began my listening session.
first of all, i figured i wanna watch a dynamic movie with this amp driving all my speakers in all "large" setting.so, the amp will handle the bass w/o the help of a sub. this will break in the amp quickly i guess.i wanna see if this amp has the capability.
i ran an auto setup with my EAD encore and check the level of each speaker. the setting for each speaker is a little higher than the one with ATI driving the speaker. about 3 steps higher.then , i pop in my DTS version of Saving Private ryan whic is my favourite for the very first 30 scene and the last scene. Surprisingly, this little amp has enough juice to give the same level of performance of my ATI w/o any sense of distress or distortion. the sound was very clean with alot of headroom for dynamic passage like explosion and plane hovering above my head. the dialog was clear and easy to understand. Voices sound less mechanical, and soundtrack are more musical making me watching the whole movie this time. and at the end, i check the amp if it has been overheat by the 3 hour movie and i found that it was barely warm.!!!
then i watched a couple of other movies like Fifth Element, Matrix, Dancing With Wolves etc for another few hours and leave the amp on all the time until i'm ready for music listening. after a few days, i feel that the amp is broken in and warm up, i started to listed to my favorites cd's collection. i spend the whole sunday evening listening to my system without noticing the time pass by.
after comparing with my friend's ATI 1505, i found that this amp has its weakness in bass area. the ATI has better controll in the lower bass region but very bright on the top end, which why i prefer the sound of the PM500. the 500 has more laid back sound, with better imaging and focus. deeper and wider soundstage with lots of low level resolution. i notice my speaker was not as bright as it was with the ATI and the background noise is significanty lower with the 500.
with the 500, music float freely in my room with the singer's vocal located exactly between the speaker. The 500 also does a superb job of preserving high-frequency air without sounding dull or whitening the music's highs. Upper frequencies are so slightly sweet. There's no hint of the sound of ear-biting cymbals. but when it come to a bass heavy music, the 500 show its weakness, the bass is not as tight as it was with ATI 1506 brigde, but adequate and still have the power to shake the room with authority. pretty good for a 100W amp.
accoustic instrument like string really sound goods with the 500, no sign of sibilance to my ears. i can listen to the music at loud level for long period of time w/o getting tired/fatique. the sound is so relaxing.this amp is a keeper for me. or may be until the new powermaster 1000 come out with more power.
I just can't believe that those powerful amp is only rated at 100W per channel. for some reason, i feel like EAD has underrated this amp, may be for marketing purposes. no idea. but i don't believe that an amp this small can drive my speaker with ease, w/o distortion and most important, it sound better than ATI (IMHO). i'm not gonna miss the ATI with this amp in my setup. and i can always make use of my big subwoofer when it comes to big bass task which i feel the 500 couldn't handle, ( which BTW, it could!!). if this little baby could do as much, wait until you listen to PM2000.
anyway, i plan to get another pair of amp to power my rear speaker and biamp the front with the PM500.
well, this amp will keep me quite and away from upgrade bugs for a while, even though i do like a big, heavy behemoth Amplifier. perhaps i will get the powemaster 2000 or 1000 when i'm ready.
this amp has done its job pretty well and has made me happy.
BTW, i have to apologize for not being able to describe the sound signature
of this amp as good as professional writer. i just wanna share my experience about this beautiful sounding amp and spread the words to those potential buyer who are in the market of multichannel amplifer. i believe this amp is as good if not better as any other sub $2k range of commercial HT amp. it will stand up well against other amps like rotel, marantz, Outlaw, Sherboun, parasound, NAD and even ATI.
IMO, it will be a perfect match for speakers that has bright and forward characteristic like paradigms, NHT,PSB, Monitor Audio etc etc.
i will make a comparison with a new Marantz SR-18 next week and also acurus act3 replacing my Encore to see if the current big receiver can really competes with avarage separates.
stay tune.
just my 2 cents.......thanks for reading.
( i wish i still have the 1506 to compared, but i sold it a few weeks earlier)

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Topic - REVIEW: Enlightened Audio Designs PowerMaster 500 Amplifier (SS) Review by Abdul at Audio Asylum - Abdul 10:51:41 12/30/99 (0)

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