New Compact Marpa Amps

It works the same as for the old amps... and the answer to what the max power out is is "it depends".

The amps actually don't know or care where they're powered from. They will just pump out whatever they can... the level of distortion just rises the more you load the system down as their supply rail drops. Powering the amps from the Matrix Switcher means all the amps doing so are sharing the capacity of the MS power supply, and are at the mercy of voltage drop in the CAT5.

The factors which affect the power output when powered from the Matrix Switcher are :
- the number of amps being powered by the MS
- the length of cable

As such it's not possible to specify a meaningful figure.

I have 3 zones installed at home, all powered from the MS with no issues. Two of the zones are small rooms (Bedroom/Bathroom, with Krix holographix speakers - one uses the new low power amp, the other uses the old style), the third is a larger room (Family room, with Krix hemispherix speakers) which gets turned up a bit more, but I haven't found the distortion to be noticeable.

This was the case with the first revision of the amps. The design was updated a few years back (I think it was about 2006) to switch off the power amp and related circuitry when the amplifier was not in use. The catalogue numbers changed (a /2 was added on the end) at this time to delineate the newer versions.

As for the external power supplies... they don't turn off when the amp turns off, but the demand on them from the amp is reduced. I suppose if you were concerned about the standby consumption of the external power supplies you could power them from a relay channel and switch it with the same group address used for the amp volume.

Nick