Bass Amp Power Stage

[bbrich]

Here's an interesting one for you electronics wizards. Does the Power Stage of a Bass Amplifier "colour" the sound in any way?

I'm reliably informed that the power stage merely amplifies what the Pre-Amp throws at it, but having just had the power stage replaced in my ancient TE combo my ears are telling me a different story.

Your thoughts please…

[BigRedX]

Everything in the signal path colours the sound in some way. Anyone who says differently is deluding themselves. The only important question is whether or not you like how the sound is being coloured.

[Phil Starr]

An ideal power stage wouldn't colour the sound of course but there are always going to be some limitations. I doubt that in practice you would hear a lot of difference between say, a new 400W class AB power stage and a 400w class D one. In this case you are talking about an old amp that will have a lot of components which will have drifted out of spec over the years so it won't be sounding like new and you might well hear a difference. A lot of old amps had big capacitors to decouple the speakers from the power rail and this limited the bass response,

In the end the power amp will contribute less distortion than the pre amp stages but that won't mean nothing at all.