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Hey guys thanks for the props!! Yes it is true the idea came from a defibrillator. It seemed silly to me that all these guys in the db drag lanes need to have 1/2 of their vehicle full of batteries and alternators to maintain a decent B+ voltage for a few seconds. That and the fact that the amount of total energy all those batteries contain is huge and they are only using a fraction of it during their burp. It is like taking a NASCAR car to a drag race. A vehicle that is designed to go 200mph for hours on end probably isn't the best design for a 1/4 mile burst. So when you look at the way a defibrillator is used its like burping an amp. Defibrillators don't have massive power cords that need mega amps at 220V, in fact some of them are portable and run off a very small battery. Why, because they don't need to shock someone for hours at a time, just a quick burst. They just draw a small amount of power continuously during 'charge up' and once all the energy they need is accumulated they release it all at once. With the operation of the defibrillator in mind, I tried to apply it to car audio. I set off to build a prototype which was based on (2) T1500.2 output sections, I had to liquid cool the MOSFETs because even the FETs in the T1500.2's were not big enough to handle the kind of power I wanted. By keeping them very cold they could be pushed beyond their limits. (This may be the radiator ect... part of the story that someone posted). Then I needed a way to store a bunch of energy, electrolytic caps and some of the carbon based caps that are commonly used in car audio were not even close to being capable of storing the amount of energy I needed, so I used 12 small motorcycle batteries in series to get 140+ Volts. Then I built a power supply that would convert 12VDC to 140VDC to 'charge' these batteries. I got this contraption all put together the night before the Annual Rockford Fosgate Employee Sound-Off. I didn't really how much power it would make exactly, but to try to shorten this long story it ended up putting out 15,030 Watts RMS! This is how 15k Watts became the goal for a 'real' amp. The first step towards making it a 'real' amplifier was I had to eliminate the array of batteries. I began searching high and low for something that would do it. I found a company that makes capacitors for hybrid cars and large wind turbines. These worked perfectly. The caps I ended up using are 400 Farads, and there are 180 of these in the T15kW. Then I needed an intelligent power supply that could monitor these caps and add energy to them as needed, and it had to be fast, really fast if this amp was going to play music and not just a burst. So during music these caps are charging, discharging, charging, discharging. The power supply in the T15kW can charge the caps 35,000 times per second. Of course many other things had to happen like finding MOSFETs that could handle it, a way to keep it cool without antifreeze and car radiators ect. The final product met all the goals and then some. The main idea is that with this technology the amplifier can put out more power during transients or bursts than the car it's connected to could supply. Again thanks for the props, look for hybrid technology to hit our smaller amplifiers in the near future. PS if you guys would like to see pictures of the original liquid cooled proto I'll post them. This proto was eventually dubbed the D'Fibrillator. haha -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tony D'Amore Design Engineer Rockford Corporation So much :wackit3: :wackit3: :wackit3: in this post.

I award you an A for effort sir. However the devil is in the details and the marketing info. That graph is erroneously drawn to make Class D look better than it is. The x axis is drawn lineraly in power. It should be drawn as a LOG. This would make the difference between the two look much less though, and would exploit the crap out of the fact that Class D has LESS efficency at very low levels. The graph in that .gif should have the x axis drawn as: 0.0001%, 0.001%, 0.01%, 0.1%, 1%, 10%, 100% ... NOT 0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% and so on. Class Dismissed

I'm glad tony got his knowledge from here... The only thing the diamondboxx needs is a cassette player

this guy really has no idea who tony is youre arguing against an engineer who designed amps for a living here are pictures of the most efficient amp aver made.. even after the years no person has come close to building something like it Tony Damore Posted - 12/06/2006 : 9:36:39 PM Hey guys thanks for the props!! Yes it is true the idea came from a defibrillator. It seemed silly to me that all these guys in the db drag lanes need to have 1/2 of their vehicle full of batteries and alternators to maintain a decent B+ voltage for a few seconds. That and the fact that the amount of total energy all those batteries contain is huge and they are only using a fraction of it during their burp. It is like taking a NASCAR car to a drag race. A vehicle that is designed to go 200mph for hours on end probably isn't the best design for a 1/4 mile burst. So when you look at the way a defibrillator is used its like burping an amp. Defibrillators don't have massive power cords that need mega amps at 220V, in fact some of them are portable and run off a very small battery. Why, because they don't need to shock someone for hours at a time, just a quick burst. They just draw a small amount of power continuously during 'charge up' and once all the energy they need is accumulated they release it all at once. With the operation of the defibrillator in mind, I tried to apply it to car audio. I set off to build a prototype which was based on (2) T1500.2 output sections, I had to liquid cool the MOSFETs because even the FETs in the T1500.2's were not big enough to handle the kind of power I wanted. By keeping them very cold they could be pushed beyond their limits. (This may be the radiator ect... part of the story that someone posted). Then I needed a way to store a bunch of energy, electrolytic caps and some of the carbon based caps that are commonly used in car audio were not even close to being capable of storing the amount of energy I needed, so I used 12 small motorcycle batteries in series to get 140+ Volts. Then I built a power supply that would convert 12VDC to 140VDC to 'charge' these batteries. I got this contraption all put together the night before the Annual Rockford Fosgate Employee Sound-Off. I didn't really how much power it would make exactly, but to try to shorten this long story it ended up putting out 15,030 Watts RMS! This is how 15k Watts became the goal for a 'real' amp. The first step towards making it a 'real' amplifier was I had to eliminate the array of batteries. I began searching high and low for something that would do it. I found a company that makes capacitors for hybrid cars and large wind turbines. These worked perfectly. The caps I ended up using are 400 Farads, and there are 180 of these in the T15kW. Then I needed an intelligent power supply that could monitor these caps and add energy to them as needed, and it had to be fast, really fast if this amp was going to play music and not just a burst. So during music these caps are charging, discharging, charging, discharging. The power supply in the T15kW can charge the caps 35,000 times per second. Of course many other things had to happen like finding MOSFETs that could handle it, a way to keep it cool without antifreeze and car radiators ect. The final product met all the goals and then some. The main idea is that with this technology the amplifier can put out more power during transients or bursts than the car it's connected to could supply. Again thanks for the props, look for hybrid technology to hit our smaller amplifiers in the near future. PS if you guys would like to see pictures of the original liquid cooled proto I'll post them. This proto was eventually dubbed the D'Fibrillator. haha -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tony D'Amore Design Engineer Rockford Corporation

Thank you sir! The choice of Class A/B was based on two things - Sound quality and idle current. These are both suprior on a class a/b amplifier. Advantages of class D amplifer are size and better effiencency under some conditions, not all. Size was not a concern as the size requirement for the woofer airspace was the determining factor there. Efficency was a wash. So Class A/B it is, and it sounds great! Just trying to give Dr. Helmholtz some love and respect Idle current shouldn't differ too much I think? What are your findings? The main thing is that class AB uses about 4 times more power with music at max volume. Waste of battery IMO. Class D is also much more suited for mass manufacturing (SMD, sinking via the PCB). I saw on your FB page that you were searching soldering techs down to 0603. There's no way your handassembling this (right?). Do you mind sharing some internals, maybe via PM, I always like to see the engineering work of others. Idle current is quite different on the two. Like double on the class D. In my opinon Class D is better suited for higher power applications, and where sound quality isn't as much of a priority as price. The amplifier PCB is designed for manufacturing and uses SMD parts and some through hole parts. The parts are machine placed. At continuous full volume I agree, a Class D amplifier would be more eff, which possibly could allow us to use a smaller capacity battery. But with the idle current being higher, at low volume the eff gain is nulled. We chose to let the battery cost a bit more and enjoy the sound this system produces. How do you figure class AB uses 4 times the power with music at max?

One in his shoes simply doesnt read forums and becomes the lead in R&D for several audio companies before doing his own thing.

They sound great. got mine a few weeks ago. Wife picked the red. Then sha claimed it and told me to get my own

Worlds Best Boombox - Custom Pearl Orange DiamondBoxx - CLEAN and LOUD - This thing ROCKS! If you got headphones or a decent system on your PC it will be more apparent in this video Before you bitch about the price. Remember a few things. How much is a TOP OF THE LINE set of mids/highs for your ride? How much is a custom amp (one for each speaker in the box) designed by one of the best engineers to ever design car amplifiers? How much is the automotive grade paint job, the 20 hour Lithium battery? I say load up the most expensive piece of shit you can get at Walmart with D Batteries and turn it on. Walk away from it for 20 hours and see what you have when you come back. Now buy new D batteries every time you go out and figure the cost to replace those things over the course of a year. The battery alone will justify the cost let alone the AMAZING components this thing is made of. This isn't the last video i am making of this. More to come including some side by side comparisons. here are the specs. -------------------Technical Specifications------------------- Amplifier - Class A/B (Better sound quality than Class D) Each speaker has its own amplifier 40 Watts RMS to each woofer 30 Watts RMS to each tweeter Total clean output amplifier power is 140 Watts RMS Total MAX amplifier power is 320 Watts (We don't run it that hard for best sound quality and durability) Active limiters to prevent over driving the speakers and amplifier Active 2nd order crossover set to 3.5kHz Active 2nd order subsonic (infrasonic) filter at 32Hz Designed to use very little power at low volumes (extremely low idle current) The entire aluminum front panel of the DiamondBoxx is the amplifier's heatsink so it will never overheat, even when playing full blast for hours. Stereo output VU meter with 10 White LEDs, also displays battery charge level in 10% increments when DiamondBoxx is turned on 3.5mm AUX input on front panel to plug in audio from: iPhone/iPad/iPod (all generations), any other phone with a headphone jack, Tablet, TV, XBOX, PlayStation, Wii, other gaming, laptop, PC, MAC, Projector, just about anything 2.1A USB Port on front to charge mobile devices (any phone or tablet) Because you don't want your iPod dying when you are partying Bluetooth A2DP -- Range up to 50 feet Speakers - Two 5.3 inch (135mm) active woofers, aluminum cones, rubber surround, neodymium magnets Two 1 inch (25mm) titanium dome tweeters, liquid cooled voice coils, neodymium magnets Two 2 inch (51mm) Helmholtz resonators, tuned to 45 Hz Enclosure - 500 mil thick MDF enclosure with bracing for improved bass (MDF wood provides great sound quality, much better than plasitc) 125 mil thick 6061 aircraft grade aluminum front panel, hard black anodized and laser etched with aluminum bracing for improved bass Finished in either automotive type durable polyurethane paint, or Duratex on the Rough Duty Black model Total Weight approx 18 lbs (8.3kg), Shipping Weight 25lbs (11kg) Rear Panel - 125 mil thick 6061 aircraft grade aluminum rear panel, hard black anodized and laser etched. Jacks for battery charger and input/output loop for linking multiple DiamondBoxxes Battery and Charger - 87W-hr Lithium Ion power cell - Will power the DiamondBoxx up to 20 hours at low volume, 4-5 hours at MAX volume 2 Amp voltage and current regulated charger, charges a fully dead diamondboxx in 2.5 hours Battery can be fully charged and discharged well over 1000 times (6 years if fully discharged and charged every other day), still keeping 80% of its capacity after this

This forum has a standing reputation for ahole-ness. There's more guys measuring their "wiring harnesses" on this board than I've ever seen. Try not to get too worked up over it. A few of your posts did seem a little strong. But no worries. Take a break from the forum for awhile and come back on a new topic later.

He has no need to teach you anything. He doesn't owe you anything. You don't deserve anything from him or anyone else because you have no respect for people and their efforts based upon your comments. If you have a question there are ways to ask it. These people are giving away free advice, at their leisure to people in our hobby. A little respect for their time and everyone elses on this forum would be a good thing for you. This isn't a engineering forum, he is not presenting untested findings to you. In fact I regret ever saying anything about an amplifier because of your comments. Maybe i joined the wrong forum then. A lot of the things I said/asked/stated were just out of interest but get taken way out of context. I'll leave the discussion for now. Thanks again mr d'Amore for developing this product and taking the time to answer my questions.

Damn guys, I'm just having a conversation and trying to learn of his knowledge. I really respect his work and I'm not bashing his products AT ALL. What should I do, kiss his ass? Maybe I'm on the wrong forum, but I thought it was meant to share thoughts and learn from eachother. I'm not trying to pose as knowledgeable at all, I'm a complete noob compared to him. I'm just sharing what I (think I) know, so he can correct me where neccesary. I was going to type a reply to mr D'Amore, but maybe I shouldn't and just let it be.

Thank you sir! The choice of Class A/B was based on two things - Sound quality and idle current. These are both suprior on a class a/b amplifier. Advantages of class D amplifer are size and better effiencency under some conditions, not all. Size was not a concern as the size requirement for the woofer airspace was the determining factor there. Efficency was a wash. So Class A/B it is, and it sounds great! Just trying to give Dr. Helmholtz some love and respect

I took this vid at CES . All 5 being controlled from 1 master. I have taken my Diamondboxx to a basshead meet. Just to prove the bluetooth is that good, I set it down and then walk away.

lets see it!

some sort of cool grills would be cool

So since DC is a build house and not a retailer its really odd for someone to knock on the office doors but last week thats what happened, The man on the other side said he drove 4 hours because of a woofer issue that the 2 different shops he had working on it could not figure out. They both had blamed the subwoofer for it not being able to handle 2000 watts. He explained to me he had spent a lot of money on our product and was really unhappy with it. its rms is at 2200 so he would expect it to take the 2000 watt amp he had it hooked up to. He explained he had purchased a DC XLm2 12 from a retailer and it was getting stinky quick and could not keep up with the rest of the system. He explained the system sounds great at low volume but there is a point on the volume knob that the bass stops getting louder but the rest of the system keeps going. I knew right then what was going on and said OK lets go take a look at it. His bass section of his system was a 4 volt headunit that feeds an EQ with high voltage outputs that then goes into a 2000 watt amp thats wired at 1 ohm. Should be an easy task for a XLm2 right. Just glancing at the settings It appeared it was probably all too high. I had just the tool to show him what was going on. I could have explained it to him but this guy didnt really know me so I could be some guy working at a shop just pointing the finger in a different direction. The better way is to get out the DD-1 and explain how it works, So thats what I did, I explained what a gain on an amp is for and how deck/eq voltage works. How over gaining an amp will cause an amp to run out of useable power before you run out of volume knob and how it will produce dirty power and how that effects the operating temp of the sub. He tells me he normally runs his deck at volume 22. So we hook up the DD-1 to the outputs of the headunit and its well within his clean useable volume clicks. What was good about doing this first is now he understands the way the DD-1 works, He was able to see how about 95% of the deck volume was all clean and how only the last couple clicks were dirty and lit it up. When we got to the outputs of the amp we were able to get to volume 12 when the distortion light came on, because he understood the way it works from the previous settings we went through, it clicked right away what the issue was for the guy. I think he was just relieved to understand car audio better and to also know exactly where the problem was, not just guess work and finger pointing. So basically we got a guy that rolls at volume 22 but gets dirty at 12. We adjusted his settings on the 2000 watt amp so that he could get the most clean power out of it at the volume he listins to. No more subwoofer heat issues and the sub now continues to get louder in a linear way with the rest of the system all the way up through the volume clicks, no more leveling off early and smelling. Huge thanks to steve, awesome job on the tool. from a manufacturers stand point, if that customer had not come out and got dialed in with the DD-1 he would just be a guy out there unhappy with his system, that includes being unhappy with us. But because we were able to tune his system and show him where the real issue was I think we have made a happy DC customer for life.