I hear that Phoenix Gold Amps are underrated. How much power do they really put out?
Measured on a test bench most Phoenix Gold amps continuous power is underrated by about 5 to 15%. The higher lines of amplifiers are more likely to be underrated, where the lower lines are more accurate to the specs. But keep in mind, there is more to an amp then just what the power output is on a bench test. The higher line of amplifiers, regardless of the power output, the more solid the build, beefier, and more audiophile parts are used. The higher lines will also usually have better features such as RDDP ports, variable crossovers, fans, etc. Most importantly, the beefier high end amps are better able to handle the peaks of the music which will allow for more headroom, rarely is this taken into account when actually measuring output of an amplifier. Of course, this is fairly subjective because some listeners claim they can hear a difference between two amps with similar power output but from different lines (ie, qx2350, XS2300, ZX250). But there are people can’t tell the difference
