Power To Spare
Unpacking the unit from the box, I was immediately impressed with the power to weight ratio. The 44M20 only weighs about 25 pounds yet can put out 20,000 watts? Whoa. And that’s not a “peak” or “burst” power number; the factory states that the amp can deliver 5,000 watts at 2 ohms per channel with all channels driven simultaneously. Back when I started in pro audio, my first real amp rack contained four amps that weighed in at more than 200 pounds while delivering 2,400 watts in total.
Our company warehouse manager Wes and I set up a passive loudspeaker system so we could give the unit a listen. It was easy to dial in the DSP. First we hooked up a few full-range loudspeakers for critical listening test, and the loudspeakers sounded noticeably better with the 44M20 than with the 15-year-old amp technology we currently use it.
Next, we adjusted the DSP and then hooked up a couple of subwoofers. With all four channels running, we played some bass heavy electronic music to see if the bass through a pair of channels would make the amplifier sag a bit. But it just chugged along with the subs thumping and the tops sounding great.
There was also very little heat coming out of the amp. Wes was really impressed and placed the sonic quality at the same level as some studio monitors that he’d recently mixed a project with. We’ve had the loudspeakers for years and have never heard them sound as good.
We also tested the Dante networking with one of our Soundcraft mixers as well as a Mackie DL32R compact rack-mount mixer also in the shop for evaluation. I’m a big fan of Dante and have switched to it instead of analog as much as possible. Both mixers and the laptop running Dante controller found the amplifier and easily patched it into the network.
Genuine Performance
Confident in the capabilities of the 44M20, the next step was to take it to some gigs. At a corporate meeting where we normally use powered 15-inch loudspeakers, we swapped in a pair of passive 15-inch (also horn loaded) models in order to drive them with the amplifier. Rik Kirby of Allied SMD, the North American distributor for Linea, had included a PowerCon-to-Edison cable with the unit so we could plug the it into a single outlet for testing. Of course, we weren’t going to be able to run it at full power from a 15-amp wall circuit, but for this average-sized room, we only needed a few hundred watts to adequately drive the PA.
The 44M20 made that pair of passive loudspeakers sound great, and sat in the corner running cool all day. If there were more time available, we could have set the DSP to match the loudspeakers perfectly, but the production ended up being a rush so we just ran two channels of the amp, full range.
Supporting a live band at an event came next. Basically, we deployed the same system configuration that we’d set up in the shop – two full-range top boxes pole-mounted over two subs. In this case, however, the loudspeakers were higher end, and they’re normally driven by three amplifiers (two of them bridged running one per sub at 4 ohms and the other running the tops in stereo). In contrast, just the single 44M20 supplied 3,000 watts at 4 ohms for each sub and 1,500 watts for each top, more audio power than the three amps we normally use, plus the DSP is built in. It also made the rig sound noticeably better.
I’m confident that if we bought our current amp rack components new, the cost would be more than the 44M20. Using it to drive the mains and a smaller Linea 4-channel model for monitors would make for a small, light and therefore easy-to-transport power solution that could take the place of two of our 16-space racks.
The band sounded great through the rig, and during sound check the singer stood by the mix position and commented how fantastic the rig sounded. Before the show and during the breaks we played some of the test tracks used at the LSI Loudspeaker Demos. They sounded amazing, so much so that I even listened to Jennifer Warnes’ “The Hunter” for the 17,345th time with a smile on my face. Suffice to say that the unit worked flawlessly and my creaky old back appreciated not having to move around a heavy amp rack.
The Linea Research 44M20 represents the highest caliber of professional audio technology. It very well could be the best sounding power amplifier I’ve ever heard. It’s also flexible, not only in terms of the DSP but that it can be optimized for 70-volt systems and networked seamlessly in live and installed systems, large and small.
U.S. MSRP: $7,500