Peavey CS 3000G Installation And Connection, Industrial And Commercial Installations, Bridge Mode

INSTALLATION AND CONNECTION

The Peavey CS 3000G commercial series power amplifier is designed for durability in commercial installations and the quality of performance required in studio and home applications. The unit is a standard rack-mount configuration, 3-l/2” high and is cooled by automatic two-speed internal fans. All of the input and output connections are on the back panel. The front panel contains LED indicators for power and DDT activation, detented/calibrated sensitivity controls, and a mains power switch.

INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL INSTALLATIONS

For commercial and other installations, where sustained high power operation is required, the CS 3000G should be mounted in a standard 19” rack. It is not necessary to leave rack space between each amplifier in the stack, since the fan pulls air in from the rear and exhausts the hot air out of the front. However, an adequate COOL air supply must be provided for the amplifier when rack-mounted. The internal fan must have a source of air that is not preheated by other equipment. The amplifierwill start up in “Low Speed” fan operation, and will normallystayat low speed operation unless sustained high power operating levels occur. Then as the amplifier’s “Heat Sinks” heat up, the automatic thermal sensing circuitry will cause high speed operation to occur. Depending on signal conditions and amp loading, high speed fan operation may continue or it may cycle continuously between high and low. This situation is quite normal.

If cooling is inadequate due to preheated air, or a reduction of airflow occurs due to blockage of the amplifier inlet/outlet ports, or if the amplifier is severely overloaded or short circuited, then the amplifier thermal sensing system may cause temporary shutdown of that particular channel. This is indicated by the channel power LED on the front panel ceasing to illuminate. Depending on available cooling air, operation should be restored in that channel relatively quickly, and the power LED will be illuminated. In any event, corrective action should be taken to determine the cause of the thermal shutdown. If the amplifier is not severely overloaded or shorted, and air flow is normal in and out of the unit, then steps should be taken to provide a cooler environment for all the amplifiers. As a general rule, the cooler electronic equipment is operated, the longer its useful service life.

BRIDGE MODE

The bridge mode on stereo amplifiers is often misunderstood as to the actual operation and usage. In basic terms, when a two-channel amplifier is operated in the Bridge mode, it is converted into a single-channel unit with a power rating equal to the sum of both channel’s power ratings, and at a load rating of twice that of the single channel rating. In this case, the CS 3000G is rated at 1500 W RMS per channel into 2 ohms. Thus, the Bridge rating is 3000 W RMS into 4 ohms (minimum load). Bridge mode operation is accomplished by placing the mode switch in the “BRIDGE” position, connecting the load between the RED binding posts of each channel, and using channel A as the input channel. All the channel B functions as an input are defeated and they serve no purpose in Bridge mode.

A popular application for Bridge mode operation is to drive sound distribution systems in large public address applications. In this mode, the CS 3000G power amplifier can actually drive 70 volt systems directly without using expensive matching transformers. The real advantage of such an approach is primarily cost.

70 volt distribution systems are very common in applications where rather large numbers of relatively small loudspeakers are used for background music and paging. Such systems require the use of 70 volt transformers at each loudspeaker. Another common use for the Bridge mode is in subwoofer applications where very high power levels are required to adequately reproduce the extreme low frequencies. Such enclosures usually contain 2 or 4 loudspeakers to handle the power levels involved. For Bridge mode usage, the enclosure impedance must be 4 or 8 ohms; never below 4 ohms! Also make sure that the enclosure can handle 3000 watts reliably

DDT COMPRESSION

Peavey’s patented DDT compression system enables the sound man to maximize the performance of the amplifier/speaker combination by preventing the power amp from running out of headroom (clipping). This compression system is activated by a very unique circuit that senses signal conditions that might overload the amplifier and activates compression (reduces the amp gain) when clipping is imminent. Threshold of compression, then, is clipping itself and no specific threshold control is used. This technique effectively utilizes every precious watt available for the power amplifier to reproduce the signal while at the same time minimizes clipping and distortion, and thus significantly reduces the potential of loudspeaker degradation and damage. The DDT system is an automatic, hands-off approach to the problem of power amplifier clipping. Since the CS 3000G power amplifier uses circuit breakers for the over-current protection, the DDT compression system plays even a more important roll in continuous performance by preventing each channel from clipping and overloading. Continuous operation at clipping can cause the circuit breaker to trip, but with the DDT activated, this problem is minimized. For this reason you should always have the DDT compression system enabled.

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