Although by comparison to many other audio colossuses it’s somewhat younger and smaller,

Indonesian born Crescendo is nowadays fi rmly established in the market pertaining to quality speakers, offering everything from entry level factory replacements through to high level competition and reference component sets. During this time it has accumulated many awards, placed in many sound-offs and has shifted its overall perceived reputation from ‘promising beginner’ to ‘scarily profi cient’. So now that it’s turned speaker manufacturers worldwide faint, it’s currently making amplifi er manufacturers very nervous because it has them in its sights; fi rstly dipping its toe into the amplifi er pond with the four channel Sonata-Four and presently putting an entire leg in with its latest release – the Sonata Six.

LONG SONGThe Sonata range of amplifi ers have been a long time coming, with Crescendo announcing years ago that it was commencing work on numerous new units. This process has been quite delayed though, primarily due to the way the design was implemented. They’re a totally new ground-up affair although there’s a slight twist on normal development methodology and progression. They’re reverse engineered in that the raw amplifi er design was completed fi rst but then Crescendo injected a whole swag of refi nements and improvements into the basic design. This meant that although

these amplifi ers were actually good enough to be released six months ago, Crescendo held off their launch until the absolute latest technology had been affected to the design in order to offer what can only be described as one very special range of power amplifi ers.

Moving to the fundamentals of the design; they’re one of the smallest amplifi ers on the market and are of high current class-D design. The Sonata Six is the larger sibling of the two, outputting one hundred watts continuous onto each of its six channels when measured at 12-volts provided you’re running with a 2- or 4-ohms load. If you up the voltage (by starting your car for example); you’ll get around 130 watts per channel. These power fi gures are accurate too, with both over and under rating a non-issue. It’ll happily output its claimed power all day without going beyond its rated total harmonic distortion of 0.04%. Other performance fi gures are equally impressive with a damping factor of 104 at 50Hz, a slew

rate of 5V/ms, separation of 70dB and signal-to-noise ratio of 85dB. If you’re not quite up on all this technical jargon and would prefer it in plain English; while the Sonata Six isn’t the largest amplifi er on the market it is arguably among the best sounding within its price region.

Regarding the channel confi guration; you might be wondering why the need for six channels given that most cars only come with speakers in four corners. Simple question really, however not so simple an answer I’m afraid. Logistics aside it’ll also depend on your personal tastes and what you’re looking to achieve in the car. Many sound quality enthusiasts are after a superior stage and image where the band is at the front of the car and spaced evenly across the dash board.

DIPPING A TOE INTO THE AMPLIFIER POND.DIPPING A TOE INTO THE

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CRESCENDOSONATA SIXAMPLIFIER

no crossovers. Now on the outset you might think you’ve been left a little short changed but being a sound quality amplifi er Crescendo assumes you’ll be crossing the signal before it reaches the amplifi er (either by head unit or processor) and therefore they’ve been omitted. The other reason they’re absent is because it’s a power amplifi er and power is the single biggest cause of most system noise. You read all the time that good amplifi er design dictates the sound processing circuitry doesn’t live anywhere near the power delivery section, well you have no chance of noise leaking into the sound when the processing is done somewhere else altogether.

PURE POWERRemoving the stamped steel base plate is not easy because the screws are very deeply sunken in and can easily fall into the internals – trust me when I say you do not want a loose metal screw fl oating around within the confi nes of your amplifi er’s circuitry. You’ll also break two warranty seals in the process so I don’t advise you go doing this with your own unit. The layout is quite uncommon but most clever when you examine it more closely. High quality components are utilised throughout the entire design. The stiffening caps are right behind the power block and from here the current heads over to the back corner to a large air core transformer for the voltage to be jacked up to 36-volts for delivery to the power storage caps located just beside it.

Now this is where the design gets clever; the transistors are not joined to each edge of the circuit board and lined along the sides as is the case in 99 percent of amplifi ers. Instead Crescendo has peppered them along the back side of the circuit board – they’re literally wedged between the circuit board and the top heat sink. This means you cannot see them at all but I tell you what – if ever there was a better place for then thermally I’m yet to think of it. The sheer nature of it being digital class-D dictates that there must be at least some delicate circuitry and Crescendo has seen this placed vertically at one end of the circuit board and only attached via its edge – this sees to it that these delicate components are kept away from the beefi er ones.

The clean white box has the Crescendo branding neatly printed on it and opening it you’re presented with the amplifi er itself and little more. Unlike most amplifi ers on the market Crescendo offer you very little extras. Besides a small bag of screws and some mounting feet there are no fuses, no tools, no wires or anything else for that matter. I might also add that the user manual is so bare of useful information that it might as well have been excluded too and trying to get

information out of Crescendo is akin to drawing blood from a stone.

When it comes to mounting the Sonata Six, Crescendo have gone away from the more traditional class-D square shape and instead opted for a longer and narrower design. The unit is 370mm in length but the width is only 140mm. Height is a mere 50mm at its highest point. I mounted mine in our MX5 test car behind the driver’s seat where it slides in snugly next to the fuel tank and crash plate. My confi guration saw channels one and two running two Seas RW27F tweeters in the pillars while channels three and four ran the RW165/1 midranges located in the doors. I bridged channels fi ve and six to run the Seas SW250 subwoofer in the boot.

The unit turns on for the fi rst time without any thumps or pops as it charges up the power caps and after a quick check on the oscilloscope to set the gains we would soon be away and listening – however before going anywhere we tested with the usual zero noise track where the amp is turned up to full pelt to check for any noise issues. This is where the ear to ear grinning starts. Sure you can argue that Crescendo was a little thin on the features and included equipment, and true, it did ruin the look of the beautiful heatsink with that badge. But the quality of the output you simply cannot argue with – it outputs virtually zero noise when the gains are set at realistic points. During playback, even when you start really pushing it, the sound quality remains paramount. The bass remains defi ned and punchy while the cymbals and highs remain crystal clear. If you keep pushing it you will hit the limits but the Sonata Six certainly outputs plenty of power that’ll keep the most enthusiastic sound quality buff happy for hours. However in the same breath it must also be clearly stated that it’s not designed for setting world sound pressure records so don’t expect titanic amounts of grunt from it.

CONCLUSIONSo the speaker expert has dipped its toe into the amplifi er pond? But has it been successful? Only time will tell as these units start spreading into competition circles worldwide. Because after all; it’s sales that ultimately determine if a product is truly successful. However, if technical specifi cations and black and white performance are anything to go by, Crescendo has itself a real winner here.

These people often employ a single channel amplifi er to run their subwoofer while the six channel amplifi er runs their entire front stage, either passively in the case of a 3-way component front end or passive/active in a car comprising of a 2-way component front end. The latter seeing channels one and two running the tweeters while the remaining four channels are bridged to run the midranges – as more power equals more headroom and that means less hiss.

Then there are those who have very little real estate for an amplifi er – this scenario often lends itself to the use of just one Sonata Six running either front components and subwoofer or front and rear speakers and subwoofer. There are confi gurations aplenty when using an amplifi er with so many channels.

Physically speaking; the Sonata Six would easily be one of the best looking amplifi ers around had Crescendo not ruined it with a large, ghastly badge which is literally bolted to the top via eight silver cap screws. Here you have an exquisite copper colour anodised aluminum heat sink that has been brushed-fi nished to magnifi cence – the badge just has no business being there. Along the entire front panel are the gold plated power and earth input blocks, speaker output blocks and the six RCA input ports – no high level input here sorry.

On the opposite side of the case live the operational lights and three gain pots which are very deeply sunken into the frame. Two 30A fuses are also nestled between the power and speaker output terminal blocks and there are no other controls to speak of, including

CRESCENDO SONATA SIX AMPLIFIER

• Superbly clean sound• Great build quality

• Few features and accessories• And that badge…

TYPE: Class-D six channel amplifi er

CONTINUOUS POWER RATING: 6 x 100

watts at 4 ohm (CES2006)

FEATURES: Not many

COST: $799

CONTACT: OzBliss on 03 9570 3930

WEB: www.ozbliss.com

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