Selective Amplifiers

Applications

Where these amplifiers go

Eight installations, from a residence with speakers you cannot see to a floor plate with twenty-six of them — each one worked through as an actual channel and zone configuration rather than described in the abstract.

Installations
Eight
Distribution
Lo-Z and 70 / 100 V
Power budget
500 W per chassis
The stair hall of a hotel lobby, galleried over two floors.

How to read these

500 W, eight ways

Every case below spends the same 500 W, because that is what the SD125.4 has. What changes between them is how the four outputs are arranged and where the speakers sit on them.

Ch 1 is one low-impedance output, up to 125 W into a 4 Ω to 16 Ω load. Ch 1/2 is a bridged pair driving one 70 V or 100 V line at up to 250 W, so the four outputs become two. Both arrangements can run at once in the same chassis, which is what most of these buildings actually want.

Power Share is not shown in these diagrams because it is not something an integrator lays out. The supply hands watts between the channels of a pair on demand, while the music plays — the numbers below are the design budget, not a set of allocations anyone types in.

These are worked examples rather than fixed products: arithmetic on the published specification, using tap values and speaker counts that a real install would use. Cable gauge, the constant-voltage wiring rule and the high-pass that keeps line transformers out of trouble are all on the technology page.

Luxury residential Lo-Z, or Lo-Z and 70 V together

Speakers you were never meant to find

The case the rest of the category does not have: a house where every loudspeaker is either plastered into the wall, cut into stone outside or made of glass — and the amplifier is in a cupboard, which is the only piece of the system anyone is allowed to see.

Four rooms, four low-impedance outputs, nothing between the terminals and the drivers. Take the terrace outside and the arithmetic changes: bridge one pair into a 70 V line and the garden, the pool house and the terrace become one run of tapped speakers, while the two remaining outputs stay low-impedance indoors. Same chassis, no second amplifier, no transformer in the rack.

Four zones, low impedance

One residence · 4 Ω / 8 Ω

Ch 1 125W

Great room Nakymatone invisible

4 speakers · 8 Ω

Ch 2 125W

Kitchen & dining Nakymatone invisible

2 speakers · 8 Ω

Ch 3 125W

Primary suite Nakymatone invisible

2 speakers · 8 Ω

Ch 4 125W

Listening room Waterfall Audio glass

2 speakers · 4 Ω

4 zones · 10 speakers 500W of 500 W

Grounds on a 70 V line

One residence · Hi-Z outside, Lo-Z inside

Ch 1/2 250W

Terrace, garden & pool house Architettura Sonora

8 speakers · 20 W taps · 160 W of 250 W

Ch 3 125W

Great room Nakymatone invisible

4 speakers · 8 Ω

Ch 4 125W

Kitchen & dining Nakymatone invisible

2 speakers · 8 Ω

3 zones · 14 speakers 500W of 500 W
A four-zone residence, and the same residence with the grounds moved onto a constant-voltage line.
Bars & cafés 4 × Lo-Z · 500 W

Four rooms that are never at the same level

A small box with real power per channel is what a bar actually needs: the counter loud, the seating civil, the back room on its own, and the courtyard running whatever the weather allows.

Four low-impedance outputs cover it without a rack — the whole amplifier is half a rack unit wide and 2.8 kg, so it goes in the cupboard behind the till rather than into a cabinet somebody has to find space for.

Four zones, low impedance

One venue · 4 Ω / 8 Ω

Ch 1 125W

Main bar

4 speakers · 8 Ω

Ch 2 125W

Lounge seating

4 speakers · 8 Ω

Ch 3 125W

Back room

2 speakers · 4 Ω

Ch 4 125W

Courtyard Architettura Sonora

4 speakers · 8 Ω

4 zones · 14 speakers 500W of 500 W
Four independent low-impedance zones, each set to its own level.
Restaurants 1 × Hi-Z + 2 × Lo-Z

A dining room and a bar are not the same room

Sound is part of the service, and the level a dining room wants is not the level the bar wants three metres away. The two need separate control, and the dining room usually needs more speakers at lower output rather than fewer at higher.

That is exactly what a constant-voltage line is for: a dozen ceiling speakers on 10 W taps across the dining room, spending 120 W of the pair's 250 W budget, while the bar and the private room stay on their own low-impedance outputs.

One 100 V line, two Lo-Z rooms

One restaurant · 100 V ceiling, 8 Ω rooms

Ch 1/2 250W

Dining room

12 speakers · 10 W taps · 120 W of 250 W

Ch 3 125W

Bar

4 speakers · 8 Ω

Ch 4 125W

Private dining

2 speakers · 4 Ω

3 zones · 18 speakers 500W of 500 W
One 100 V line across the dining room, two low-impedance rooms beside it.
Retail 2 × 70 / 100 V lines

Sound branding, across a whole floor plate

Retail sound is matched to the store rather than to a room: cool and low across a furniture floor, denser and louder in a clothing shop. The demand varies enormously between one tenant and the next, and the speaker count is usually high while the power per speaker is low.

Two bridged pairs give two independent constant-voltage lines from one chassis — the sales floor on one, fitting rooms and the entrance on the other, sixteen and ten speakers respectively, each line spending well under the 250 W it has available. Headroom on a line is not waste; it is the next six speakers the tenant adds.

Two 100 V lines

One store · constant voltage throughout

Ch 1/2 250W

Sales floor Gray Sound

16 speakers · 10 W taps · 160 W of 250 W

Ch 3/4 250W

Fitting rooms & entrance

10 speakers · 10 W taps · 100 W of 250 W

2 zones · 26 speakers 500W of 500 W
Two constant-voltage lines, twenty-six speakers, one half-rack chassis.
Fitness 4 × Lo-Z · 500 W

A yoga room and a spin studio, from one box

No other vertical asks a single amplifier for this range. A spin class wants everything the channel has; the yoga room next door wants almost nothing; the weights floor and the cardio deck sit somewhere in between and change through the day.

Four low-impedance outputs, four levels, and the reason this works from one chassis rather than two is that the demand is never simultaneous — the studio takes its headroom in bursts and the pair it belongs to hands the power across automatically while the music plays.

Four zones, low impedance

One club · 4 Ω / 8 Ω

Ch 1 125W

Studio — spin & HIIT

4 speakers · 8 Ω

Ch 2 125W

Weights floor

4 speakers · 8 Ω

Ch 3 125W

Cardio deck

4 speakers · 8 Ω

Ch 4 125W

Yoga & stretch

2 speakers · 4 Ω

4 zones · 14 speakers 500W of 500 W
Four low-impedance zones with very different level demands.
Hotels & education 2 × 70 / 100 V lines

Long runs, many rooms, one budget

Hotels and campuses have the same shape of problem: auditoriums, theatres, dining halls and a lot of meeting rooms, spread over distances that make low-impedance wiring impractical. What they need is complete flexibility in where the available power ends up.

Two constant-voltage lines carry it — front of house on one, the conference and teaching floor on the other. Cable length is the constraint that bites on a site this size, and the published gauge and run-length figures are on the technology page.

Two 100 V lines

One site · constant voltage throughout

Ch 1/2 250W

Lobby, corridors & restaurant

16 speakers · 10 W taps · 160 W of 250 W

Ch 3/4 250W

Auditorium & meeting rooms

10 speakers · 15 W taps · 150 W of 250 W

2 zones · 26 speakers 500W of 500 W
Two 100 V lines covering front of house and the conference floor.
Corporate 1 × Hi-Z + 2 × Lo-Z

Open plan, boardroom, cafeteria

The corporate estate is several different jobs in one building: masking and background across open-plan desks, speech in the boardroom, and something with more level in the cafeteria and the warehouse.

A sixteen-speaker line on 5 W taps spends 80 W across the office floor — deliberately quiet, deliberately even — while the two remaining low-impedance outputs run the boardroom and the break area at whatever level those rooms need.

One 100 V line, two Lo-Z rooms

One floor · 100 V open plan, 8 Ω rooms

Ch 1/2 250W

Open-plan office Gray Sound

16 speakers · 5 W taps · 80 W of 250 W

Ch 3 125W

Boardroom

4 speakers · 8 Ω

Ch 4 125W

Cafeteria & breakout

4 speakers · 8 Ω

3 zones · 24 speakers 500W of 500 W
A quiet 100 V line across the office floor, two low-impedance rooms alongside.
House of worship 1 × Hi-Z + 2 × Lo-Z

Speech, first and last

A house of worship needs the voice carried reliably and intelligibly over a large distributed area with a lot of specialised speakers on it — which is a demand for quality at moderate power rather than for maximum output.

Twelve speakers on a 100 V line cover the nave at 15 W each, 180 W of the pair's budget; the narthex and the hall stay on low-impedance outputs so a service can carry through to the overflow space without the main run being touched.

One 100 V line, two Lo-Z areas

One building · 100 V nave, 8 Ω rooms

Ch 1/2 250W

Nave

12 speakers · 15 W taps · 180 W of 250 W

Ch 3 125W

Narthex & hall

4 speakers · 8 Ω

Ch 4 125W

Chapel & offices

2 speakers · 4 Ω

3 zones · 18 speakers 500W of 500 W
One 100 V line through the nave, two low-impedance overflow areas.

Across all eight

One chassis
Power

500 W that moves

The supply shares its output automatically across each pair of channels, so a zone that briefly asks for more than its continuous rating gets it from a partner that is asking for less. Nothing to configure.

Distribution

Both modes, same box

Output mode is set per output in the amplifier's own interface — no transformer in the rack, no separate high-impedance amplifier, and no reason a building has to pick one topology throughout.

Commissioning

Set up from a browser

The amplifier hosts its own web interface over a built-in wireless access point. Levels, zones, filters and limiters are set from a laptop or a phone on site, without a separate adapter and without joining the building's network.

In the rack

Half a rack unit

44 × 220 × 319 mm and 2.8 kg, with optional rack and wall/desktop kits — so the equipment cupboard in a café and the comms room in a hotel take the same amplifier.

Specifying one of these

The SD125.4 page carries the full specification, the connector list and the mounting hardware; the technology page has the wiring and cable references behind every configuration above. For a system that does not look like any of the eight, talk to us.