10
In 1992, Cr
own engineer Andy Ar
chias worked on
the MA-5000. Cr
own’
s upper management was
delighted that the amp had such a positive impact
on the company
, the music industr
y,
and the audio
world. MA-5000s wer
e even used on destr
oyers
and air
craft carriers (and still ar
e today).
A major suppor
ter of MA amps was Sam
Helms, manager of Sigmet, a pr
emier pr
o audio
repr
esentative in New Jersey
. Sam put Cr
own
amps thr
ough all sor
ts of tor
tur
e tests. As he
says, “W
e put low-fr
equency squar
e waves into
the amp and dr
ove a subwoofer with that signal.
This was to show how the MA
’s
damping factor
contr
olled speaker
-cone motion compar
ed to the
competition. It was no contest.”
“Using a signal generator
, we put 60 Hz in the
fr
ont end of the amp, ran the level contr
ols up, got
high-power out of the amp and welded pieces
of metal with it! Or we’d take an AC cor
d, cut of
f
the end of it, put on a banana jack, plug it in the
back of the amplifi
er
, and run a drill of
f it. The
competition would shut of
f and the Cr
own amp
would just keep going. Y
ou could drill thr
ough a
4x4 with no pr
oblem at all.”
Cr
own’
s elite studio amplifi
er
, the Macr
o-
Refer
ence
™
, used the same main boar
d as the
MA-3600VZ, but with r
emote load sensing for
higher damping factor
. It was the best-measuring
MA-5000s are used on
destro
y
ers and aircr
aft carr
iers
.”
amp Cr
own ever made. Ar
ound 1992, Cr
own intr
oduced the
MA-24x6 and MA-36x12 amps with a dif
fer
ent power rating
in each channel for bi-amping woofers and hor
n drivers.
VZ technology (with bi-level power supply switching) was fi
rst
pr
ototyped in an MA-1200. It was fear
ed that the switching
would af
fect the audio, but that did not happen. The fi
rst
bi-level amps wer
e MRI units custom-made for Picker
Inter
national, a medical imaging company
.
Jim Stembel, Cr
own’
s Inter
national Business Development
Manager
, r
ecalls: “At the trade show in which we intr
oduced
the MA-3600VZ, it was the fi
rst amp with that much power in
two rack spaces. One of our biggest competitors asked, ‘Why
put all that power in two rack units?’ W
e
r
eplied, ‘Because
we could.’ That power density was unhear
d of at the time. It
was quite a signifi
cant landmark.”
“When we intr
oduced the MA-5000, one of our major
customers asked, ‘Why does anybody need that much
power?’ Again it was an amplifi
er ahead of its time — it
was so large compar
ed to anything else on the market. At
the time, nobody appr
eciated the power of the MA-5000.
Of course, the MA-5000 has gone on to become a wildly
successful amp in touring sound — a standar
d. They r
eally
wer
e tr
end-setting amplifi
ers.”
10 years ago in Pr
o Sound News, a poll r
epor
ted that 9 out
10 of the major tours used Cr
own, mostly MA amps. W
e
still
have die-har
d customers who r
efuse to use anything else.
So, star
ting with Gr
ounded Bridge, invented in 1971, and
JTS, invented in 1974, those two key pieces of technology
enabled the Micr
o-T
ech and Macr
o-T
ech family
. After a long
lifetime, most of those pr
oducts ar
e still running. That’
s what
we think they should do.
