29 May Hypex NCORE Technology

Hypex Electronics is a Dutch electronics company founded in 1996 that started out supplying plate amplifiers for live sound loudspeakers. Their products drew the attention of hi-fi speaker manufacturers, resulting first in a line of active subwoofer amplifier subassemblies, shortly followed by multichannel units with active cross-over filters for the studio market.

In 2003 the company migrated to the d-class and they started using the newly invented UcD technology. They expanded their line of business by offering general purpose amplifier modules that quickly established themselves as the new standard, both in terms of measured and subjective performance.

Two years later, Hypex went one step further and turned from being a technology user to being a technology source. For this, he hired Bruno Putzeys, the inventor of UcD, as head of R&D. 

Hypex Electronics supplies power amplifiers, digital processing and conversion to the professional, consumer and live audio industries. They serves many big-name audiophile brands that previously couldn’t find Class D amplifiers that met their stringent sound quality requirements.

▶ Hypex NCORE Technology

Below we detail information about the modules with NCORE technology developed by Hypex, and their distribution / sale.

NC2000 Very high performance module with an output power of 1,600W at 8 Ohms and 2,500W at 4 Ohms with an output current of up to 48A.

NC1200 It is the flagship product of NCORE technology that Hypex developed a few years ago and distributed among its prestigious original equipment manufacturers (Mola Mola, Theta Digital, etc.) with a contract and exclusivity time, because this model we have not been able to arrange the rest OEM until this year. It supplies, with a suitable source, 400W at 8 Ohms, 700W at 4 Ohms and 1200W at 2 Ohms and provides a maximum current of 38A. It includes its own input buffer with the option for the OEM to add its own custom buffer.

NC500 It is the “reduced” version that Hypex released for the rest of the OEMs. It is the same model as the NC1200 but has limited the output current to 26A. The power is the same at 8 Ohms and 4 Ohms but limited to 550W at 2 Ohms. The module is supplied “incomplete”, that is, it only includes the control section and the final power section. It has a 38-pin multipin connector in which the manufacturer has to connect the predriver section and the input buffer. This is where each manufacturer puts all the “meat on the grill” by developing its own buffer, which can include the best components on the market, such as Sparkoslabs, Sonic Imagery, Burson Audio, etc.

NC400 It is the public and DIYer version accessible to all. With a suitable source, it provides 200W at 8 Ohms, 400W at 4 Ohms and 580W at 2 Ohms with an output current of 22A. It has no improvement option and is sold “AS IS”. The manufacturer Hypex itself sells a kit that contains an NC400 module, a 600W source and a box. You assemble it yourself and it’s very simple. It is a good team if you have no more pretensions.

                                                    

Then there is another slightly more modest line in power that is the NCxxxMP compact series. This series includes the power section and the power section in the module itself. It consists of modules of 2x125W, 1x250W, 2x250W, 1x500W and 2x500W at 4 Ohms. In the photo, the 2x500W module.

We are several original equipment manufacturers that work with Hypex NCORE modules: Acoustic Imagery, Theta Digital, Merrill Audio, Mola Mola, Apollon Audio, NAD, Jeff Rowland, ATM, Nord Acoustic, etc. in its different versions, with variants or not. With respect to the NC1200 model, it is not yet widely introduced in the market because it has recently been “released” to OEMs.

Tell them that the NC400 is the only one for sale to the public, both as a single unit and a kit with a fountain and an aluminum box. The rest is only available for OEMs.