Of the many 12-channel amplifiers available. What do you find the most reliable? I have a restaurant application that will be open 7-days a week.

I've dealt with probaly about 25 Sonance 1260 installations w/ 1 DOA and 1 unit dead after about 2-3 weeks of use. The unit operates at a reasonable temperature. I think that the chassis is sort of large.

... 30-40 Elan Z661/Z660 amplifiers w/ no failures that I can think of other than situations where speaker loads were too low or clients blew then from playing too loud. The unit is very fragile (in that you can't accidentaly short the outputs and expect it to work or run multiple speakers of a single channel in parallel) and runs very hot, but is very small. It is also only a 6-ch amp, so you would need 2, but having the channels split among 2 amps might be a good safety measure.

For the Sonance, gain adjustments are on the back of the amplifier via small knobs, while the Elan adjustments are in the front behind a hidden strip that must be adjusted with a small phillips driver.

I believe that both of these amplifiers run in class AB, although musical, tends to be inefficient and creates alot of heat. You might want to consider a pro audio piece such as a Crown or Crest amplifier and run it through a high powered speaker distribution unit.

i ve heard that speakercraft makes a 12-channel amp...might be worth a try.Otherwise sonance is most reliable.

I would HIGHLY recommend the AudioControl series of 12 channel amps.

The Architect Model 500 is a 12 channel delivering 50 watts all channels drive.

The Architect Model 700 is the same amplifier, but with a customized 6 band EQ on each stereo pair.

Great sound with Lightdrive technology for bulletproof operation.

No, Pro Audio is definitely the way to go. TSV has the right idea, get something with a reliability guarantee like a crown amp. I run carvin in both my DJ rigs, my garage, and my bass shakers. Carvin is for me, bulletproof....I'm a carvin fanatic. Crown though does offer a 3 year no-fault warranty. I'd seriously look into one of their contractor series of install amps. They're a bit pricey, Carvin is much more reasonably priced. Your application will probably determine what type of system you need though. If you're designing a system to distribute the same source to many speakers (like background music, occasionally interrupted by paging) then a 70 volt distributed system is the right way to go. You can adjust speaker volumes independently at the speakers themselves, for quieter or louder areas. However if you want seperate signals to seperate zones (different music in different areas) then a multi channel amp system is better and more cost efficient. In a restaunt, a 70 volt system makes much more sense. I'd set up a system with Crown amplification and a US Audio MPM1. Carvin amplification would lower the cost by about $1,000 and they're excellent power amps. The US Audio MPM1 is a great mixer for most restauant applications. It lets you mix or select from various essential line inputs, plus has priority facilities for a paging mic with music ducking. A multi channel amp will start giving you problems in the signal routing area for paging and such.

NO, LOL

Yes!! I know you swear by your AudioControl, and I love AC, I have a pair of EQL's in my truck. But just as I swear by Carvin, come on, this is a restaurant, he doesn't need a multi channel amp to drive a couple of 8" dual cone ceiling speakers which will probably be connected by a couple hundred feet of speaker wire. This thread was so old anyways, I didn't realize that until it was too late. This guy has probably already installed his sound system and is happy with it. Or had it installed by Kevin Henderson and is still wondering why there's no music.

No, I know....

He asked for a multi channel amp...so I said my best choice.

If he asked for system design advice, I would have said 70v with Stewart Audio CVA series..