Fusion CA-DA41400 4Ch Class D Amplifier
Product Details
Manufacturer: Fusion
Distributor: CEL Trade/Fusion Europe
Website: link
Typical Selling price: £299.99
Described as a 1,400 watt four channel class D amplifier, it’s clear Fusion are aiming at the mainstream market with their new product as the model number and box labelling is all about a ‘˜peak’ power rating and is about competing-via-labelling with lesser kit with sillier ratings on them. ‘˜Peak’ is not a rating method the purists love but this amp’ll actually make such peaks. As a four channeler, it means 350 peak watts per channel and that would equate to a more realistic if still impressive to them’s as knows, 150 watts RMS (or continuous) in four places. As peak ratings go there is no standard way of doing this this is still righteous at just over twice RMS. Some makers use 4x!
The device looks compact and businesslike and then you remove the top panel and it looks absurdly small and powerful for its cubic occupied. The CA-DA12250 (1x 1,100 w RMS @ 1 Ohm) and CD-DA51600 (4x 80w RMS + 1x 250w RMS) amplifiers alike can all be housed inside this same sized H shaped cast chassis. They also share a well-written English manual. This cast heatsink is wrapped around the internals and reaches forwards to act as support for the leading edge of the removable top metal panel. This is a handsome piece and has a Fusion logo, not as a decal but as an actual inset piece below the level of the brushing. Very sexy and looks good with the white label on the fore edge of the panel, too.
This cover serves to conceal the connection strip beneath. You get the four paired speaker connections on one side, well-engineered with a nice 45 degree slope so as to make them easier to operate, with the cluster of six RCAs next to that, as it has a pass-through set of stereo as well as the four channels of input. This pass-through is a real help when compared to paying for yet another vulnerable-to-noise and costly cable run of RCA to feed, say a bass amplifier. Also brilliant if you don’t have the full-fat triple set of RCAs out of your headunit.
I used the amp to drive a pair of Fusion CP-CM50 component speakers and a set of oval Fusion CP-FR6930 6x9s. I then used the RCA pass out feed of the amplifier to drive the input of a Fusion CS-AW1120 active bass box, in a frenzy of New Zeal for the New Zealander Product!
– Class D
– 4 x 150w RMS @ 4 Ohms
– 4 x 220w RMS @ 2 Ohms
– 2 x 440w RMS @ 4 Ohms bridged
– H-shaped cast Aluminium heatsink with brushed anodised Aluminium top plate cover
– 8Ga. Power Terminals with cross headed grub screw bare wire socket connection
– 0 to 12dB Bass Boost @ 45Hz
– RCA connections – four channels input and stereo outputs
– Stereo & bridged operation
– Frequency response 10Hz to 100Hz
– Signal to Noise Ratio not quoted
– Channel separation not quoted
– High Pass Filter 32Hz to 320Hz
– Low Pass Filter 32Hz to 320Hz
– Fuse Rating 40A x2
– HxWxD(mm) 50 x 300 x 210mm
– C/W Manual, warranty card, four fixing screws and a window sticker
Editor Review : Fusion CA-DA41400 Four Channel Class D Amplifier
This is the first of the new breed of Fusion kit I have had a go on and I am quietly impressed. For one, there are some simple levels of ‘˜seriousness’ in car amps. You get con-artist chip-amp wannabes (like the KOAC chortle here: link) then you get real ones with extruded chassis the classic power one end, signal the other, all in a finned heatsink. Then it’s the more cunning internally cooled jobs with fans and perhaps more to go wrong and then there’s the Big Engineering Statement which is the CAST chassis.
And up there with Rockford Fosgate and a very few others (Mission, anyone recall?) the new breed of Fusion amplifiers all live in this superbly finished super slabby sexy Aluminium casting. What’s clever is how they fit either a sodding great monoblock into the chassis, or a five channeler of four smaller channels than we have here, plus a fifth fatter channel for running a subwoofer in a single footprint solution, driving a custom sub in a box.
However, this one is the bigger, badder four channeler and I will be using an active bass unit with it, the Fusion CS-AW1120. I fired the system up with just the ovals hooked up first to really listen to the amp.
Straight into a bass CD from my beloved Power Supply with such ditties as ‘˜My Bass Hits HARD!’ and yet they have a fine set of production values. Not only were the ovals really clean and phat with some nice snap and ability to display the power fed to them but the amplifier was clearly giving the ‘˜Supply boys a fine supply of just what they craved.
Again as an old fart fuddy-duddy purist, I would love to know the Signal To Noise ratio the innards can muster as I suspect the specification for this is pretty damn high. I also accuse the whole brand of being part of the new revolution in car amps that will eventually result in class AB amps being made only for those who also like light bulbs inside their amps! The whole sound was clean and effortless, yet had authority. So much so, that I’d like to connect some absurdly disproportionately costly speakers up as well and see how they sound. I have some £1,400 Morels in a box set upstairs
But in a real world context the Fusion CS-DA41400 may have a slightly ‘˜El Magnifico’ way of presenting itself to the world in numbers terms but if you ignore that, you find a bang tidy slice of the very latest in amplifier technology class D super clean amps, (Massive Nano, Alpine PDX4, Hertz HP4 and others) with better sound than Class D ever had before, allied to a just bloody gorgeous cast chassis that says ‘My Daddy has bigger Engineering Flex than yours’ to most of the rest of the industry.
That cover panel is bloody beautiful and even if it does hide the green/red protect/run LEDs in the process, well, we can forgive it that, too. I also love that the panel is held on with proper Allen-headed short engineering bolts.
In fact, I liked it so much all round that I can happily admit that the Fusion CA-DA41400 Class D amplifier scores enough to garner a Talk Audio Recommended award.
Overall 8.8
Sound Quality 8
Power Output 9
Features 8
Build Quality 10
Value For Money 9