Alpine Power Pack KTP-445

Product Details
Manufacturer: Alpine
Website: link
Typical Selling price: £129.99 (CAD £99.99)
Compatible with all Alpine headunits since those in 2005 that started to have the black headunit-end harness plug, this device is a small amplifier that is simple to fit. You plug one end into the headunit’s socket and the other end, after a generously long loom of wire leading to a box of electronics and another leading away from it, finishes in exactly the same socket. Thus, the power input and speaker output wires exit the electronics here as normal, but have all gone through the add-on KTP-445 amplifier unit. This uses the speaker level outputs of the headunit’s chip-style amplifier and then runs it through a ‘proper’ amp, made to be as powerful as it can be for the 12V DC current available in the not-upgraded-diameter power wire loom. The only control is a simple covered high or low gain switch, used to change between Alpine headunits of higher or lower power. TIP: Leave it switched to the more sensitive high gain setting and let the gain be less for the volume required to get more headroom. Offers a ‘true amp RMS’ of 4 x45w.
– Class D
– 4 x 45w RMS @ 4 Ohms, (4x100w max)
– Aluminium extruded heatsink with brushed black finish
– Full looms of cable from both ends, fully terminated with Alpine socket/plug assemblies
– Adjustable input sensitivity in two stages ‘high’ and ‘low’
– Stereo operation
– Signal to Noise Ratio 82dBA (ref:1w into 4 Ohms)
– Fuse Rating 15A x1
– HxWxD(mm) 38 x 65 x 182mm
Review by Adam Rayner
What an elegantly clever idea and one that trashes the really Big Issue with upgrading. Car audio has always been divided between those who will only buy a headunit and maybe some speakers and those who will get an amplifier and subwoofer and other bits to make a ‘proper’ system. The tipping point is the bit where you are happy to install a ‘thing’ in the boot on it’s own power wires run through the engine firewall on a grommet and�well that’s the point. A lot of folks just won�t.
But we all know that even the likes of Alpine can only get so much muscle crammed into a headunit chip amplifier and even then there are fidelity issues with the scale of the music and this device, called a Power Pack gets around all that and happily acknowledges the Elephant in the Room of the difference between 4x60w as said on the outside of a head unit and a 4x45w RMS as said on the outside of a ‘proper’ amplifier.
In fact, as luck would have it, the only headunit that the folks at Alpine had spare to use in the test was one that had the characteristic high-head-power lump hanging out the back like a carbuncle – a DC to DC converter unit to make more head muscle! This is a declared 4×60 ‘headunit’ watts but in reality provides around 27w RMS and was in truth absolutely stonking on the test speakers – a big old set of enclosed 6x9s with horn compression tweeters, very rare and dead revealing of both power and fidelity as they are so heavy duty.
The device is an impulse buy blister pack thing for anyone who has no amp and yet owns an Alpine bought any time in the last five years. It’s idiot proof.
You simply introduce it between the head unit’s own socket and the loom it came with, just plugging in only one way around and only one way up. You stuff the unit in the dash and with NO extra wiring you now have a class D amp with a true 4x45w rating.
Since there is only so much electricity that can rush through the skinny wires (fused in the power line at 15A by the way) as you get to louder bits, you can see the illumination on the headunit dim somewhat but the difference is that now it’s a plug-in-now-and-drive-away-grinning job. It’ll take you way longer to work out how to pop off an under dash panel and feed the wire loom through than ever it will to ‘install’.
And the effect is like magic and way overdue as technology since this is nothing new technically – just how it’s been thought out and connected is what’s new. It could be used with any headunit if you were prepared to cut and connect on bullets, the wires from the other brand headunit�s loom to the wires of this device. While it’d work and take a tiny bit of expertise, do be aware that it’s warranty-voiding to do such modifications – it would work though!
The sound was bigger and cleaner and bizarrely large scale for such a small add-on box with no eight gauge power wire leading to it! To say I was impressed would be an understatement as it was revelatory. Even given that I was going from the best heady power Alpine had to this unit and was only gaining a few watts, the sonic improvements that came with some grip and maybe even headroom with a ‘real’ amplifier were immediately apparent. Yes, it is limited by the fidelity of the speaker leads’ outputs and yes it could have had a simple single RCA pair input for those myriads who have the urge and a headunit with RCA outputs ‘ all they’d need would be one additional RCA cable pair – but that’d be to miss the product’s point and would add some cost.
A brilliantly simple a yet cleverly cunning add-on as tempting as ice cream on a hot day and you can arrive at a dealer�s to buy one and not leave the place until you have it installed right away – it will only take minutes.
Alpine’s KTP-445 Power Pack doesn’t score heavily on ultimate fidelity nor by dripping with features but it�s very existence is as cool as Pimms and Cucumber sandwiches on a UK summer afternoon. I love it!
Sound Quality 8.0
Power Output 7.0
Features 8.0
Build Quality 10.0
Value For Money 10.0
Overall rating 8.6