It is indeed getting cheap. Although the marketing on this one is pretty bad. It is only a 500-watt amp at 4 ohms. It produces 1000 watts of total power; well according to the literature anyway. One individual tested the actual wattage before distortion and found that it produced about 50 watts when bridged, 25 watts at 4ohm stereo, etc. RMS. Now, this is true continuous power, so in essence, the amp would provide 25 watts of power all day every day assuming a 4-ohm stereo load. This would mean that with any modern speaker capable of about 98db @ 1-watt, 1 meter, a potential peak output of about 110db at best. Realistically based on most commercial music, you would lose about -6db of that potential SPL, setting you around 104db of actual volume. So it would be just loud enough for most home theater folks to be happy. The amp would be in the red, crying for help long before it was loud enough to support a full band.
So yeah, amplification is getting cheap, but it still hasn't gotten to the point where real usable power is cheap. This is good for background music in a shop at best.
