# Soundstream Picasso Nano 4.520d review



## Hillbilly SQ (Jan 26, 2007)

I bought this amp bnib for $80 from BigAl to hold me over until the kinks got worked out of "plan A". Arc is taking care of it since they dropped the ball on QC but whatever, **** happens. This PN will eventually end up chilling out on rearfill but until then it's running my front stage. Here's the link to the amp.
PN4.520D | Soundstream
And here's the same amp under PPI badging. 
i520.4 – Precision Power
And Power Acoustik probably has this board in one of their amps too.

Anyway, I really like the no-nonsense design of the amp. It has a fixed 80hz high and low pass switch just in case you for some reason need it. My guess is most people who buy this line of amps will be using the onboard crossover. Pretty standard cross point so it will work for most people who choose to use onboard crossovers. You can also bypass it for a full signal. CHECK THE SWITCH POSITION after securing the amp. I bumped the tweeter side to lowpass and was wondering why my tweeters weren't playing. Felt like an idiot when I realized what I had done. I like the terminal block on it. It's sturdy enough and the screws don't seem to be prone to stripping out. From a no BS and utilitarian standpoint the design of this amp has all the basis covered.

It does have some hiss in it but nothing too terrible obnoxious. I'll at some point see if turning the gains down has a major effect on it. I have them a little hot right now due to eyeballing them. Remember, temp use. I prefer to have plenty of headroom for those low recordings. The "sound" of this amp seems like it can be tuned to sound however you want it to. You could probably dial in with the processor and forget there's a cheap amp driving the speakers. It replaced half of a JL XD800/8 and I expected it to do about the same or maybe a little less real world. At the output where the 75x4 of the XD amp would fall on its face the cheap 100x4 Epsilon amp keeps on trucking. My ears tapped out before the amp did so I know it's making good power. Stayed pretty clean too.

In closing, for the money I can't say a single bad thing about this amp. It's doing a great job for now. How long it will last is anyone's guess. I've seen cheap amps last many years under terrible conditions so you really can't judge an amp's longevity by its price tag. The Picasso Nano and Ion get my nod for a good amp on the cheap.


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## Bayboy (Dec 29, 2010)

I have installed one i640.5 ran off of an 80prs and am about to install another in my daughter's Camry. The first one was in a 95 200sx se with 4 channel bridged on Diamond components ran passive and a set of JBL GT5 10" IB. Entirely impressed with the output though it was bridged. Noise floor was no worse than any other setup I've ran in my own. Distortion was low enough that I would be satisfied running it for myself. The amount of clean volume was very surprising. 

The second amp (bought them both for a unbelievable price!) going in the Camry will probably be used in a basic upgrade setup using JBL GX600c in stock locations & GX962 in the rear deck. I thought about going IB, but I have three Peerless autosound XXLS 10" I'm not using so she'll more than likely get one in a sealed box fastened to the rear wall in an IB isolation configuration. The deck I'm looking at will be a Pioneer FH-X731BT which has some decent DSP features. How the amp will do on a max 2 volt source remains to be seen compared to the max 5 volts given to the other one, but knowing how the amp is able to play cleanly in such a tiny package I'm not worried much. 


These amps are very slept on IMO and I have used JL XD, JBL MS-A, Alpine PDX, and some other stuff including A/B amps.


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## Jheitt142 (Dec 7, 2011)

I have 3 of the PN amps and I like them. They are a serious bang for the buck killer Imo. I just with they had a bigger mono, I have the pn1000.1 but I'd like more 4ohm power. 

I do like that the line has several amps to choose from, including a decent little 2ch. 

They also fit nearly anywhere you can imagine. 

Sent from my SM-G930W8 using Tapatalk


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## TaylorFade (Nov 9, 2014)

Semi-related, but in case anyone is wondering if they do rated power, I put the PPi version on the bench a few years ago. Cool little amps.

My test: Precision Power iON i520.4 - Car Audio Classifieds!


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## PPI_GUY (Dec 20, 2007)

Really thinking about picking up a 4 channel and a mono Ion for my daily driver. Give my old school PPi's a break. Not a big fan of Epsilon but, really like the potential of these little underappreciated amps.


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## Bayboy (Dec 29, 2010)

I like the little iON amps. Great value. If there's anything I don't like on the 5 channel is how the turn-on remote is tied into the sub remote cable which kind of forces you to use the cable, but no biggie. 

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk


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