Emotiva XPA-1 monoblock impressions...

Dominick22 said:

I will also say that the most enjoyable addition to my 2 channel stereo was a $150 passive tube preamp. That surprised me even!

Dominick

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Quite possibly true. I have similar results adding a tube stage into the mix. I originally bought an Emotiva ERC2 CD player to go with the preamp and monoblocks. I just wanted the simplicity of one remote control. What I found was that there appears to be an impedance issue between the ERC2 and the USP1 preamp such that the ERC2 overdrives the preamp. This gives me very limited usable range in the preamp volume control ...basically from off at 7 oclock to unable to bear at 9 oclock. Secondarily the upper mids and highs start to get compressed sounding at the higher SPLs. So, just for chits and giggles, i pulled out a Shanling CDT100A that I had in a box awaiting sale on Agon. The Shanling has a variable volume output so that I could throttle the input to the preamp. The Shanling also has a choice between SS output stage and a tube bufferred output stage. I started with the SS output stage to judge the effect of less drive on the overall system. The early results were impressive. Immediatly I noticed that the high end and upper mid compression was gone and with the output of the Shanling set at about 8 of 10 the VC on the preamp was much more usable and fine tuning the spl via the remote was much less.."hit and miss". I listened to this combo for about a week, and actually started to enjoy the sound that the Emotiva gear was delivering.

Today I rolled some new tubes into the Shanling and switched over to the tube output stage. Wow, now I have something to talk about. The added harmonic warmth of the tube buffer increases the soundsatge of the system, which was already quite good, and it takes away the bright "edgeiness" from Emo stack and makes it far more listenable. The results speak for themselves, the Emo pre and monoblocks are fine gear and are capable of revealing much more detail when served gourmet signal than previously thought . You will notice I didn't qualify that by saying "for the money". Now if I could only get Dan from Emotiva to return my emails, I might be swayed to alter my position about the company.

DrJRapp said:

Basically, from what you are saying, I gather that Emotiva does not design all their gear.

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True, Tonewinner is presumably the master designer behind all of these other three mentioned brands. It has to be quite huge to be to be able to manufacture it's own equipment for eastern market and these three brand into the western market. These three brands may have some differencies compared to the original design, but I would presume that the Tonewinner is fully responsible of the design in all cases, the actual circuit design is sourced from them. Just spec what you need, they will design it and tell you the price. I don't know who designs and manufactures the speakers though.

Outsourcing from east is far more common than we usually think. For example all classe production went to China some time ago. In China, like everywhere else, you get what you pay for. I heard a ~500k€ Audio Note set a week ago at an Audio fest. They certainly manufacture everything still in the UK.

DrJRapp said:

Basically, from what you are saying, I gather that Emotiva does not design all their gear.

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There are a lot of smaller companies that do the same. Some have been around for a very long time.

theWB said:

I bought a pair of XPA-1s back in February. Had no problems with their customer service got the amps 2 days after I paid for them. I find the build quality excellent and no problems with the speaker terminals, my only complaint about the terminals is they're more than a foot apart. Rather than reterminate my current Zu cables I picked up a pair of Emo's cables. I also didn't like the silver plates on the side of the amps, so I ordered the black ones. They are not as warm as my B & K, but I hear more of the music with the Emo's. I'm very happy with the purchase.

The Chicago clan a while back had all brought over their high end amps for a listen, if I remember correctly it was the CJ350, CJ140, and Sanders ESL mono blocks. Perhaps we could all get together again and throw the EMO's into the mix to see how it stacks up.

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While I have no intention of buying anything (maybe CLX) over the next couple months, the spread on the XPA1 speaker terminals is a hard one to accept for me. Perhaps it is not an issue to have to reterminate cables for the "all wires sound the same" group, I'd have a hard time sending off my cables to fit on an amp. This is not intended to become a cable debate at all, there are plenty of them here and elsewhere!!

Gordon

I had Frank at Signal cables make me a custom pair of speaker cables. It was actually pretty straight forward. Be would have also reterminated my existing cables, but I decided to order new shorter cables and hook the XPA-1's up via XLR IC's.

I know the speaker terminals being so far apart is a little annoying, but sometimes you live with little things like that if you don't to shell out an extra $4-5k.

Agreed,
I sent my everest cables to audiogon to be reterminated to fit the xpa-1's. $80, which really seems decent to me since they are several hundred new. So the amps were 1,040 each instead of $1,000. The cables increased my cost by 4%. I am ok with that! lol

Dominick