Recent content by Rob83

@spkrdctr It actually has a fan. But same as with yours, it doesn’t turn on as my ears (and probably my speakers too) won’t allow me to drive it even remotely hard enough to make it anything more than warm to the touch.

I'd highly recommend and at the price point it's hard to go wrong. From the research I did on Audio Science Review the XLS 1502 is the one with the lowest distortion and lowest noise floor of the whole series. Power wise there's no reason to go any bigger as the 1502 is already overkill. Those...

@spkrdctr Ok, so you got me curious and I finally ordered one. Mine arrived today. The Crown XLS 1502 instead of the XLI as it’s 2 ohm stable. And well, I must say I’m positively surprised. Even so much that this is going to be a keeper. It’s like a veil is lifted. A much wider sound stage than...

If you have Tidal or Qobuz there are a couple of Stereo test albums on there that do just that. Otherwise you could try Audacity. It has a chirp generator that you could use to generate sweeps.

My experience with ESL’s is that they place voices right in the center regardless of any tricks a receiver does. My wife is still convinced that the center speaker of my surround system is playing the voices while listening to stereo tracks ;-)

I see where you're coming from. Personally most of my experience is with class AB as well. Having said that, last year after getting my ESL-X's I've found that my Sherwood Newcastle a-965 while sounding great at lower volumes, at higher volume would go into clipping. Even Bi-amping didn't...

Man, you made me doubt! I've been looking at the XLS series as there are lot's of positive reviews on Youtube about it. I see you've got the XLI series. I wasn't familiar with those and from what I can see it's a class AB amp with a massive toroidal transformer and big capacitor bank. The XLS...

Maybe I’m just thinking to simple but wouldn’t a simple mains isolation transformer archive the same as well as eliminating any potential ground loops and other interference?

Glad that worked out. I've already found a local retailer here in The Netherlands so I'm looking forward to read about your adventures!

I’m very curious about your experience with it. Might even order one myself.

The Crown XLS drive core 2 series are said to be very suitable for ESL’s. At least that’s what they say on YouTube. They are so cheap that you could even consider buying two. They can run in bridge setup or even bi-amp setup with build in Y input mode.

What I’m saying is that it actually went quite well with the Marantz SR7015 powering a set of ESL-X’s. From the top of my head it’s rated at about 165 watts per channel, 2 channels driven at 6 ohm. Beyond 30db below reference level the distortion became audible. I didn’t try going beyond that as...

Nevertheless, don’t overestimate the requirements. Recent models average at 6 ohms with 90+ dB sensitivity and aren’t terribly hard on amplifiers. Any decent receiver from the likes of Denon and Marantz (X4700H and up, SR7015 and up) will be just fine. Only when your surround stage requires some...

Just reporting back. Dealer came over to my house this morning with a new speaker. We did some testing by playing some music and swapping left and right speaker around. He noticed it as well. Finally we swapped the weaker one and suddenly we had a well impressive stereo sound. These things just...

I just bought my first pair of ESL-X speakers. I was surprised how easy they are to drive. Out of curiosity I tried them directly on my Marantz SR7015 just to see what happens. Well, the thing had absolutely no problem driving them. I must admit I didn’t had the surround stage hooked up so it...