Post by me262 on May 22, 2012 22:07:17 GMT -5
So on friday I placed an order for the UPA-500 not completely knowing what to expect. This would be my first Emotiva Amp, and my first external amplifier. I was pretty sure it would be quality, I do own sub 10 and have been more then happy with it over the past 2 years.
Comically I got sick as a dog last night and had to call out of work this morning (seriously sick not just to play with the amp). When the amp arrived I mustered up the energy to unbox it.
So what will fallow is a preview/first impression. Once I have enough time with it I will come back and probably give a more detailed description of my experience.
Build Quality/Looks
In a word fantastic. It feels solid, heavy, everything that I want from a piece of "high end" audio equipment. I personally love the look of Emotiva Amps, the aluminum faceplate is very clean looking, and the LED lights to indicate the channels are one and functioning I think looks very good. Although its great that there is a stealth switch on the back of it to disable them if you find it necessary.
2 Channel Performance
For those of you who have scene my other thread when I was getting ready to buy the UPA-500 you will remember I was very concerned about its 2 channel performance. I currently have an Onkyo TX-NR1008 and when driving 2 channels its rated to 135 watts per channel for 8ohm loads (my speakers are currently all 8ohms) and according to sound and vision can go up to 160 watts per channel when driving 2 channels.
After yanking apart my cabinet to hook of the UPA-500 to the onkyo I started it up and made sure that I didn't make any wiring mistakes. One that was done I started my music tests.
The first song I played was mother of mercy by iron maiden. When the music first came on I was very taken back. One of my big complaints with my 2 channel performance used to be the narrow sound stage which I always attributed to my speakers (polk monitor 70's) Suddenly the sound stage stretched across the entire room in an extremely believable way. I needed to make sure I was not imagining this so I quickly rewired back to the receiver and we were back to a narrow sound stage. Other then that the song sounded great, very full, tight mids, and great highs. The layering of sounds was also greatly improved.
The Next song I listened to was Here it is by Mark Knopfler. Once again the sound stage was just huge. The vocals were extremely believable as well. In the past one complaint I had about this song on my system was his voice always sounded a little muffled, I am happy to say that that has also disappeared. The guitar cut nicely, and everything was extremely detailed but not in a fatiguing way. This is where I realized just how much my mids improved.
I listened to several other songs but the improvements were really summed up in these first 2, huge sound stage, tons of detail without being fatiguing, and mids that where a huge improvement over the internal Amp in the onkyo.
Multi Channel Music Performance
For this test I fired up Blue Man Groups the Complex. For all multi channel things I use my 9.1 surround sound system with Audyssy DSX enabled. The UPA-500 powered my FWR, FWL, L, R, and center channels with the receiver powering my SR, SL, FHL, FHR.
The first thing I noticed was the volume increase, this was expected my receiver when driving 7 channels according to sound and vision could only produce 45 watts per channel, never mind what it did when it drove 9 channels. So I knew we would have an immediate volume improvement.
Allot of the 2 channel comments carried over, the sound stage felt larger then the room, the drums took on new life thanks to the improved mids and the vocals felt clear and crisp.
TV/MultiChannel TV
2 channel tv didn't really improve all that much nor should it have. The conversations sounded clear and crisp.
Multichannel tv benefited from the added power. For example the game of thrones opening credits really came to life, and complex sound stages had better spacing and definition.
Overal thoughts
My overal though is simply awesome. It is one of the best purchases I have ever made. It doest seem to get hot, not once did the fans kick in and only during multichannel music did it even get warm. The performance is much more then I expected, and the build quality is extremely nice.
Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to fire up my turn table or a movie. When I update this in a week I plan to include both of those. If you have any questions let me know.
UPDATE 1
So now that I am not sick as a dog anymore I thought I would give you some updates, both good and bad.
Lets start with the bad and work over to the good. So the next day I was adjusting wires over by my center channel when I noticed a bit of noise coming from the tweeter. I found that odd because my system has always been silent. I then walked arround to the other channels that are powerd by the UPA-500 and sure eough all of them had the same noise. (Now just for perspective this noise was nearly inaudible from the listening chair, but its still noise that was not there) My initial thought was that I must have created a ground loop somewhere but no matter what I did the noise would not go away. It also didnt change with volume settings.
I then turned off the lights in the room...near silence. There was still noise but it dropped signifigantly (we are talking about if your more then a foot away from the speaker with your ear pointing at the tweeter there is no noise.) Turns out my dimmer switch was the culprit which was frusturating but now I have re-wired the room. Still though the fact that there was is still some background noise no matter how faint is odd, but I chalked it up to my connections and I said to myself "The improvement in sound far excedes the slight inaudible noise".
Sadly this did not end here, it seems random so far but on 3 occassions I had a loud hum come through the amps speakers (sounding much more like a ground loop or power supply/transofmer noise). This hum is very audible, and does not respond to the lights. Generally it will fix itself with a power cycle or two, but its still strange. So I have contacted support and we have begun a dialog so I am sure it will be resolved, emotiva seems very good at keeping there customers happy.
Anyway now for the good. When the noise is not audible I wanted to listen. So I hooked up my music hall and began playing Stadium Arcadium on vinyl. As said before the soundstage and clarity were excellent and huge. The dynamics though were trully out of this world and even with these slight bumps in the road I am still a big fan of this amp.
Anyway more updates will come as I try to get this problem resolved and as I continue to explore differnet content. This has caused me to buy a pair of xref 6.2's and a xref 6.2 center channel.
Update 2 The full Review
So after a great conversation with Emotiva's support staff and a bit more trouble shooting, and finally a bit of dumb luck it would appear that the hum was coming from a dimmer switch two rooms over from my media room. With that out of the way and my new 1.5 ft interconnects I was able to re-assemble my media rack and sit back and enjoy.
So after a week with the UPA-500 what do I have to say? Honestly it still sounds very good. Clean, Clear, and Real would be the words I would use to describe it. I was so impressed that I ordered the x-ref 6.2 towers and well as the x-ref 6.2 center channel.
Anyway lets hit to the meat of the matter how does it perform.
In 2 channel entertainment if this amp is given a good source , in my case a music hall turntable or a yulong d100 dac the expereience is trully stunning. It improved my imaging with my polk speakers 100% over the onkyo. The overal mid range performance also improved dramaticly to the point where my speakers honestly didnt sound like the used to. The hits of the drums in the blue man group were a great example of this, each hit now had an impact, where befor it would have to reach bellow 80hz before my sub would take over and create the impact and depth (the sub is an emotiva sub 10).
One thing to say though is the amp does really tell it how it is. It doesnt add color to the music, niether does it subtract. Amazingly it does this all without sounding boring or sterile.
In 2 channel tv the biggest improvement was in the sound stage. In particular the ability to separate voices from the background noise. Overal I would say voices were slightly clearer as well.
When I sat down to watch a movie for the first time I chose a personal favorite, the first Sherlock Holms movie. I have always used it as a theater test, I find that its use of low notes combined with its complex sound stages really tell and interesting tale as far as your equipment and your cross over settings are concerned.
In this test the Emotiva did an excellent job. The overal sound stage was much fuller thanks to the added power the emotiva gave and the stress it took off the reciever which now just needed to drive the surounds and hights. The lower notes coming from the speakers were always tight and in check, there was no boom here, but the impact was huge. Voicing through the polk center channel improved quite a bit, these improvements were mainly felt in clarity.
Throughtout these tests I kept a carful eye on heat. The Emotiva never got more then warm to touch and it never had to engage the fan. It normally remained cool with the exception of loud movie watching and surround music.
On wednesday of this week my new Emotiva Speakers arrived. My goal with them was to try and get the same experience and clarity that I have with my Senheisser HD600 headphones. I honestly didnt know if this was possible, and what always kept my from buying the Emotiva speakers was the lack of an external amp...somthing that the UPA-500 fixed. After replacing my Polk 70's and my CS2 center channel with the X-Reff 6.2 towers and X-Ref 6.2 center I was left shocked. Not only can the UPA-500 drive them buitifully to extremely loud listening levels (I only need to be about 50% of full power before I am satified) but the speakers themselves shocked me. They sounded just like if not maybe slightly better then my HD600's. The clarity and the detail was all there, the livlyness, the clean and deep bass extension down to my subwoofer, and the imaging. Oh let me be very clear, these things create a sound stage that feel real and deep. During one of my test songs I play a game where I close my eyes and point out where the instruments are and have someone put a marker up where I point. When I opened my eyes the instruments were placed naturally on the stage. None of them were focused on the speaker locations which in my opinion really speaks to there ability to create a stage. During a demo one of my fellow listeners turned to me after a song and said "Its strange when you open your eyes and you dont see a band standing there".
I think that last quote really sums up the UPA-500 and the X-Reff speakers as a whole. They create trully stunning sound stages together. They are believable and engaging and the results are akin to live musical performance.
The center channel has the same effect on voices for suround sound movies, before the voice came from the speaker, now it comes from the character on the screen.
Do I have anything negative to say? Not really, the amp is very suspetable to external factors. If you have deticated lines that great, but for most of use we cant do that so you have to make sure your house is ready for this amp. If you here a buzz on the line find your dimmer switches, check to see if the outlet is properly grounded. I promise you though if you take the time to find the problems in your home you will be exstatic with the results.
I highly recomend both the UPA-500 and the X-Reff line, in particular the 6.2 towers and center channel. I think they are the best AV purchases I have ever made, and sound better then anything at there current price, possibly double, maybe even tripple.
A shout out to Matt, best service representative that I have ever spoken to. He was extremely accomidating and knew how to treat a customer.
Comically I got sick as a dog last night and had to call out of work this morning (seriously sick not just to play with the amp). When the amp arrived I mustered up the energy to unbox it.
So what will fallow is a preview/first impression. Once I have enough time with it I will come back and probably give a more detailed description of my experience.
Build Quality/Looks
In a word fantastic. It feels solid, heavy, everything that I want from a piece of "high end" audio equipment. I personally love the look of Emotiva Amps, the aluminum faceplate is very clean looking, and the LED lights to indicate the channels are one and functioning I think looks very good. Although its great that there is a stealth switch on the back of it to disable them if you find it necessary.
2 Channel Performance
For those of you who have scene my other thread when I was getting ready to buy the UPA-500 you will remember I was very concerned about its 2 channel performance. I currently have an Onkyo TX-NR1008 and when driving 2 channels its rated to 135 watts per channel for 8ohm loads (my speakers are currently all 8ohms) and according to sound and vision can go up to 160 watts per channel when driving 2 channels.
After yanking apart my cabinet to hook of the UPA-500 to the onkyo I started it up and made sure that I didn't make any wiring mistakes. One that was done I started my music tests.
The first song I played was mother of mercy by iron maiden. When the music first came on I was very taken back. One of my big complaints with my 2 channel performance used to be the narrow sound stage which I always attributed to my speakers (polk monitor 70's) Suddenly the sound stage stretched across the entire room in an extremely believable way. I needed to make sure I was not imagining this so I quickly rewired back to the receiver and we were back to a narrow sound stage. Other then that the song sounded great, very full, tight mids, and great highs. The layering of sounds was also greatly improved.
The Next song I listened to was Here it is by Mark Knopfler. Once again the sound stage was just huge. The vocals were extremely believable as well. In the past one complaint I had about this song on my system was his voice always sounded a little muffled, I am happy to say that that has also disappeared. The guitar cut nicely, and everything was extremely detailed but not in a fatiguing way. This is where I realized just how much my mids improved.
I listened to several other songs but the improvements were really summed up in these first 2, huge sound stage, tons of detail without being fatiguing, and mids that where a huge improvement over the internal Amp in the onkyo.
Multi Channel Music Performance
For this test I fired up Blue Man Groups the Complex. For all multi channel things I use my 9.1 surround sound system with Audyssy DSX enabled. The UPA-500 powered my FWR, FWL, L, R, and center channels with the receiver powering my SR, SL, FHL, FHR.
The first thing I noticed was the volume increase, this was expected my receiver when driving 7 channels according to sound and vision could only produce 45 watts per channel, never mind what it did when it drove 9 channels. So I knew we would have an immediate volume improvement.
Allot of the 2 channel comments carried over, the sound stage felt larger then the room, the drums took on new life thanks to the improved mids and the vocals felt clear and crisp.
TV/MultiChannel TV
2 channel tv didn't really improve all that much nor should it have. The conversations sounded clear and crisp.
Multichannel tv benefited from the added power. For example the game of thrones opening credits really came to life, and complex sound stages had better spacing and definition.
Overal thoughts
My overal though is simply awesome. It is one of the best purchases I have ever made. It doest seem to get hot, not once did the fans kick in and only during multichannel music did it even get warm. The performance is much more then I expected, and the build quality is extremely nice.
Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to fire up my turn table or a movie. When I update this in a week I plan to include both of those. If you have any questions let me know.
UPDATE 1
So now that I am not sick as a dog anymore I thought I would give you some updates, both good and bad.
Lets start with the bad and work over to the good. So the next day I was adjusting wires over by my center channel when I noticed a bit of noise coming from the tweeter. I found that odd because my system has always been silent. I then walked arround to the other channels that are powerd by the UPA-500 and sure eough all of them had the same noise. (Now just for perspective this noise was nearly inaudible from the listening chair, but its still noise that was not there) My initial thought was that I must have created a ground loop somewhere but no matter what I did the noise would not go away. It also didnt change with volume settings.
I then turned off the lights in the room...near silence. There was still noise but it dropped signifigantly (we are talking about if your more then a foot away from the speaker with your ear pointing at the tweeter there is no noise.) Turns out my dimmer switch was the culprit which was frusturating but now I have re-wired the room. Still though the fact that there was is still some background noise no matter how faint is odd, but I chalked it up to my connections and I said to myself "The improvement in sound far excedes the slight inaudible noise".
Sadly this did not end here, it seems random so far but on 3 occassions I had a loud hum come through the amps speakers (sounding much more like a ground loop or power supply/transofmer noise). This hum is very audible, and does not respond to the lights. Generally it will fix itself with a power cycle or two, but its still strange. So I have contacted support and we have begun a dialog so I am sure it will be resolved, emotiva seems very good at keeping there customers happy.
Anyway now for the good. When the noise is not audible I wanted to listen. So I hooked up my music hall and began playing Stadium Arcadium on vinyl. As said before the soundstage and clarity were excellent and huge. The dynamics though were trully out of this world and even with these slight bumps in the road I am still a big fan of this amp.
Anyway more updates will come as I try to get this problem resolved and as I continue to explore differnet content. This has caused me to buy a pair of xref 6.2's and a xref 6.2 center channel.
Update 2 The full Review
So after a great conversation with Emotiva's support staff and a bit more trouble shooting, and finally a bit of dumb luck it would appear that the hum was coming from a dimmer switch two rooms over from my media room. With that out of the way and my new 1.5 ft interconnects I was able to re-assemble my media rack and sit back and enjoy.
So after a week with the UPA-500 what do I have to say? Honestly it still sounds very good. Clean, Clear, and Real would be the words I would use to describe it. I was so impressed that I ordered the x-ref 6.2 towers and well as the x-ref 6.2 center channel.
Anyway lets hit to the meat of the matter how does it perform.
In 2 channel entertainment if this amp is given a good source , in my case a music hall turntable or a yulong d100 dac the expereience is trully stunning. It improved my imaging with my polk speakers 100% over the onkyo. The overal mid range performance also improved dramaticly to the point where my speakers honestly didnt sound like the used to. The hits of the drums in the blue man group were a great example of this, each hit now had an impact, where befor it would have to reach bellow 80hz before my sub would take over and create the impact and depth (the sub is an emotiva sub 10).
One thing to say though is the amp does really tell it how it is. It doesnt add color to the music, niether does it subtract. Amazingly it does this all without sounding boring or sterile.
In 2 channel tv the biggest improvement was in the sound stage. In particular the ability to separate voices from the background noise. Overal I would say voices were slightly clearer as well.
When I sat down to watch a movie for the first time I chose a personal favorite, the first Sherlock Holms movie. I have always used it as a theater test, I find that its use of low notes combined with its complex sound stages really tell and interesting tale as far as your equipment and your cross over settings are concerned.
In this test the Emotiva did an excellent job. The overal sound stage was much fuller thanks to the added power the emotiva gave and the stress it took off the reciever which now just needed to drive the surounds and hights. The lower notes coming from the speakers were always tight and in check, there was no boom here, but the impact was huge. Voicing through the polk center channel improved quite a bit, these improvements were mainly felt in clarity.
Throughtout these tests I kept a carful eye on heat. The Emotiva never got more then warm to touch and it never had to engage the fan. It normally remained cool with the exception of loud movie watching and surround music.
On wednesday of this week my new Emotiva Speakers arrived. My goal with them was to try and get the same experience and clarity that I have with my Senheisser HD600 headphones. I honestly didnt know if this was possible, and what always kept my from buying the Emotiva speakers was the lack of an external amp...somthing that the UPA-500 fixed. After replacing my Polk 70's and my CS2 center channel with the X-Reff 6.2 towers and X-Ref 6.2 center I was left shocked. Not only can the UPA-500 drive them buitifully to extremely loud listening levels (I only need to be about 50% of full power before I am satified) but the speakers themselves shocked me. They sounded just like if not maybe slightly better then my HD600's. The clarity and the detail was all there, the livlyness, the clean and deep bass extension down to my subwoofer, and the imaging. Oh let me be very clear, these things create a sound stage that feel real and deep. During one of my test songs I play a game where I close my eyes and point out where the instruments are and have someone put a marker up where I point. When I opened my eyes the instruments were placed naturally on the stage. None of them were focused on the speaker locations which in my opinion really speaks to there ability to create a stage. During a demo one of my fellow listeners turned to me after a song and said "Its strange when you open your eyes and you dont see a band standing there".
I think that last quote really sums up the UPA-500 and the X-Reff speakers as a whole. They create trully stunning sound stages together. They are believable and engaging and the results are akin to live musical performance.
The center channel has the same effect on voices for suround sound movies, before the voice came from the speaker, now it comes from the character on the screen.
Do I have anything negative to say? Not really, the amp is very suspetable to external factors. If you have deticated lines that great, but for most of use we cant do that so you have to make sure your house is ready for this amp. If you here a buzz on the line find your dimmer switches, check to see if the outlet is properly grounded. I promise you though if you take the time to find the problems in your home you will be exstatic with the results.
I highly recomend both the UPA-500 and the X-Reff line, in particular the 6.2 towers and center channel. I think they are the best AV purchases I have ever made, and sound better then anything at there current price, possibly double, maybe even tripple.
A shout out to Matt, best service representative that I have ever spoken to. He was extremely accomidating and knew how to treat a customer.
