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Mr. Ben
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Joined: Mar 2008
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Location: Hudson Valley, NY

My review
« Thread Started on Dec 30, 2008, 5:55pm »

I’m the owner of an MPS-2, which I’ve owned for nearly a year now. You already know the specs, so I won’t get into that here. Let me give you a bit of background about my listening tastes, so you can get a feel of where I’m coming from with this review. When I first purchased the MPS-2, I was using a Denon 3300 receiver (105w x 5) for much of my listening. In addition to the Denon, I also own a Hafler 220 power amp (110w x 2, mosfet), and a Phase Linear 700B, which is a Bob Carver designed 350 watt per channel monster. Mostly I use this system for 2-channel audio, with a nice turntable + tube preamp and a Denon 3930Ci SACD/DVD-A/CD player as my main sources. It’s also used for movies and multi-channel discs, although not nearly as much. I listen to a lot of Tom Waits, Bjork, Junior Wells, Patricia Barber, Nine Inch Nails, Blue Man Group, and I have many classical recordings from the RCA Living Stereo series, and many others.

I have pretty good hearing. I can hear most TV’s on mute from many meters away, I hear fluorescent lights all the time, and in a double blind test I was able to identify a 24bit 96khz audio sample from the same sample re-encoded at 16bit 44.1 Khz 10 times out of 10 (using my headphone setup). I don’t listen to MP3 unless it’s something that doesn’t need much resolution, like a lot of modern pop music. I prefer SACD over vinyl, and vinyl over CD, because that’s what sounds the best to me.

I was using a pair of Klipsch KLF-20 towers (three way, high sensitivity, with two 10” woofers, a midrange horn and a high range horn), and the matching center and surrounds for all of my multi-channel listening, and much of my two channel listening. I owned these for 8 or 9 years. I also had a pair of B&W 601 series 2 bookshelves that were used for most of my two-channel listening (1” dome metal tweeter, 6.5” Kevlar woofer). The Klipsch were well suited to most louder music (rock, pop, movies, drums), but the B&W’s had a much better high-end that I preferred for jazz, and some classical, and they were much better suited to vinyl, as the Klipsch would accentuate the surface noise too much.

I drove my Klipsch with the Denon, and the B&W with the Hafler amp. Klipsch matched with Hafler sounded bright and fatiguing, but the Denon made them sound fantastic, especially in music containing horns and most vocals. The Denon powering the B&W’s was ok, but the Hafler brought out nuances in the music making the B&W’s sound fantastic, especially cymbals and fingers on the strings. Don’t let anyone tell you that matching the amp to the speakers isn’t important. It is.

When I first hooked up the MPS-2, I didn’t like it. It has a hum to it which I can hear if everything else is off, and when it powered the Klipsch towers, there was a static almost rice-krispies sound coming from the tweeters that I could hear during silent passages from the back of the room. The less sensitive B&W’s were not a problem, but this issue soured my initial impressions. It turns out I have some RF interference at my home, and so Emotiva swapped out my amp modules for some modified versions that are able to filter these sounds out. The replacement modules came with some build quality issues – one of the rail guides was glued in crooked making it difficult to insert it in the chassis, and another had the red/black speaker terminal colors reversed, further lowering my expectations for the amp. But then I started listening to it.

I wanted to have the optimal configuration before starting to really listen critically, so I started out bi-amping the Klipsch towers (this used all 7 amps for my 5.1 system), as that would theoretically sound better than using 5 amplifiers. Using some familiar material, I couldn’t tell any difference between bi-amping and normal amplification of these towers, although I expected to and really tried to. I suspect it’s due to their high sensitivity (100dB), as 200w is more than enough to drive these to the point of pain. I didn’t try to tell a difference in the bookshelves. I left it in bi-amp configuration for the remainder of my listening since I had the amps, so I might as well use them.

Gone was the need to match my speakers to the amp. The MPS-2 drove the Klipsch towers without the harshness of the Hafler, and with all the good stuff I got from the Denon. The same was true of the bookshelves – the MPS-2 drove them better than the Hafler did, with none of the deficiencies of the Denon. I spent hours listening to both sets of speakers and heard things I hadn’t heard before, and everything just sounded cleaner.

The MPS-2 brought out a lot of good in my speakers, but it brought out some bad too. The bookshelves, even with the subwoofer handling the bottom end, were having troubles in the low to mid region. The MPS-2 was more than enough power for them, but after switching back to the Hafler, I decided that the MPS-2 was bringing the bookshelves performance to a new level, but in doing so the weak points of the speakers were more obvious. Don’t get me wrong – they are great speakers, but the MPS-2 was too good for them. My Klipsch towers had a similar issue. They were sounding better than the Denon, with none of the harshness, but suddenly it sounded like I was listening to a horn. Again, I heard new things in the music – the bottom end was fantastic, and all the things I loved about the speakers and the music were enhanced, but it sounded like the music was coming at me through a horn. And it was. It always had. But I couldn’t hear that before.

Basically the MPS-2 brought out a lot more in the music, and a lot more out of the rest of my system. You know how MP3’s throw out the stuff people supposedly wouldn’t have heard anyway? That’s because most people don’t have an MPS-2 amp. There is so much more that I hear now, both good things and bad things. This makes me happy. But my speakers had to go. As you can see from my signature, I got tired of this speaker swapping nonsense and I had to upgrade to some speakers more worthy of the amp. My current B&W 7NT mains (previous generation of today’s B&W 704’s) aren’t perfect, but this isn’t a review of speakers – it’s for an amp. An amp that brought out new details in the music, and now that I’m no longer listening to the flaws of my speakers, I’m enjoying the music more than ever.

I recently bought a Phase Linear 700B amp. I haven’t taken the time to compare it to the MPS-2 yet, but when I do, if there’s interest, I’ll update this review to include it.

UPDATE: Apr 20, 2009
Since the review above, I've made several changes to my listening habits. The most significant of which is to split my listening into a 2-channel setup, and a HT setup. The 2-channel room uses a pair of B&W N803 speakers, with a RSP-2 preamp, and a turntable and disc player as sources. When I first set this up, I used four channels of the MPS-2 to biamp my 803’s, as the MPS-2 has been a real pleasure to listen to. This sounds great, but it’s a bit odd to have a 7-channel amp running a 2-channel setup. One nice feature of the MPS-2 is that I was able to pull out the unused three amp modules and use them outside of the chassis for the front 3 channels of my HT setup. You can’t do that with any other amps! I also tried only using 2-channels and no bi-amping, and it sounded basically identical. If it was any different, I’d say that it was better using only the two modules, which goes against the conventional wisdom of bi-amping.

I have also been able to spend some quality time with my old Phase Linear 700B, in the 2-channel setup. This is a 350w x 2 amp, and obviously better suited to two-channel use compared to the MPS-2. It has been upgraded a bit with new output devices and increased capacitance compared to when it was new. Overall, I think I have to give the nod to the 700B over the MPS-2. Both sound fantastic, but I feel like the 700B brings more to the experience in the way of detail and accuracy. As a result, the MPS-2 will be going back to the HT setup.

Update: July 30, 2009
After listening to the Phase Linear for a while, I thought I'd try going back to the MPS-2, and my Hafler again, in my 2-channel setup. All of these are good amplifiers, but they have some noticeable differences. The Phase linear is still my favorite, with really good dynamics and effortless presentation, but it's a bit rounded off in the top end, when compared to the other amps. The Hafler has a great midrange and top end, but it seems to be missing the punchy transients of the other amps. Like I have too thin of speaker wire or something. The MPS-2 modules don't have these weeknesses, but they do have a bit of a grainy sound to them. They're not as smooth as the others, and I had a tendency to turn the volume down when using them, compared to the other amps where I kept wanting to turn it up. The MPS-2 continues to be a great amp for watching movies, and listening to music on my less-revealing speakers in the living room.

« Last Edit: Jul 30, 2009, 1:09pm by Mr. Ben »