Pauly
Emo VIPs
Posts: 5,237
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Post by Pauly on Jun 21, 2012 16:56:20 GMT -5
Sure Bonzo, I completely understand. I've been in that situation too before. I certainly didn't mean for it to sound as if you were foolish for not selling your speakers or anything. I'm sorry if it came across that way. Just trying to point out things that you may not have thought about before, but with your explanation, I understand where you're coming from. Hopefully you can get everything sounding the way you want it to without having to change any gear.
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Post by dean70 on Jun 21, 2012 17:44:49 GMT -5
Having just recently purchased an XPA-2 myself, I believe a small break in period is of benefit. Ive had the amp for a couple of weeks, and in that time the sound quality has improved.
I didnt run it for 8 hours or anything like that, just after a few movies and a couple of hours of music at various volumes, I have noticed an improvement.
Enjoy your new amp.
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Post by Bonzo on Jun 22, 2012 8:44:41 GMT -5
Sure Bonzo, I completely understand. I've been in that situation too before. I certainly didn't mean for it to sound as if you were foolish for not selling your speakers or anything. I'm sorry if it came across that way. Just trying to point out things that you may not have thought about before, but with your explanation, I understand where you're coming from. Hopefully you can get everything sounding the way you want it to without having to change any gear. Pauly, no apologies required. I totally took your post as advice, not criticism or knocking. I appreciate any advice you can give me. On the flip side, I apologize for making you think you needed to apologize. My post must have come across a bit snippy, which is not how I intended. I'm not the best forum wordsmith sometimes so please forgive me. Anyway, enough with the niceties. Bottom line, I'm not poor, but I'm not rich either. It's just that, as you know, other things in life take priority. The next thing on our list is a new kitchen remodel, which my wife desperately wants and we desperately need. She LOVES to cook, and I love to eat, so it's a no brainer. So the next $50,000 in my life goes to that. She let me get my sports car last fall, and now the XPA-2. Next up is for her. [Well, unless my 1999 CRT TV goes out that is. Black is no longer black; it has a redish hue. I hope we can get a few more years out of it, but we'll see.] Spending money on tweaking my stereo to the N-th degree has to take a beck seat. Anyway, thanks for the advice, I do appreciate it. On a side note, I listened a bit last night to some Bela Fleck and it sounded fantastic. No harshness on his banjo at all. And the piano on one of my favorite tracks was just amazing. So I'm really hoping some speaker set up tweaking will dial it all in.
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Post by Bonzo on Jun 22, 2012 8:46:45 GMT -5
Having just recently purchased an XPA-2 myself, I believe a small break in period is of benefit. Ive had the amp for a couple of weeks, and in that time the sound quality has improved. I didnt run it for 8 hours or anything like that, just after a few movies and a couple of hours of music at various volumes, I have noticed an improvement. Enjoy your new amp. Thanks. Whether it's the amp or just your ears adjusting (as many have said), it's good to know it's working for you. Gives me more energy to keep playing with adjustments.
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Post by garbulky on Jul 9, 2012 13:34:22 GMT -5
I don't have any evidence to support what I do, but I keep my UPA-2 turned on most of the time. It consumes very little power when nothing is playing.
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Leon
Minor Hero
2 Channel Journey
Posts: 65
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Post by Leon on Jul 9, 2012 15:33:46 GMT -5
I leave my gear on all the time. The only thing that gets switched off is the CD player
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Post by rclark on Jul 9, 2012 16:24:01 GMT -5
I leave my gear on 24/7, including cd player. It DOES sound better when the power has had time to cycle through and warm up.
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Post by roadrunner on Jul 9, 2012 17:33:48 GMT -5
Bonzo In addition to playing with your speaker placement you may want to do some rudimentary room treatment to eliminate any harshness being caused by the acoustic properties of your listening room. Often, rooms with a lot of hard reflective surfaces sound harsh when using power amounts with neutral voicing and lots of headroom. Have you made any effort to tame this problem with room treatments? Some photos of your room would give us an idea of whether you might benefit from adding some room treatments. One of the threads that was "stickied" to assist with room setup and speaker placement might prove valuable to you. Carefully read all the posts in that thread as they are full of very good information. Click on the link below to see this thread. emotivalounge.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=speakers&thread=19452&page=1#309921You will find the "Test and Burn-in CD" on Reference Recordings web site extremely useful for dialing in your speaker placement. Link below. www.referencerecordings.com/SAMPLE.asp
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Post by The Mad Norseman on Jul 9, 2012 17:54:40 GMT -5
I guess I'm wondering about all this because my first impressions aren't 100% positive. There is a definite sound change, descriptions I haven't thought to put into words yet. That's why I wanted to wait for my written review. But one thing on the negative side I can tell you it that I feel I am now getting some slight harshness I didn't have before. Like it's overly bright. Now I know this could be a lot of things, including just my speakers being powered like never before, or that I'm just playing them louder than before, but I was wondering if with some break in I can expect this to diminish at all. Hi Bonzo, I know I'm a bit late to the party here, but I believe your Denon AVR has room acoustic correction software on it? So have you tried re-running your auto-setup? Sometimes (maybe probably in your case), re-running your Auto-setup can tame those higher frequencies that the new amp might be exacerbating?. Its always a good idea to re-run that software after changing anything in a system - especially an amp, or speakers! I'll bet it will readjust things to sound better all around. Good luck!
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Post by Bonzo on Jul 12, 2012 10:33:31 GMT -5
Hi Bonzo, I know I'm a bit late to the party here, but I believe your Denon AVR has room acoustic correction software on it? So have you tried re-running your auto-setup? Sometimes (maybe probably in your case), re-running your Auto-setup can tame those higher frequencies that the new amp might be exacerbating?. Its always a good idea to re-run that software after changing anything in a system - especially an amp, or speakers! I'll bet it will readjust things to sound better all around. Good luck! Yeah, ya know my Denon does have that stuff, but it's an early carnation of them. I got the receiver back in 2005 I think, so by today's electronic standards it's archaic. DVI still in it's infancy, and HDMI was just a test tube baby back then. Even so, when I got it the room correction stuff made a world of difference for my old Bose 10.2 speakers (that I got in college before I knew I was an audiophile back in 1989.). But when I finally got my Def Tech speaker upgrade in 2006, the room correction sounded horrible. Since then I've never looked back or tried it again. For music listening, I have every tonal function turned off. I put my Denon Universal player in Pure Direct Mode, which turns off all video processing stuff, and let it do the DAC internally. So it's just a 2 channel analog signal out to the receiver, which I also have set to Pure Direct (which turns off all video and digital audio processing including bass management). I also have the receiver tone controls (bass & treble) turned off (not neutral, turned off). With the Emotiva in the mix, my receiver pre-amp now inputs then just sends the analog signal straight through to the XPA-2 without any additional DAC back and forth going on. It's as good as I can do with my system. But, for sh*ts and giggles, it would be interesting to see what it does. When I get some time I think I might just try it. Thanks for reminding me it's there.
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