Sherbourn 7-350 @ $999.00

[mgbpuff]

O.K. Got the PA7-350 beast hooked up and running. Had to watch a chick flick with my gf and I couldn't tell much about the sound from that thing, but I was having some difficulty with speech intelligibility. So after that movie I put in 'Red Tails' to catch more dynamics. I was slightly disappointed, again speech intelligibility was a problem I don't remember having with the UPA-7. Also, the voices seemed to be light in the mid bass area. So I put on a B-Ray Michael Buble concert and again I felt his voice was emphasised upward in the voice frequency ranges. Now I am getting concerned because my UPA-7 sound on concerts was mind boggling good and accurate (as comparing voices on both my Maggie and my Revel based systems). Maybe this thing will sound better after a break in period, but I have to say that at this moment I am sorry I replaced my UPA-7. Anyone else out there notice this about the PA7-350 sound?

[garbulky]

mgbpuff, I'm not familiar with the sherbourn and I know you are in no way a "newbie" but...
could it be that you haven't switched the amp input to balanced?
Also is any dynamic range control (night time viewing mode etc) set to off?
What about sub cross overs on the umc?
As the 7-350 has a different gain setting and isa a different amplifier have you re-run room correction?

[mgbpuff]

garbulky - Thanks, I do have to spend some time dialing the Sherbourn in because no I did not rerun room correction, I just substituted the PA7-350 for the UPA-7 and fired it up using unbalanced inputs from the UMC-1 just as I did for the UPA-7. So nothing in the UMC-1 settings was changed. As far as sub crossovers - again nothing changed. I have a separately powered LFE amp (a NHT U2 two sub system) and my main right/left speakers are Sonus Faber Concertinos with a separate analog cross over that sends low frequencies below 80hz to Yamaha self powered subs and high frequencies above 80 to the Concertinos. So the big PA7-350 rig is not very challenged as might be with someone having full range slightly inefficient speakers like B&W's.

[bolle]

mgbpuff: Sorry to hear this - don´t make me get nervous, my 7-350 will arrive on friday... I already took the day off and hope I won´t be disappointed with the amp. Please report your further experiences! Thanks in advance

[dally]

Mgbpuff- this has not been my experience at all. I upgraded from the xpa-5 and I find the midrange the least changed aspect of the switch. I don't use emo q on my umc-1,I run everything flat (prefer the sound that way). I would definitely try re-running your room correction or turning it off. Good luck!

[mgbpuff]

Listening to B-Ray 'Killers' right now and it sounds really good. Maybe it's my ears that need conditioning! Here is a shot of my HT set up (at least the front). The surrounds are Boston Acoustics VR-MX and the rears are NHT 2.5s.

[bolle]

My 7-350 has just arrived. I will replace a Sherwood AM-9080 with it this weekend - I am really excited.

[Deleted]

All my stuff was supposed to be here on Tuseday but for some reason, Fedex says they didn't even pick anything up from Emotiva yet. But I have tracking numbers from Emo and a delivery date of tuesday. Sent a few emails to Emo asking what up with no reply..... I even took the morning off to hopefully be home to get the gear only to have nothing show up. Can't say I'm super happy LOL

[bolle]

Be patient. It also took a week longer for me than first expected but that was because we rearranged shipping and I got one 7-350 from the Netherlands warehouse. This made much more sense with shipping to Germany and also saved a lot of shipping costs.

Hats off to Emo for doing this rearrangement - really great customer service which saved me about $200.

[Deleted]

Well to be fair, a half days work for me is $300 I miss. I've had many instances of FedEX not updating their shipping and when I phoned they even gave me the delivery date lol. It's just strange that I got all the info but the gear wasn't even shipped out. I'm not that worried abut not getting the gear super quickly but it does suck taking off work to wait for it, since the FEDEX ground place is an hours driver each way for me to go pick it up if I miss them.

[bolle]

That´s FedEx... Was great this week:

- Delivery scheduled for today but tracking shows a failed attempt of delivery every day since tuesday
- Tracking shows delivery attempts have been in a city a few hundred kilometres away
- Package is shown with 120kg, not pounds!?

Called FedEx:

- Tracking is buggy and show the last station the package was scanned and given to the sub-company as the location of delivery
- Weight should be 120kg?
- No worry they will make a fourth attempt today

Reality:

- Driver arrived today and we carried the package together into my living room. All well.
- There never were delivery attempts, the attempt today was the only one.

So FedEx, their tracking and their support line are, while being really nice, friendly and quick pretty messed up.

[bolle]

mgbpuff: Having connected the 7-350 and listened for an hour with a lot of different source material I think I know what you mean with "speech intelligibility". I at first also think speech sounds different than with my previous amp - sometimes too laid back, sometimes too pronounced. Listening to more and more material I finally got it - in my opinion the 7-350 is much more neutral, hase more resolution and is more unforgiving than my previous amp. I noticed that good speech recordings are awesome and have more fine detail than before, especially timbre and frequency balance. But if a recording or mix has a "tilt" in one direction - too pronounced, too laid back, this is very clearly reproduced.

I think I will have to do a slight alternation of my manual PEQ calibration now but I don´t blame the 7-350 for that. I always had the feeling with my previous amp that there was still some finetuning with the midrange I could do, but it wasn´t so obvious and clearly audible - the 7-350 isn´t so forgiving anymore.

What´s more to report - bass control is great and tighter than before. Resolution is great, also the placement of details in room - beautiful. Before the imaging was a little more 3-dimensional but the 7-350 is much more precise with the placement and display of the different layers of the audio mix. Overall I liked the first hour a lot...

EDIT: Damn this thing has power! Now I can listen to music at ear splitting levels without any hint of distortion or lessened control. Also just watched the beginning of "Fast 5" and got goosebumps - never thought that I was missing so much dynamic headroom...

[springwright]

bolle,

I agree with your acessment of the Sherbourn. I've had mine "dialed in" to my system for about a week now and I've found that it sounds very similar to the XPR-5 in respect to sound quality. What differentiates the PA7-350 from the XPR-5 (IMO) is two more channels (less 50 rated watts) and 34dB of gain (as opposed to 29dB). After I adjusted for this, the PA7-350 sounded very good in my system. The soundstage proved to be fairly expansive and detailed without being overbearing. The amp also posesses good dynamics (similar again to the XPR-5). This amp is very neutral and will reproduce exactly what its given so if you are used to an amp with a bit more midbass punch or prefer a mellower midrange, then you will need to eq it to your taste which is doable. Of course, program material will also dictate that.

I almost passed on the Sherbourn deal but now I'm glad I picked one of these up. If you were fortunate enough to have bought this amp for the $999 asking price when they were available, then I think that you really got lot for the money.

[djoel]

Aug 17, 2013 4:49:36 GMT -5 bolle said:

mgbpuff: Having connected the 7-350 and listened for an hour with a lot of different source material I think I know what you mean with "speech intelligibility". I at first also think speech sounds different than with my previous amp - sometimes too laid back, sometimes too pronounced. Listening to more and more material I finally got it - in my opinion the 7-350 is much more neutral, hase more resolution and is more unforgiving than my previous amp. I noticed that good speech recordings are awesome and have more fine detail than before, especially timbre and frequency balance. But if a recording or mix has a "tilt" in one direction - too pronounced, too laid back, this is very clearly reproduced.

I think I will have to do a slight alternation of my manual PEQ calibration now but I don´t blame the 7-350 for that. I always had the feeling with my previous amp that there was still some finetuning with the midrange I could do, but it wasn´t so obvious and clearly audible - the 7-350 isn´t so forgiving anymore.

What´s more to report - bass control is great and tighter than before. Resolution is great, also the placement of details in room - beautiful. Before the imaging was a little more 3-dimensional but the 7-350 is much more precise with the placement and display of the different layers of the audio mix. Overall I liked the first hour a lot...

EDIT: Damn this thing has power! Now I can listen to music at ear splitting levels without any hint of distortion or lessened control. Also just watched the beginning of "Fast 5" and got goosebumps - never thought that I was missing so much dynamic headroom...

What is/was your previous amp?

Thanks

Djoel

[bolle]

My previous amp was / is a Sherwood AM-9080.

Having listened some more, I must alter my opinion slightly. The 7-350 really has slight difficulties in the midrange. In my case it is a clear overpronouncation of "F" and "S" at the beginning of words... Those are really sharp now. Strangely this is almost only noticable with movies and doesn´t really occur to me with music.

I will give the amp some time to burn in, but either my previous amp didn´t have a flat frequency response or the 7-350 hasn´t. Or the 7-350 has problems with the impedance of my DIY speakers - they dip under 2 ohms in the midrange. Perhaps I can also compensate for this with the UMC-200s PEQ.

Otherwise the amp is nice and doesn´t get really hot at all.

EDIT:

Aug 13, 2013 7:37:23 GMT -5 mgbpuff said:

Also, the voices seemed to be light in the mid bass area. So I put on a B-Ray Michael Buble concert and again I felt his voice was emphasised upward in the voice frequency ranges. Anyone else out there notice this about the PA7-350 sound?

Looks like I noticed the same thing now...

[bolle]

Still having the problem with the overpronounced midrange. Got it confirmed by a few people now, to whom this also was audible. I had my trusted calibrator and friend here today with professional measuring equipment and over 25 years of experience in the industry. There isn´t anything measurable, my system is rulerflat above 400hz calibrated with the UMC-200. But the problem was clearly audible to him after a few seconds of listening to "Rebecca Pidgeon - Spanish Harlem".

Really strange, I will try some things to see if it helps.

[KeithL]

Just a few thoughts:

Could it possibly be that your source (the CD or whatever) isn't perfect, and you just never noticed it with your old amp?

And are the "problems with movies" happening with Dolby Digital (not True HD) recordings? (Maybe you're hearing the results of DD compression?)

Aug 27, 2013 13:20:24 GMT -5 bolle said:

Still having the problem with the overpronounced midrange. Got it confirmed by a few people now, to whom this also was audible. I had my trusted calibrator and friend here today with professional measuring equipment and over 25 years of experience in the industry. There isn´t anything measurable, my system is rulerflat above 400hz calibrated with the UMC-200. But the problem was clearly audible to him after a few seconds of listening to "Rebecca Pidgeon - Spanish Harlem".

Really strange, I will try some things to see if it helps.

[bolle]

Hello Keith,

I tried as sources:

- My HTPC over HDMI using a Radeon 7770. PowerDVD 10, Total Media Theatre 6, Foobar and Winamp as software. Only playing back original BluRays or FLAC / APE losless music.
- My Pioneer DV-668 connected via toslink
- My DVB-C tuner of my Sony KDL55-EX500 connected via toslink.

Some examples of source material: "Chesky Ultimate Demonstration Disc", "Django Unchained - BluRay", "Iron Man - BluRay", "Sheffield Labs - My Disc", "Fast 5 - BluRay". Of course with HD sound when available. Especially the CDs I know very well from years of judging and evaluating highend car audio.

All sources have the same problems. I am messaging with mgbpuff who has the same problems with his 7-350, but compared to a different old amp (UPA-7) and using an UMC-1, not an UMC-200 like me.

I will try some RCA-XLR cables next and some RCA terminators for the unused inputs on the 7-350 then. I am really glad for any other ideas!

Best regards

Fabian

[suzyq]

What you are hearing, based upon your description, is sibilance. This is particularly noticeable on Ss, Ps, Ts, and Fs when spoken or sung. You may want to give the amp a good "run-in" for 100 hours or so and see if the sibilance dissipates. If it doesn't it can become very bothersome. Give the amp some time, hopefully it will self-correct.

SQ