bootman
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Post by bootman on Nov 15, 2013 7:26:45 GMT -5
To each their own of experiencing different +'s or -'s in our systems, I find my speakers pretty revealing and when I went from my Yamaha receiver to my UPA-1 amps I noticed a big improvement and everything since has been smaller steps being either good or bad. Chad I'm not saying there shouldn't be a SQ difference in an amp upgrade, but the difference will not be as great as say upgrading the speakers. The changes the OP wrote about is exactly what I would expect with that XPA-5 upgrade. The OP felt like the changes should have been greater. |
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Post by cardiffkook on Nov 15, 2013 9:47:18 GMT -5
I upgraded from an expensive Sonic Frontiers tube amp to the reasonably priced XPA 100s. The difference was immediately apparent on my Golden Ear Triton twos. The XPA mono blocks were better in every way except midrange.
On my Magnepans the difference is even more dramatic. They are flat out unlistenable with the lower powered tubes. The XPA 100s improve everything about Maggies. On a scale of one to 100 I would say I went from a 10 to a 95.
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Post by Bonzo on Nov 15, 2013 10:12:34 GMT -5
Depends on the speakers. I "heard" zero change or sound improvement going from my old Denon Receiver rated at 120wpc (rated, not actual performance) to the XPA-2 rated at 300wpc. My Denon played loud and clear; same with the XPA-2. My speakers have their own cross over and built in subs with 1500 watts each built in. So all my separate amps are really driving is the tweeters and mid-range.
Now with normal "unpowered" speakers, where the amp must drive the woofers too, there may or may not be a minimal or even huge difference, again, depending on the speakers.
I wouldn't blame your Denon pre-amp (that's what I'm currently using too). While a better separate pre-amp might make slight changes, any properly working receiver will do 99.9% as good a job. The pre-amp is nearly the last place in a system to expect sound changes.
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Post by garbulky on Nov 15, 2013 10:22:47 GMT -5
While a better separate pre-amp might make slight changes, any properly working receiver will do 99.9% as good a job. The pre-amp is nearly the last place in a system to expect sound changes. While I agree it is logical that this should be so especially when you look at the measurements etc. I've found (in my experience and system) that it is not. The DAC and pre-amp makes a significant difference. |
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bootman
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Typing useless posts on internet forums....
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Post by bootman on Nov 15, 2013 11:04:25 GMT -5
I upgraded from an expensive Sonic Frontiers tube amp to the reasonably priced XPA 100s. The difference was immediately apparent on my Golden Ear Triton twos. The XPA mono blocks were better in every way except midrange. On my Magnepans the difference is even more dramatic. They are flat out unlistenable with the lower powered tubes. The XPA 100s improve everything about Maggies. On a scale of one to 100 I would say I went from a 10 to a 95. Going from tubes to SS (or vice versa) will usually make a big difference due to the sonic characteristic of each type. Hard to drive speakers like planars will also tend to show differences more readily than easier types of loads. Thanks for sharing these exceptions.  |
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Post by brendelac on Nov 15, 2013 11:46:22 GMT -5
Meanwhile if you would like some suggestions, post a picture of your room and speaker setup. Make sure to include your couch in it as well so we can see the whole setup. We may be able to provide somethings that may help.  My living room is very open so far from an ideal listening environment. No room treatments or measuring equipment (other than an SPL meter) in place. I have my towers on either side of the TV and surrounds on either side of the couch with the center channel above the TV. I have a two non-identical 15" sealed subwoofers - one located in the bottom left corner of the picture and the other beside the right-surround speaker (opposite the kitchen wall) |
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Post by paintedklown on Nov 15, 2013 12:05:44 GMT -5
Two pages deep and I am surprised that no one has asked the obvious question. Did you re-run your room correction software after installing the Emo amp? I am not saying your findings aren't valid. Your Denon is no slouch, so you probably will not hear a night/day difference either way. For me, I went from an old HTIB to Emo amps, so I DID hear a night/day difference. In fact, it sounded like I had bought new (better) speakers when I switched things up. I was stunned at how much of a difference good clean power made in my system. It's kind of funny, because everywhere I go, I always wonder what my freinds' speakers would sound like attached to my electronic front end. LOL! Good luck with your setup! |
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Post by brendelac on Nov 15, 2013 12:07:35 GMT -5
Yes, I did re-run Audyssey multi-eq XT.
It might be worth mentioning too that I was never unhappy with what I was hearing before adding the XPA-5, but as I mentioned about reading reviews stating that an amp was a worthwhile upgrade for these speakers had me believe that there was a whole other level to what I wasn't hearing.
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Post by garbulky on Nov 15, 2013 12:30:37 GMT -5
Meanwhile if you would like some suggestions, post a picture of your room and speaker setup. Make sure to include your couch in it as well so we can see the whole setup. We may be able to provide somethings that may help. My living room is very open so far from an ideal listening environment. No room treatments or measuring equipment (other than an SPL meter) in place. I have my towers on either side of the TV and surrounds on either side of the couch with the center channel above the TV. I have a two non-identical 15" sealed subwoofers - one located in the bottom left corner of the picture and the other beside the right-surround speaker (opposite the kitchen wall) Sorry, I'm actually rather bad at helping with diagrams. But I do appreciate the effort. Maybe somebody else would do better? I can help you more if you can post an actual photo of where the main speakers are. (If you can include the couch and surroundings as much as possible that would help as well). These would allow me to see - how far apart the speakers are. The toe in. Whether there are major obstructions. How far away from the wall. Whether it's past the plane of the speakers. What if any carpetting. Etc. Then others with more experience can direct you as to some good starting locations of the acoustic panels. |
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Post by gravi on Nov 15, 2013 14:01:33 GMT -5
A good amplifier should never change anything in the signal, its function is to simply amplify as the name suggests. A better amplifier will allow you to achieve clean, distortion-free sound when pushed harder. So you should not be hearing a "night and day" difference. A lot of these misconceptions start with the so-called audiophile reviewers, who will swap a power cable and then say that "the soundstage opened up", "the horn section came alive", or "the cellos sounded much warmer" are utter nonsense. I have a collection of such priceless quotes from audio magazines which I turn to whenever I need a laugh. This is a subsequent post from my original posting hereI purchased a used gen-1 XPA-5 to power my Energy Veritas 2.3i towers, 2.0Ci center and 2.0Ri surrounds with a Denon AVR-3312 as a pre-amp. I was happy with their sound, but doing a few minutes of googling, it is widely advised that these speakers "need" a good amp. That combined with the Emotiva reputation led to my purchase of the amp. It definitely adds something to the sound quality - bass is the most noticeable aspect and the ability to drive them cleanly at very loud SPL levels, but as much as I like loud, the 3312 went as loud as I required (not quite as cleanly though.) All these night-and-day differences reviews that I've been reading though are far far from what I am hearing. If I was to rate the sound on a scale of 1 to 100 before and after the XPA-5, I'd say it is 5 points higher after the addition. There seems to be some debate on the actual efficiency of these speakers. I've read 90dB+ @ 8ohms, but this link put the 2.4s at 85dB @ 4ohms with the difference being an added woofer on the 2.4s compared to the 2.3s. I wanted to like (and keep) this amp and still do, but it's hard to understand how I can read a review like the one below and feel nowhere near the same about my experience. emotivalounge.proboards.com/thread/33794/denon-avr-xpa-5 |
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Post by brendelac on Nov 15, 2013 14:45:03 GMT -5
just realized I forgot to add the link to the soundandvision.com review with the speaker sensitivity rating that I was referring to - original posting updated .
Garbulky, I will try to snap some photos later today...
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Nov 15, 2013 15:00:41 GMT -5
A lot of that has to do with exactly what you (and the reviewer) find important, and how important it is to you. Is the difference between a Denon receiver and an XPA-5 "night and day"? How about the difference between a $20k Nissan and a $200 Lotus sports car? How about the difference between a glass of Lancers white ($15 a bottle) and a $1000 bottle of champagne? How about the difference between a Nikon d800 and a $69 Nikon L20... or the camera on your iPhone? I'm sure we all agree that the products in all of those examples have differences, and we can all feel, taste, or see those differences, but how we characterize them is a matter of personal preference and priorities. Arguably, a $10 table radio will allow you to tune plenty of stations, and probably even hear most of the words on most of the songs... so why bother with a better stereo at all? Audio reviewers are like most any other sort of critic; they make a living by expounding on - and often exaggerating - the differences between what they review. A critic who says publicly that "all power cables sound about the same to him" isn't going to get too many gigs reviewing power cables... and he's going to piss off his readers who are sure they can hear things he says he can't (not to mention how his publisher's advertisers will feel about it). We all have things that we notice and things we don't..... To me, the difference between a Dragonfly and a DC-1 is "night and day" ... but I might not be able to tell a "decent" guitar player from a great one. (If you pointed out the differences to me I would hear them, but I might not notice them by myself, or I might be perfectly happy listening to the OK player.) Likewise, I figure anybody could hear the differences between those DACs on an A/B test; but not everybody will actually care all that much. (Hey, I know people who actually listen to the sound cards on their computers... or even an iPod...  ) When reading ANY type of review, you must ALWAYS take the source into account..... A good amplifier should never change anything in the signal, its function is to simply amplify as the name suggests. A better amplifier will allow you to achieve clean, distortion-free sound when pushed harder. So you should not be hearing a "night and day" difference. A lot of these misconceptions start with the so-called audiophile reviewers, who will swap a power cable and then say that "the soundstage opened up", "the horn section came alive", or "the cellos sounded much warmer" are utter nonsense. I have a collection of such priceless quotes from audio magazines which I turn to whenever I need a laugh. This is a subsequent post from my original posting hereI purchased a used gen-1 XPA-5 to power my Energy Veritas 2.3i towers, 2.0Ci center and 2.0Ri surrounds with a Denon AVR-3312 as a pre-amp. I was happy with their sound, but doing a few minutes of googling, it is widely advised that these speakers "need" a good amp. That combined with the Emotiva reputation led to my purchase of the amp. It definitely adds something to the sound quality - bass is the most noticeable aspect and the ability to drive them cleanly at very loud SPL levels, but as much as I like loud, the 3312 went as loud as I required (not quite as cleanly though.) All these night-and-day differences reviews that I've been reading though are far far from what I am hearing. If I was to rate the sound on a scale of 1 to 100 before and after the XPA-5, I'd say it is 5 points higher after the addition. There seems to be some debate on the actual efficiency of these speakers. I've read 90dB+ @ 8ohms, but this link put the 2.4s at 85dB @ 4ohms with the difference being an added woofer on the 2.4s compared to the 2.3s. I wanted to like (and keep) this amp and still do, but it's hard to understand how I can read a review like the one below and feel nowhere near the same about my experience. emotivalounge.proboards.com/thread/33794/denon-avr-xpa-5 |
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Post by repeetavx on Nov 15, 2013 16:07:53 GMT -5
Keith's right of course. Each one of us listens for different things.
When I buy a new piece for my stereo system, I go to old worn out songs that I've heard hundreds of times. I'm looking for a difference. Usually it's small differences. If it's a big difference then either your old or new component was/is coloring the sound.
With my Yamaha DSP-A1, I would hear background percussion, or flourish instruments, wander into and out of the back of the sound stage. When I upgraded to the UMC-1, these instruments would stay in the mix, up against the back wall of the sound stage. When I upgraded to the PT-7030 these background instruments stepped away from the back wall and have "air" and "space" around them.
As far as the instruments "up front" go, they, do and should sound the same. With a new amp, or preamp, these "up front" instruments can take on a more solid sense of being. But the tone and color shouldn't change.
I must admit as an audiophile, that I do spend too much time "squinting" into the music, listening for the faint and the obscured sounds in the mix. As a musician, having playing and listened to live performances, I expect all of those sounds to be there.
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Post by vcautokid on Nov 15, 2013 17:16:48 GMT -5
I Always say like anything else in audio you try, your mileage may vary. Sounds silly sure, but like Garbulky said above, won't repeat. It really is up to you. I have been around this stuff a long time, and part of the fun is finding the right combination that works for you. Not the guy on phone you talk too, or your neighbor, or coworker etc. Combinations that are what you want and envision in your listening. Will it be right the first time. Not always, that is another fun part of our hobby. The XPA-5 is fine powerful amplifier that will engage many. All maybe not, but it does have the right stuff inside to give it the best shot.
Remember at the end of the day, loud is only a small sliver of why you have an amplifier with your AVR. It is about the effortlessness it reproduces the nuances, and the wide dynamic swing our music, and movies have today. The XPA-5 was designed from the beginning with executing this with ease. I have had the XPA-2 for a number of years, and other amplifiers too, and while I am not just about the dB's etc. I am about the leap of belief your system can produce overall. The XPA-2 exceeded my expectations.
In any case, I hope you find the right combination that works for you. Don't be discouraged, this hobby is about getting it right for you. I know you will find that combination you will love.
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Post by 1960broookwood on Nov 15, 2013 20:12:34 GMT -5
Depends on the speakers. I "heard" zero change or sound improvement going from my old Denon Receiver rated at 120wpc (rated, not actual performance) to the XPA-2 rated at 300wpc. My Denon played loud and clear; same with the XPA-2. My speakers have their own cross over and built in subs with 1500 watts each built in. So all my separate amps are really driving is the tweeters and mid-range. Now with normal "unpowered" speakers, where the amp must drive the woofers too, there may or may not be a minimal or even huge difference, again, depending on the speakers. I wouldn't blame your Denon pre-amp (that's what I'm currently using too). While a better separate pre-amp might make slight changes, any properly working receiver will do 99.9% as good a job. The pre-amp is nearly the last place in a system to expect sound changes. DefTech owner too. I added a PA7-350 to an Aventage with pre-outs and have the same experience--  |
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Post by regulator on Nov 15, 2013 20:21:25 GMT -5
This is a subsequent post from my original posting hereI purchased a used gen-1 XPA-5 to power my Energy Veritas 2.3i towers, 2.0Ci center and 2.0Ri surrounds with a Denon AVR-3312 as a pre-amp. I was happy with their sound, but doing a few minutes of googling, it is widely advised that these speakers "need" a good amp. That combined with the Emotiva reputation led to my purchase of the amp. It definitely adds something to the sound quality - bass is the most noticeable aspect and the ability to drive them cleanly at very loud SPL levels, but as much as I like loud, the 3312 went as loud as I required (not quite as cleanly though.) All these night-and-day differences reviews that I've been reading though are far far from what I am hearing. If I was to rate the sound on a scale of 1 to 100 before and after the XPA-5, I'd say it is 5 points higher after the addition. There seems to be some debate on the actual efficiency of these speakers. I've read 90dB+ @ 8ohms, but this link put the 2.4s at 85dB @ 4ohms with the difference being an added woofer on the 2.4s compared to the 2.3s. I wanted to like (and keep) this amp and still do, but it's hard to understand how I can read a review like the one below and feel nowhere near the same about my experience. emotivalounge.proboards.com/thread/33794/denon-avr-xpa-5The night and day difference people just make me laugh. I've never heard a night and day difference between any electronics, ever. There are subtle differences but the people that hear these huge drastic differences must have broken amps... That's awesome, I feel the exact way. I have never heard night and day difference either with any electronics I own, and I've had some crappy stuff. Still, I definitely have an improved system then ever before, but I think speaker placement, learning how to properly set up the system, etc improves sound more than the electronics part. One the other hand, adding a quality sub was a night and day difference for me. I have only had low end subs too, I can only imagine some of the heavy weights out there. |
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Post by doc1963 on Nov 15, 2013 21:30:21 GMT -5
I wouldn't blame your Denon pre-amp (that's what I'm currently using too). While a better separate pre-amp might make slight changes, any properly working receiver will do 99.9% as good a job. The pre-amp is nearly the last place in a system to expect sound changes. While in theory, I would agree with you, however "my" past experiences have proven (again... to me) that this isn't always true. A few years back, I migrated from an Outlaw Model 990 pre/pro (that I was happy with) to a Marantz AVR (used as a pre/pro) to gain HDMI connectivity and newer Hi-rez capabilities. No significant changes to the sonic qualities were encountered. About a year later, I replaced the Marantz AVR with the "just introduced" UMC-1 (which was pre-ordered). There was a very definite improvement in the overall sonic signature that was quite obviously the result of adding the UMC-1 to the system. No other component was added and nothing else changed. Nothing….. The sonic "signature" of the UMC-1 (and, now, the UMC-200) have been well publicized both here in these threads and through the "professional" media. So, I won't re-hash what's already known. Last year, I moved the UMC-1 to reserve duty and replaced it with a new UMC-200 (to gain HDMI 4.0 capability and faster switching). Again, no "significant" changes to the sonic character, but there were some modest refinements which were noticeable. So, IMO, an overall blanket statement (not necessarily bonzo's, although I quoted his particular comment) that would imply that changes made to the components in the "front end" of a system have (or should have) little to no impact upon the sonic qualities of a system (as a whole) are not always correct. If that were the case, then why would some of these same gentlemen have thousands invested into amps and a processor? Bragging rights…  I sincerely doubt it. Personally, I believe that once you have attained a certain plateau of components reflective of both excellent product design and exceptional overall quality, you would (then) expect very little difference between such components. That is what's referred to as "the point of diminishing return". Some of us have hit that plateau, some may have not. To the OP, a well designed amp serves two functions. One, to faithfully reproduce and amplify the signal being fed to it without "coloration" while inducing minimal distortion of its own at its full rated output. Two, to effectively "control" the connected speaker without driving itself into clipping through the means of well designed circuit topology and ample power reserves. IMO, the XPA-5 is capable of doing both very well…  |
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Post by pedrocols on Nov 15, 2013 22:24:47 GMT -5
Here we go again....  |
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Post by danny01 on Nov 16, 2013 1:08:56 GMT -5
Ditto. Today I tried running my Selahs directly off of an HK3490 receiver using its on board dac. I was surprised by how well the receiver was handling the fullrange signal into a 4 ohm load at modestly loud volume. If I was blind folded and told to choose between this ~$400 receiver and the DC1+1L ($2097 retail) combo, I would probably be wrong 75% of the time. I've generally been against using amps in receivers for low impedance loads because of a bad experience I've had while using an expensiveish receiver's amp section and having it shut down and then realizing huge improvement in sound quality and clean SPL after moving to Emotiva amps driven by the preouts on the same receiver. But this little experiment today really got me thinking whether separates are worth the headache and signficant expenditure over a GOOD receiver. To top it off, the dac on the HK receiver looks to be thrown in as an afterthought. The thing is, with most receivers you can never tell how strong the amps are before you buy unless you see third party measurements. I sure am enjoying the journey and hope to keep trying new things forever. No matter what I buy in the future Emotiva will have a place with me being that it is the company that provided a way for many of us including myself to venture into the world of separates.
Sent from my HTC6500LVW using proboards
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Post by Bonzo on Nov 17, 2013 12:17:39 GMT -5
While a better separate pre-amp might make slight changes, any properly working receiver will do 99.9% as good a job. The pre-amp is nearly the last place in a system to expect sound changes. While I agree it is logical that this should be so especially when you look at the measurements etc. I've found (in my experience and system) that it is not. The DAC and pre-amp makes a significant difference. I really wasn't discussing the DAC. I don't use the DAC in my receiver (except for multi-channel SACD and DVD-A because I have to). I was referring to the pre-amp section only. This area is basically just a high level switcher, and if a switcher can't just pass a signal on without adding it's own sound, then it's not worth having. I'd say in the receiver realm, Denon's "ain't no slouches." Can they be beat? Sure. Absolutely. But only after the source, the source player, the amps and mostly the speakers have all been maxed out. In other words, it's the last upgrade in my book. But that's just me. |
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I sincerely doubt it.
