XPA-100 power trips on increased volume.

[Priapulus]

Emo amps have >>surge protection<< built-in. Amplifiers use sudden surges of power to meet musical climaxes, or movie explosions). Many surge protectors/conditioners impede those surges, so are not recommended, or needed for amplifiers. Plug EMO amps directly into the wall, preferably to a high current dedicated line/outlet.

[KeithL]

Here's an interesting thought for you folks.....

The audio circuitry in pretty well ALL audio equipment - including ours - runs on DC voltages. The power grid uses AC for various reasons, most having to do with convenience and efficiency in getting the power from one place to another. When it gets to your audio equipment, the AC power is converted into the various DC voltages necessary to run the actual circuitry by a POWER SUPPLY. There are quite a few different types of power supplies, but by the definition given, all of them sort of count as "power conditioners". (They take the power coming from the line, which is not in the proper form, and convert it into the form required to run the equipment.) The term "line conditioner" is most often used to refer to an external filter, applied to the AC power line, and separate from the internal power supply in the individual equipment - but they really often overlap.

It's really splitting hairs to argue about whether the internal power supply on a particular unit incorporates specific features normally found in external line conditioners. In fact, our protection circuitry does indeed protect your equipment from various signal fault conditions, and our power supplies do incorporate several types of power conditioning. In fact, under most circumstances, our equipment has enough internal power conditioning that it usually doesn't need or benefit from additional external power conditioning. (There is some equipment out there that picks up buzzes and noises from every appliance running less than three rooms away, and maybe even from your neighbor's air conditioner; because of the various power conditioning methods we include inside our equipment, it isn't nearly that fussy, and normally works great without an external power conditioner.)   

Dec 3, 2013 10:08:13 GMT -5 jmasterj said:

The products page states in XPA-100 Features

That the XPA-100 has "totally transparent protection circuitry-protects you from all common fault conditions." That is not a line conditioner. It is a protection circuit.

A line conditioners purpose is to "Improve the quality of the power that is delivered to electrical equipment". The term most often refers to a device that acts in one or more ways to deliver a voltage of proper level and characteristics to enable load equipment to function properly.

To say that the XPA-100 amps have a line conditioner built into them is incorrect, and misleading.

[Accurus]

Sounds to me like the CC5 is putting too hard of a load on the amplifier. I had this happen to me one time with my XPA-2 when I tried to run a CC3 with my old 2.7s in an L+ and R- wiring. It put a 2 ohm load on the XPA-2 which did fine until you started to push it and then it shut off with all lights blinking red. A 3 ohm constant load maybe too much for the amplifier.

[jmasterj]

I think somebody is Pi__ing on me and trying to tell me it'd raining.

[garbulky]

Dec 4, 2013 8:57:17 GMT -5 jmasterj said:

I think somebody is Pi__ing on me and trying to tell me it'd raining.

I assume this was directed at me?
Anyway, watersports aside.... let's get to the issue.

Dec 3, 2013 10:08:13 GMT -5 jmasterj said:

To say that the XPA-100 amps have a line conditioner built into them is incorrect, and misleading.

I thought I addressed that by saying that power protection would be a more accurate term. I'm not trying to mislead anybody. Keith mentioned that the power supply itself does some line condtioning but I'm not educated enough to really talk about line conditioning and how relates to regular line conditioners so I'll leave that to him. But in case it's not obivious I also feel that emo amps are best plugged into the wall - as that's what Emotiva used to say. Unless you are seeing things like your lights flickering or hearing better things with the conditioner in the loop etc.

[jmasterj]

Actually garbulky that was not directed at you that was directed at Keith.

By his definition any appliance that converts AC current to DC is a line conditioner. Which is technically true but not relevant in the context which we are discussing. If you all want to believe these amps have built in line conditioners that's fine with me.

I still think somebody is pi--ing on my head and trying to tell me it's rain.

[vishal]

Dec 3, 2013 17:52:41 GMT -5 KeithL said:

Here's an interesting thought for you folks.....

because of the various power conditioning methods we include inside our equipment, it isn't nearly that fussy, and normally works great without an external power conditioner.)   

Keith, sorry to bring the old thread back to life, but I am still in the camp of using the external conditioner. Partly because I already have one and partly because I do not know whether the built-in Emo conditioner will be able to handle voltage sags. The specific reason I went with the more expensive APC unit is because it claims to handle sags and boost the voltage if it dips below a threshold. This is in addition to handling surges which any $20 surge protector can do as well. Based on my reading, voltage sags stress electronics a lot since they happen a lot and usually fly under the radar.

So the question for you is - Does the built-in Emo conditioning do voltage boosting to handle sags?

[Gary Cook]

Keith will probably do a better job at answering this, he's a genius at making complex explanations simple, but I'll have a go.

Short term "Voltage Boosting" is a task performed by the large capacitors in the power supply of the amp. When the power supply can't keep up with the instantaneous demands of the amplifier the capacitors discharge to fulfil it. They then recharge in times of less demand. Emotiva amplifiers have large (some might say huge) capacitors.

Longer term "Voltage Boosting" is a little more complex. Typically amplifier power supplies have a fairly large tolerance to supply voltage, it can rise and fall a reasonable % without any effect. For example if you supply is rated at, say, 110 volts then 120 volts or 100 volts most likely won't have any effect. Keeping in mind that the power supply is transforming 110 volts AC to maybe 12 volts DC using a voltage regulator set to 12 volts. So 100 volts AC input would likely still be sufficient to give 12 volts DC output.

In general amplifiers and other audio video equipment are designed to be more tolerant to voltage drop (or rise) than things with electric motors, like fridges, air conditioners, compressors etc. If they aren't giving you problems then chances are you don't have a long term voltage drop problem. But you could easily check it, simple plug in voltage testers are not expensive. If you suspect a problem then you can get you electricity supply to do monitoring on your voltage over a few days. There are regulations as to how much the voltage can deviate from the standard.

Hope that was of some help
Cheers
Gary