Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Audioholics A1400-8 Review

Well, their review is finally up. Hopefully someone didn't already post this in another thread that I missed.

Axiom Audio A1400-8 Digital Multi-Channel Amplifier Review

Thanks CV for posting this review. I guess I don't have to do my A B testing since Gene has done it for me ( betwwen the Denon and Axiom )
It's interesting to note that Gene did the same thing that Jay did with my A1400 when switching speaker cables and blowing 2 channels. Your in good company on that front Jay.
My problem now will be how to use both my amps at the same time. I'm leaning towards powering my front M80's with the Axiom and the rest with the Denon.
Mel N.

Lest anybody think I play anti-favorites...

Hmmmm. Well, I guess that's an ok review.

I'm not too happy to see that he managed to fry TWO of them during the course of his review. I would have thought that a $4,000 amp would have the appropriate safeguards engineered into it to prevent such disasters.

But I do see that Axiom said that adding those safeguards were not in their best interest in terms of sound quality. Really?!? I find that to be a very interesting comment, considering what the "amps don't affect the sound quality" group say around here. Apparently, Axiom would have you believe otherwise!

Happy to see Axiom getting more press, but a bit disappointing that it wasn't a "home run" of a review.

Yeah, overall it was very positive, but it would be cool to see Axiom respond to the criticisms with a couple of changes.

Thanks. It was hard to follow the conversation before you clarified things.

The cooking issue is a "problem" they need to address. But otherwise, I'd say that review is pretty strong. As he concludes, this small package can replace and equal a stack of high-end linear amps with no drop-off in sonic quality. Given the price of amps in the 200wpc range, this a real value. Not in my price range right now, but still a value.

Peter,

To the extent that protection circuitry often includes some type of current limiting that reduces the output power the amplifier will produce, and hence cause it to go into clipping much sooner than would otherwise occur, then yes, amplifiers can indeed sound different.

I'm often misquoted regarding statements I've made about the "sound" of amplifiers, both here in the forums and in various magazine articles over the years. There are numerous reasons why amplifiers may sound different, especially when they are driven to their output limits. However, to reiterate, when solid-state amplifiers have ruler-flat frequency response (most do), distortion levels below, say, 0.2%, and are free from design errors that may compromise one or more aspects of performance (e.g. many early solid-state designs, mostly Japanese, used huge amounts of negative feedback to reduce THD distortion to 0.0002% or less), and when they are not driven at or near the limits of their output capabilities, they will tend to sound identical. At least, that is my experience participating in double-blind comparisons of a variety of different solid-state amplifiers. I certainly have not heard every amplifier, and would be reluctant to generalize to newer designs that were never part of the tests I participated in.

Just in passing, I'll comment that swapping cables trying to detect the nuances of amplifier sound differences takes too much time. Ideally, the switching should be instantaneous with relay-operated switching, or certainly take no longer than about 3 seconds, and of course it should be done blind.

Regards,

Alan

Yeah, the way they were performing the comparison left something to be desired. It just seems like Audioholics should have a better system for evaluating.

Glad to see I'm not the only one capable of doing the unthinkable to the A1400

For those that are wondering, the day before I returned the A1400 back to Mel, I was running the iPod through the A1400 and the one channel I had used for the center during my mishap, went dead, I was using it for the right of the 2 channel set up. The channel beside was also dead. Axiom stepped up to the plate and sent Mel a new one and I am covering the repair of his old one.