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anyone have XPA-1 amps?
#312936 07/01/10 03:05 AM
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dakkon Offline OP
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i was looking at the emotiva website, and the though of getting 3 of these crossed my mind one for L/R/C...... does anyone here have this amp?

anyone had much experience with this company and their electronics?

Thanks guys!

Re: anyone have XPA-1 amps?
dakkon #312943 07/01/10 03:47 AM
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I had trouble with the XPA-2 nearly 2 years ago, the head of the company or product development (?) was nice, I believe his name was Lonnie, emailed me some suggestions but I never could make it work with the M80s, it kept going into protect mode. I thought the XPA-2 sounded great until it crapped out and there was no sound, which of course was very frustrating. The problem only happened with HT sources with wide dynamic range but would happen frequently with dynamic peaks even at nonreference volumes, I never could make it happen with music even at 105 db, or even higher. Lonnie swore at the time that two XPA-1s, which were just then coming out, would work just fine with the M80s. I decided to punt and went with the A1400-8, never looked back.

Others have had no problem with Emotiva stuff, a few like me succumbed to the Emo jinx, which was largely confined to the M80s.

My guess is that the XPA-1s would most likely work well (although it's funny, if memory serves Lonnie told me that they would drive a 2 ohm load and I thought the wattage at 2 ohm spec was listed on the Emo website, now I see they only give specs for the XPA-1 driving a 4 or 8 ohm load; that could be important because at the time Lonnie kept insisting that the m80s would dip below 4 ohms in certain situations and this would trigger the protect circuit in the XPA-2, even there was no evidence from the M80 frequency response curve on record to support this claim. Lonnie believed that the absence of a protect circuit was what made the XPA-2 so responsive to instantaneous peaks but sadly the poor XPA-2 was no match for the power hungry M80s!).

Emo does or did have a 30 day return policy if you don't mind paying for shipping, which would add up some with 3 XPA-1s. Don't overlook the form factor, though, those suckers are huge, back breakers, and I didn't find the XPA-2 pretty to look at in my HT/living room, but of course such aesthetics are a matter of taste.

Let us know if you try out that setup, it sounds like fun.


"If you try to turn toward it, you go against it."
Re: anyone have XPA-1 amps?
SatKartr #312973 07/01/10 01:00 PM
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A few years ago I had the king of the hill MPS-1s, also worked with Lonnie over a period of 3 months, replacing the mono's, etc. The amp kept going into protect mode prematurely, far before the Denon 2805 (at the time) would even break a sweat. Can't comment on if they have resolved these issues, however, they said it was the fault of the m80's dropping to 1ohm, not.


M80s VP180 4xM22ow 4xM3ic EP600 2xEP350
AnthemAVM60 Outlaw7700 EmoA500 Epson5040UB FluanceRT85


Re: anyone have XPA-1 amps?
SirQuack #312988 07/01/10 02:26 PM
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next week i'll have a pair of m80's and the vp180 connected to my XPA-5 emo amp. there will also be a pair of Polk TSi200's at 8 ohms connected as surrouds to that same amp at the same time. i'll try my test with the surrounds on and with the surrounds off and see if i have any issues. i'll be sure to check back with this thread and let you know if i'm having any troubles. mind you i don't play my music or movies at ear blead levsls cause i can't stand it.

i'll let you know if i have any troubles at the volumes i listen to. don't know that it will make any difference one way or another but all 3 of my axioms will be the V3 models. i'll keep you posted. i will also test it out on some movies that have really powerful soundtracks too and i'll crank it a bit beyond what i usually listen to things at to see if anything happens.

Last edited by solarrdadd; 07/01/10 02:27 PM.

SonySXRD55"
Marantz AV7702MKII pre-amp
Emotiva XPA-5,UPA-2amps,
14 Speakers, All Axiom
Oppo 105D&93
Re: anyone have XPA-1 amps?
solarrdadd #312995 07/01/10 03:02 PM
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dakkon Offline OP
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That is interesting that a dedicated amp would not be able to handle a short period of a 1 ohm load... I would think the power supply would be big enough to support that for a short period anyhow? especially if a receiver can power the same speaker just fine.... And that can't be Just an M80 thing, any speaker with a normal impedance of 4ohms, is going to drop below it, depending on the frequency.......

Re: anyone have XPA-1 amps?
dakkon #312996 07/01/10 03:07 PM
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In my case they said there was a special circuit on the MPS boards called a waveform limiter. This was what was turning the amps off, at one point they said if I removed this circuit from the amp boards they would not shut off anymore. I was suprised Emo was saying for a user to do this..


M80s VP180 4xM22ow 4xM3ic EP600 2xEP350
AnthemAVM60 Outlaw7700 EmoA500 Epson5040UB FluanceRT85


Re: anyone have XPA-1 amps?
SirQuack #313020 07/01/10 08:44 PM
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I don't know enough about ohms to say whether or not M80's dip to 2 or even 1 ohm during musical/theatrical playback. But one thing I have noticed is that most of the problems that we here on the board have heard about seem to come from the M80's, not from other speakers like the M60's. And from what I've seen on their forum and other forums is that they do fine with most other 4 ohm speakers as well.

So the question is, what else could it be? If they have protection circutry installed to shut it down in the event of a power spike (which would occur if a speakers impedance did dip down to 1 or 2 ohms), and that isn't that case with the M80's... then which characteristic of the M80's would trigger the shutdown?


My Stuff :

M80's
QS8's
VP150
EP800
Denon 4802
Emotiva XPA-3
Samsung BD-P3600
Sharp 65 Inch Aquos LCD
Re: anyone have XPA-1 amps?
Micah #313029 07/01/10 11:32 PM
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dakkon Offline OP
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the protection circuit could be set to be too sensitive. a short term protection should be set for a much higher value, than a longer term value...

axiom does not post the minimum resistance value or what frequency that occurs at, without this information one can only guess, without doing your own test to find the minimum value.....

Re: anyone have XPA-1 amps?
SirQuack #313105 07/02/10 02:06 PM
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Originally Posted By: sirquack
A few years ago I had the king of the hill MPS-1s, also worked with Lonnie over a period of 3 months, replacing the mono's, etc. The amp kept going into protect mode prematurely, far before the Denon 2805 (at the time) would even break a sweat. Can't comment on if they have resolved these issues, however, they said it was the fault of the m80's dropping to 1ohm, not.


I also have the MPS-1 driving M80's. I have not had the shut down issues that Randy did. I did have a buzz in one of my surround channels that Lonnie said was probably due to interference with a microwave tower - of which there is a large one within eyesight of my house. They gladly exchanged an amp module and I have been problem free since. Guess I'm one of the lucky ones.

Scott


Scott

My HT
Re: anyone have XPA-1 amps?
a401classic #313115 07/02/10 02:41 PM
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I remember the thread about this amp being paired with the m80's a couple of years ago. Some folks were having problems and some weren't. Did any of the guys who were having problems exchange the amp or components for new ones to see if that resolved the issue? If it did resolve it then the amplifier design isn't the problem, it is more of a quality control issue. However, the customer service issue needs to be fixed and hopefully is by now. Rather than looking at a problem with the amp itself (maybe a faulty component?) they seemed to be blaming the difficult load of the m80's imposed on the amp and that was it. The entire point of having a separate amp is to be able to drive speakers, that may be difficult to drive, to reasonable levels (and even reference levels if desired). And some folks couldn't even do that with the Emotiva amp.

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