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RE: Anyone? What's your impression of Emotiva's XPA-1L "class A" monoblocks?

Posted by RGA (R) on October 1, 2013 at 01:06:51

In Reply to: Anyone? What's your impression of Emotiva's XPA-1L "class A" monoblocks? posted by Feanor on September 28, 2013 at 05:02:34:

What is the point exactly? You want to get class A to see if the forum pundits are correct or not right? Here's the thing - if you take this class A amp and it fails to live up to the forum pundit hype you KNOW what they are going to says it's because 1) Emotiva isn't really high end and thus 2) does no represent what class A SS amplification or class A in general is capable of producing.

If you want to judge the technologies you need to take home say three of the world's best class A/B amps, B amps, and Pure Class A amps regardless of price. Then you can judge the technology. Do the same at $1k and determine if what won the silly price shootout works at the cheaper end of the spectrum.

Just because something is Class A doesn't automatically make it better - Naim I believe is class B and they do pretty good. I have heard push pull A/B and hybrid amps sound better than SET. Just not at higher price levels. So I am somewhat inclined to believe that SET costs more to get right.

Sure there may be some "generalities" - take the old "less switches are better" routine - sure if all else is equal but if Amp A has a bunch of switches and amp B has none doesn;t mean B is going to sound better. It might but the rule to me only applies if you have amp A with switches versus amp A without switches. The former likely sounds better. But A with switches could kill amp B from some other worse designer.

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