Crown XLi 800 Power Amplifier Review

[anmpr1]

I suppose the pertinent question is asked at 3:10 - "What's it all for?"

Driving inefficient speakers? Or maybe it's just the power conditioner.

 

[Severian]

Thanks for the review. I use an XLS1002 to power some 85dB speakers in a nearfield setup. It sounds super clean to me. I feel like I hit the limits of the speakers long before the amp distorts (which, to be fair, is not nearly as loud as I'd like). I used it to power some 95dB speakers for a wedding and comfortably maintained PA levels of output with high fidelity. The amp is an incredible value.

However, I've long been curious about converting the 85dB speakers to active (I think their crossover kinda sucks) and picking up one of these Class AB amps for the tweeters. Now I know I should stick with another XLS1002.,

 

[Ron Texas]

Culture freaks may take note that Forbidden Planet is based

Thanks for the review. I use an XLS1002 to power some 85dB speakers in a nearfield setup. It sounds super clean to me. I feel like I hit the limits of the speakers long before the amp distorts (which, to be fair, is not nearly as loud as I'd like). I used it to power some 95dB speakers for a wedding and comfortably maintained PA levels of output with high fidelity. The amp is an incredible value.

However, I've long been curious about converting the 85dB speakers to active (I think their crossover kinda sucks) and picking up of these Class AB amps for the tweeters. Now I know I should stick with another XLS1002.,

The XLS series have built in DSP crossovers so with two of them and a little EQ in your computer, you are up and running active.

 

[GrimSurfer]

Given the choice between a PA amp or active speakers for home music listening, I'd unreservedly choose active speakers.

Given the choice between active speakers or a PA amp for open air amplification (or a bingo hall), I'd unreservedly choose a PA amp.

 

[Ron Texas]

Given the choice between a PA amp or active speakers for home music listening, I'd unreservedly choose active speakers.

Given the choice between active speakers or a PA amp for open air amplification (or a bingo hall), I'd unreservedly choose a PA amp.

First sentence is apples and oranges. Which "PA" amp, and passive speakers, and which active speakers?
Second sentence indicates how misinformed you are because there are lots of active speakers designed for live sound, installed sound and "PA" use. This also has the same defects as the first sentence. You have made some very open ended unscientific claims which demonstrate bias.

Please control your hatred for "PA" amps. At this point your continued doubling down on a thoughtless post has no purpose other than to annoy people who own that kind of gear.

 

[GrimSurfer]

First sentence is apples and oranges. Which "PA" amp, and passive speakers, and which active speakers?
Second sentence indicates how misinformed you are because there are lots of active speakers designed for live sound, installed sound and "PA" use. This also has the same defects as the first sentence. You have made some very open ended unscientific claims which demonstrate bias.

Please control your hatred for "PA" amps. At this point your continued doubling down on a thoughtless post has no purpose other than to annoy people who own that kind of gear.

Please control your bias. I own neither PA amps nor active speakers, so have no personal stake in the recommendation I have made here.

As for apples and oranges, that claim is as shallow as your apparent understanding of design philosphy.

Manufacturers design PA amps to do very specific things, many of which do not correspond to what is required for home audio. You know that, or would, if you were not blinded by your biases.

I am not annoying you. The truth is what is annoying, or rather, embarrassing, you.

 

[KozmoNaut]

GrimSurfer, your Dunning-Kruger effect is showing.

 

[amirm]

No personal comments.

 

[GrimSurfer]

Look, guys, manufacturers design PA amps with very specific applications in mind, such operation in public settings and open spaces. They don't do this to be different. They do it because it allows them to design and build a product that fits it's designed purpose without having to worry about achieving SOTA, or even good results, in areas where it isn't needed.

As you move from a public space to the average home, the importance of certain performance parameters change. These include:

- High output. You no longer need hundreds of WPC because the distances are small and the ambient noise is low.

- Power efficiency. Home users aren't plugging into highly branched/taxed circuits of some old, hoary, dance hall. Home circuits are very conservatively arranged in order to be fool proof. Indeed, successive National Electrical Codes make it exceedingly difficult to overload modern home circuits.

- Strength in middle frequencies. Helps in getting the gist across iaw Fletcher/Munson, but the low noise of private homes allows, and indeed supports, critical listening. So linearity of FR becomes more important.

- Grounded gear is no longer critical because homes are classed as enclosed weatherproof structures. Double insulation is more than sufficient to meet electrical safety needs, especially since there is a much smaller risk of ground lifts (routinely used in PA because there isn't time to trace group loops) and moisture that can lead to electrocution in public settings.

@amirm's Test Results show a great deal of how the difference in design philosophy result in higher SINAD, lower SNR, and roll-off in FR for the PA amps he's tested. He, and people other than me, have talked about a variety of issues that make them less than ideal in most home settings. The manufacturer's even go so far as to talk about their designed purpose. These are real things, guys. It's displayed in black and white for us. So what is it about these issue that you're not getting?

Consciously ignoring test results, manufacturer warnings etc. to justify your own biases is one thing. Arguing with people who point out the obvious is another. Hence my original post on militant stupidity, which was not directed at anyone specific despite the now obvious fact that a few people are trying their utmost to display it.

 

[KozmoNaut]

The level of misconceptions and misinformation about live audio from home audio people continues to astound me. Some of these comments could only come from people with absolutely no experience with professional audio products. As someone with a bit of experience in live sound, I regularly see home audio people who make all kinds of claims about professional audio, despite them having absolutely no experience in that segment. It's the "internet expert" syndrome.

The whole confusion about PA meaning either "public address", "pro audio", "power amplifier" or any number of other meanings is just the beginning. It also invariably includes a list of why pro audio gear is somehow completely unsuited for home use.

Crown advertises this amp as a power amplifier "suited for musicians, DJs, and entertainers as well as houses of worship, discos, and pubs", which are all segments that do have some expectation of sound quality. Not to a high quality home audio level, but certainly decent sound quality. Nowhere does it say it's targeted only at public address (ie. speaking or informational) systems.

Sure, most people don't need 300+WPC in their home systems. Some people do, and pro amps can provide that, without the ridiculous overpricing that happens in higher ranges of the home audio segment.

Particularly the "strength in the middle frequencies" claim is abject nonsense. A pro amp that doesn't provide linear frequency response will be thrown in the trash. If your amps have weird frequency response, it can be absolutely hell trying to EQ a venue with multiple wonky amps that don't match each others' frequency response.

Crown has made a mediocre amp in the XLi 800, we can agree on that. Your mistake is extrapolating from that and claiming every pro amp made is equally mediocre.

 

[RichB]

These amplifiers may not be suitable in a home environment where the gain controls may be accessible to those who should not touch them, the gain is a mismatch, triggers are needed for power on automation, when the S/N distortion would be audible (for example high-efficiency speakers), etc.

However, they are a great bang for the buck, just not my buck

- Rich

 

[GrimSurfer]

1.Crown advertises this amp as a power amplifier "suited for musicians, DJs, and entertainers as well as houses of worship, discos, and pubs",

2. which are all segments that do have some expectation of sound quality. Not to a high quality home audio level, but certainly decent sound quality.

3. Nowhere does it say it's targeted only at public address (ie. speaking or informational) systems.

4. Crown has made a mediocre amp in the XLi 800, we can agree on that. Your mistake is extrapolating from that and claiming every pro amp made is equally mediocre.

I've separated the more interesting bits of your post to facilitate what I'm about to write.

On the first point. Absolutely true. That is the sort of info in Crown product literature.

On the second point, much of what you say is your interpretation. Crown doesn't say this, for obvious reasons. I'd say most of what you wrote was a reasonable interpretation, provided that "decent" is defined. For the fora Crown produces for, one could easily get by with marginal results. Discos and pubs are very high noise environments in which the beat or gist of the music sets the scene. Details don't matter.

I don't get to many places of worship but those I have visited are horrid wrt acoustics (the music and sacramental wine isn't great either). The reflections sort of work with choral music but not much else, including the folk guitar that makes its way into some services. So, again, the need for high or even mid fit is swamped by "the room". Ditto for most restaurants. Ethan Winer has written about this extensively.

I'm sure Crown understands all of this too, and designs their PA amps accordingly. That's why they can produce such amps at very reasonable cost relative to home gear.

On the third point, the term Public Address is not restricted to transmission of the spoken word, and neither is my use of the term. If I wanted to use a single term to describe this, I would have used "Tannoy" but that term is rooted in place (UK) and time (1950s). But I didn't for obvious reasons.

On the fourth point, I'm mindful of availability heuristics. I responded to this thread in the way I did after having done a lot of research for personal use (specifically including Crown amps, Athem PA amps etc.) and after reading this, and other reviews such as @amirm's review of the Crown XLS 1502.

These amplifiers may not be suitable in a home environment where the gain controls may be accessible to those who should not touch them, the gain is a mismatch, triggers are needed for power on automation, when the S/N distortion would be audible (for example high-efficiency speakers)

Agree.

 

[KozmoNaut]

I'm not speaking from personal interpretation of product pages or spec sheets or "research". I'm speaking from experience.

 

[GrimSurfer]

I'm not speaking from personal interpretation of product pages or spec sheets or "research". I'm speaking from experience.

Well, if ASR has proven anything it's that people's ears are notoriously unreliable.

The old "trust your ears" argument, therefore, is a weak one that is reminiscent of the pater used by many a snake oil or high end audio salesman.

But if you really want to argue on an experiential level, I suggest you start here:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ower-amplifier-review.9420/page-3#post-248101

 

[Willem]

I want to remind people of the test with an AP audio analyzer of the Yamaha p3500s that I linked to earlier. It measured very well and provided ample power at a quite low price. The fan does not come on in domestic use.

 

[GrimSurfer]

I want to remind people of the test with an AP audio analyzer of the Yamaha p3500s that I linked to earlier. It measured very well and provided ample power at a quite low price. The fan does not come on in domestic use.

Do you mean this blog post, where the guy is measuring his personal gear?

https://www.homecinema-fr.com/forum...mpli-yamaha-p3500s-mise-a-jour-t30056383.html

Any views on the measurements and methodology you can glean from the traces, @amirm? Some of the traces look a bit off, if only because the distortion curves are nowhere close to what I have seen in hundreds of others of class A, AB, and D topologies.

Here's what I see though...

SINAD masurement in one channel only at 1W (graph 6) showing -74 dB from 20-3KHz. After that point, SINAD rising to -66 dB from 3-20 kHz. This is not hifi performance, even by standards 20 years ago.

Things look better at 10W output (average SINAD of -74 dB above 10 kHz), but again not that stellar IME.

The FFT (graph 6) shows peaking at -84 dB at several frequencies in the middle of the audio range. Not altogether bad, but not stellar by any means. No substantive difference at 30W output, which would be very loud with speakers of average (87 dB/W/m) sensitivities.

I could go on, but I'm not seeing anything here that a mass market 1980s home audio amp couldn't give you for less than $200 on today's used market. Such an amp, however, would be totally inappropriate for PA work for several reasons. But I digress. I've made my point using the source you provided.

 

[amirm]

https://www.homecinema-fr.com/forum...mpli-yamaha-p3500s-mise-a-jour-t30056383.html

Any views on the measurements and methodology you can glean from the traces, @amirm?

I will go blind staring at those faint graph for too long!

 

[Ron Texas]

@GrimSurfer "Crown has made a mediocre amp in the XLi 800, we can agree on that. Your mistake is extrapolating from that and claiming every pro amp made is equally mediocre." Said by @KozmoNaut

You are painting with a broad brush and being extremely impolite about it. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but your views on Crown Drivecore amplifiers are about as useful as discussing the virtues of really expensive power cords. The fact that you don't own pro audio gear is proof of your lack of experience with it.

 

[Ron Texas]

I will go blind staring at those faint graph for too long!

Please don't go blind.

 

[GrimSurfer]

@GrimSurferThe fact that you don't own pro audio gear is proof of your lack of experience with it.

LOL. If you visit the hospital for a broken leg, do you ignore the proscribed course of treatment because the attending nurse or doctor has never suffered a fracture? Of course not!

You're trying to turn this into a "trust your experience" discussion, which is code for "trust your ears". That won't carry you very far on ASR, I'm afraid.

Your mistake is extrapolating from that and claiming every pro amp made is equally mediocre.

Here's the review of your amp, isn't it?

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-and-measurements-of-crown-xls-1502-amp.6062/

I draw your attention to the test results and @amirm's conclusion:

Can it be used for hi-fi use? Sure but it will severely limit both the resolution and potentially bandwidth of upstream sources. Its best use would be as a subwoofer amplifier.

You are painting with a broad brush and being extremely impolite about it.

I am using a broad brush, as one must when making broad distinctions. I'm highlighting the specs, designed use, and logic behind a class of products, which shouldn't cause you any hurt feelings.

Your sense out outrage at what is being said is no different than what happened when Amir turned his eye towards AVRs and found them to be generally lacking in resolution and performance. At first, people questioned the test methodology. A few attacked Amir. Eventually, the attacks shifted to anyone else raising the deficiencies of most AVRs.

It didn't change a thing because facts are facts.