This is a review and detailed measurements of the Crown XLS 1002 rack mounted pro amplifier. It was kindly purchased new by a member and drop shipped to me. The 1002 costs US $339 including Prime shipping from Amazon.
Note: our company, Madrona Digital, is a dealer for Harman and hence Crown products. We use fair bit of Crown amps in custom installs usually to power in-ceiling speakers and such. Member wanted to buy it through us but the margin on it was no more than a cup of coffee (relative to online sites) so I suggested he buy it elsewhere which he did.
Not sure what to say about the look other than it is made to have some style while being rugged:
The LCD with bluish backlight reminds me of displays on electronics back in 1980s. I guess at this price they had to cut every penny.
I was relieved to see binding posts besides speakon connectors:
Now don't laugh but I could not figure out how to pull out the safety plugs they put in the darn binding posts! There is no way to grab then and I did not want to put a mark on them by using a sharp tool. The manual says only European units have it but clearly that is not correct. Anyway, I resorted to using the SpeakOn connectors for my testing. For input I focused on XLR inputs.
I set the gain to max to get the nominal 29 dB I have standardized on for testing amplifiers.
There is a fan in the back and some inside. But none came on that I could hear above the sound of my PC during testing. Nothing shut down even when the amp was pushed into clipping. Some kind of limiter would kick in after short period to keep the power level at max. Temperature of the case didn't even rise above room temp.
Amplifier Audio Measurements
Performance was stable during a 5 minute warm up time so I ran with them:
Strange to see higher order harmonics dominating the distortion profile (FFT to the right). Ratio of noise+distortion to signal as expressed in SINAD is what I expect decent pro amps to produce:
Slightly below the average of all amps tested.
Signal to noise ratio is in the same range:
Crosstalk is reasonable:
Frequency response test shows that everything is digitized due to inclusion of DSP functionality in this amp:
Power into 4 ohm is healthy as is the case with most pro amps:
I was disappointed to see one channel be much worse than the other though.
Letting distortion go higher we get higher power output:
The burst/peak power is not higher because of the limiter I mentioned in the intro.
Using 8 ohm load gives a more behaved response than 4:
This indicates the one channel is starving for current than the other (likely longer path to the power supply).
I was unhappy to see distortion shoot up at higher frequencies:
Fortunately in practice there is not much energy up there so you will be operating in low wattage area where distortion is quite a bit lower.
Finally, I removed my AES filter to get the spectrum:
Switching frequency is around 380 kHz and decently attenuated.
Conclusions
Competent pro amplifiers target for good enough noise and distortion. The Crown XLS 1002 falls in that category so if you were expecting to have anything better for so little money and so much power, you would be disappointed. But otherwise the amp does what it targets to do.
I am going to put the Crown XLS1002 on my recommended list for non-critical applications or for driving subwoofers and such.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
The job last night after helping my wife can more tomatoes was to dehydrate these beauties:
They are called "blush" tomatoes and were invented in San Francisco in 2011! They are oval with the most beautiful coloration as if they are peaches. Once ripe, they have an incredible sweet and slightly sour taste. Once dried, they become like slightly sour and sweet candy. The rains are attacking them right now aiming to kill what is left of the plants but I picked another 10 pounds or so today.
You came here to learn about audio but you are also learning about gardening and preserving food as well. Surely that deservers a raise for me in the form of additional donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
Note: our company, Madrona Digital, is a dealer for Harman and hence Crown products. We use fair bit of Crown amps in custom installs usually to power in-ceiling speakers and such. Member wanted to buy it through us but the margin on it was no more than a cup of coffee (relative to online sites) so I suggested he buy it elsewhere which he did.
Not sure what to say about the look other than it is made to have some style while being rugged:
The LCD with bluish backlight reminds me of displays on electronics back in 1980s. I guess at this price they had to cut every penny.
I was relieved to see binding posts besides speakon connectors:
Now don't laugh but I could not figure out how to pull out the safety plugs they put in the darn binding posts! There is no way to grab then and I did not want to put a mark on them by using a sharp tool. The manual says only European units have it but clearly that is not correct. Anyway, I resorted to using the SpeakOn connectors for my testing. For input I focused on XLR inputs.
I set the gain to max to get the nominal 29 dB I have standardized on for testing amplifiers.
There is a fan in the back and some inside. But none came on that I could hear above the sound of my PC during testing. Nothing shut down even when the amp was pushed into clipping. Some kind of limiter would kick in after short period to keep the power level at max. Temperature of the case didn't even rise above room temp.
Amplifier Audio Measurements
Performance was stable during a 5 minute warm up time so I ran with them:
Strange to see higher order harmonics dominating the distortion profile (FFT to the right). Ratio of noise+distortion to signal as expressed in SINAD is what I expect decent pro amps to produce:
Slightly below the average of all amps tested.
Signal to noise ratio is in the same range:
Crosstalk is reasonable:
Frequency response test shows that everything is digitized due to inclusion of DSP functionality in this amp:
Power into 4 ohm is healthy as is the case with most pro amps:
I was disappointed to see one channel be much worse than the other though.
Letting distortion go higher we get higher power output:
The burst/peak power is not higher because of the limiter I mentioned in the intro.
Using 8 ohm load gives a more behaved response than 4:
This indicates the one channel is starving for current than the other (likely longer path to the power supply).
I was unhappy to see distortion shoot up at higher frequencies:
Fortunately in practice there is not much energy up there so you will be operating in low wattage area where distortion is quite a bit lower.
Finally, I removed my AES filter to get the spectrum:
Switching frequency is around 380 kHz and decently attenuated.
Conclusions
Competent pro amplifiers target for good enough noise and distortion. The Crown XLS 1002 falls in that category so if you were expecting to have anything better for so little money and so much power, you would be disappointed. But otherwise the amp does what it targets to do.
I am going to put the Crown XLS1002 on my recommended list for non-critical applications or for driving subwoofers and such.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
The job last night after helping my wife can more tomatoes was to dehydrate these beauties:
They are called "blush" tomatoes and were invented in San Francisco in 2011! They are oval with the most beautiful coloration as if they are peaches. Once ripe, they have an incredible sweet and slightly sour taste. Once dried, they become like slightly sour and sweet candy. The rains are attacking them right now aiming to kill what is left of the plants but I picked another 10 pounds or so today.
You came here to learn about audio but you are also learning about gardening and preserving food as well. Surely that deservers a raise for me in the form of additional donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
