Emotiva PA-1 Review (Amplifier)

[Astrozombie]

They don't mess around in school zones, know lots of people who have gotten tickets there. Also look out for the stopped school buses.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Ah, good to know! The ticket was in Kirkland actually as I was driving through. Even though it was school zone, there was not a child in sight (likely due to covid). I have gone through that street a million times. I always go extremely slow. It did not have a camera before. they must have added it.

Always have WAZE running on your phone even if not using it for directions. It will warn you when you approach a traffic camera, and often when a policeman is lurking by.

https://www.waze.com/

 

[Ron Texas]

Nice review @amirm

Rumor has it this was a single production run brought on by a very low price on the power modules. Once gone, that was it.

 

[amirm]

I bet you wish you had Judge Caprio:

Love the man. Can't believe there are judges like him.

 

[MASKINEN]

It's interesting you say that-that was my subjective impression as well. I wonder if the measurements reflect what we heard or if it's some other issue. At normal volumes they sound perfectly neutral but w/ hard rock particularly it became painful at loud volumes.

Yes it’s interesting. I’ve tried different class D amplifiers and they behave similar with harsh and painful at higher volumes with rock music. Could be due to my Canton SLS 790 since they use a ceramic aluminum tweeter. Maybe a mismatch.

 

[TabCam]

It is an odd thing for Emotiva to sell. They add no value after the box and connectors. Maybe that is one reason they have moved on and no longer offer it.
At the high performance end I have a feeling we will be waiting for the nCore patents to expire before we see real competition in class D. They nailed how to do it right, and there hasn’t been much since.

There are far more very good measuring class D designs like LM3886, Tripath and others. If properly implemented, they can all be competative but that takes hard work and a technical attitude. Seems few can build a livelihood out of that somehow, so I reckon there are more forces at play.

 

[Francis Vaughan]

There are far more very good measuring class D designs like LM3886, Tripath and others.

LM3886 is not class D.
Tripath and the like are OK but not in the same class as nCore and Purifi. The understanding of self oscillating PWM and feedback that is embodied in the patents really has cornered the technology in a manner that is hard to better. Fixed frequency PWM leaves the implementation with a host of difficulties to manage.

 

[MASKINEN]

I had this 3 channel class D amplifier based on LCaudio ZAPulse 2.1SE, three pieces in trimono config. Could pump out 3 x 290Wrms in 8ohm. Three 650VA toroids for the power of each separate channel, followed by symmetrical rectifiers and two neat 22000uF RIFA. WBT terminals, XLR & RCA inputs with a 12v trigger.

There’s only one built here in Sweden by a perfectionist called Adrian. It sounded good!

 

[DanTheMan]

Well of course it’s discontinued... the one Emotiva product I’d like to own. God bless America.

 

[oursmagenta]

Yeah. About 1Vrms of nice 450kHz sub AM-MW frequency. What a shame the designers cannot make anything better than a dumb simple LC. And this goes to the speaker wire.

Yeah, that's something that is still puzzling me.

It would be ok if speakers were designed from the ground up to overcome/take into account that there is a pretty good amount of garbage at this very high frequency. But I'm not sure that it is the case today, so who knows how this interacts with the electrical/mechanical components of a speaker. And doing third-party testing (for I don't know exactly what actually) on a per-speaker basis is not really practical.

I've seen some testing (heat, predictive attenuation by the fact that a speaker works as kinda of inductance etc ...) from third-parties (I think the heat thing was coming from you @pma, and the attenuation by archimago and also a paper from Ti I guess), but I didn't find any statement from any speaker company saying that sending 450khz energy barely attenuated through the speakers in the short an long term perspective is fine w.r.t the longevity of their products (like instant break and/or faster aging of some the components).

 

[Matias]

Yes it’s interesting. I’ve tried different class D amplifiers and they behave similar with harsh and painful at higher volumes with rock music. Could be due to my Canton SLS 790 since they use a ceramic aluminum tweeter. Maybe a mismatch.

Check for class D amplifiers that don't increase distortion in the treble when power increases. It is the direct cause of your observation.

 

[thefsb]

What's the difference between a mono amplifier and a monoblock amplifier?

 

[Francis Vaughan]

What's the difference between a mono amplifier and a monoblock amplifier?

Marketing.

 

[thefsb]

I've heard that if you drive fast enough you can avoid a speed camera ticket.

I've heard that if you drive slowly enough you can avoid a speed camera ticket.

 

[AudioSceptic]

What's the difference between a mono amplifier and a monoblock amplifier?

I've asked before: why monoblock? Seems redundant to me but some seemed to think it was a stupid question.

 

[Francis Vaughan]

I've asked before: why monoblock? Seems redundant to me but some seemed to think it was a stupid question.

Would be interesting to find the first use of the term. I think the first time I heard the term was in relation to something like the Krell KMA-200. I suspect it was chosen to sound big and beefy. But block also emphasises the unitary nature of the design, the manner in which nothing is shared with another component. Really, it is just marketing. Engineers talk of blocks all the time as basic units to build stuff out of. So a monoblock is your basic building block of amplification. They probably came up with the name over a few beers after work.

 

[jeroboam]

Would be interesting to find the first use of the term. I think the first time I heard the term was in relation to something like the Krell KMA-200. I suspect it was chosen to sound big and beefy. But block also emphasises the unitary nature of the design, the manner in which nothing is shared with another component. Really, it is just marketing. Engineers talk of blocks all the time as basic units to build stuff out of. So a monoblock is your basic building block of amplification. They probably came up with the name over a few beers after work.

Maybe they were all blocked

 

[MASKINEN]

Check for class D amplifiers that don't increase distortion in the treble when power increases. It is the direct cause of your observation.

Yes thank you. The Emotiva XPA shows some distortion in the treble if I remember correctly. Although I don’t notice it as much as I did with class D amplifiers.

 

[respice finem]

Yes, marketing IMHO: The more "technical" alternative: "mono power amp" was perhaps too "cheap" in perception, to justify twice the price of some "stereo power amps". I've never read about "stereo blocks".

 

[sejarzo]

I have a tough time accepting that an amp that has at worst 65 dB s/n at 10-50 watts output creates significant audible distortion when the measurements of typical speakers show distortion in that range at perhaps -50 dB when driven to 96 dB.