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Emotiva XPA-DR2 Review (Stereo Power Amplifier)

PeteL

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Oh yeah, forgot you can bridge it for about up to 500 watt? Don't have the exact number in mind but it's about that range. If I remember the review correctly it's absolutely distortion free until it shuts itself off. So you're free to try to turn your bookshelf speakers into PA speakers. I bet your hearing or the speakers will give in before the AHB2.
View attachment 142182

Edit: Looking at this calculation you have about 110 dbSPL at 200 Watt at 1 meter. This is huge and way above anything you'd ever need. For reference, at about 85 dbSPL it starts getting unconfortable when listening for several minutes.
But that's peak, not average, if you listen at an average of 85 dB SPL, A weighted, which is not that loud, you'll have peaks in the content sometimes 20-25 dB above that, so reaching your 110 dB is not farfetched, but that's not the worst, Wattage don't care about A-Weighting. 110 dB SPL (unweighted) in the Bass region, not at 1K, really isn't very loud. Sensitivity figures are normally measured at 1K
 
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Rottmannash

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Emotiva needs to do a GoFundMe to buy some test gear / audio analysers. They're in Tennessee- maybe too close to the Jack Daniels plant?

:cool:
They're in Cool Springs, a suburb of Franklin, about 15 minutes from Nashville. They truly do need to better measure their amps before unleashing them on the unsuspecting buyer. They routinely receive poor reviews for their amps it seems.
 

Rottmannash

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Why Intentional? I'd say an acceptable compromise in their views, It may sound quite alright for most, These THD would have been alright 40 years ago but an amp that powerful would have been the cost of a car, would heat your whole house in the winter and would need 4 people to lift. So some of these design decision make sense but you gain in some area, you lose elsewhere. Not saying I would purchase something that performs like that, but it may make sense to some, I guess some are allergic to the D word, and maybe some even like some more distortion as a sonic signature, but I believe if they could have done better they would have.

I wonder if the Monobloc version would measure better?
 

anphex

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But that's peak, not average, if you listen at an average of 85 dB SPL, A weighted, which is not that loud, you'll have peaks in the content sometimes 20-25 dB above that, so reaching your 110 dB is not farfetched, but that's not the worst, Wattage don't care about A-Weighting. 110 dB SPL (unweighted) in the Bass region, not at 1K, really isn't very loud. Sensitivity figures are normally measured at 1K

Hold up, I always thought that amp values are measured in RMS. So the actual peak power should be RMS/0,70, right? For the AHB2 this would be 285 watt peak for a few milliseconds. And I've never seen that a power rating would be A rated. I've never seen a sidenote with that so I've always considered it to be full range performane. Other than that I could imagine speakers getting more power hungry in frequency ranges where the ohm drops but not by huge margins (unless it's a bad speaker design).
 

Repdetect

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I've had a Gen 1 XPA 3 since they first came out, that's about 10 years ago. Played most every day without a hitch, I use it for center and rear channels for home theatre use. I use a tube amp for R&L channels. Integrates well with tube amp for movies and concerts. Specs are overrated. I remember reading many years ago that distortion has to reach 10% before MOST people can identify it.... unless you have golden ears like most audiophiles do..... or seem to think so anyway. Don't get me wrong, I love reading reviews, especially here, but they are not they final arbiter, my ears are.
 

PeteL

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Hold up, I always thought that amp values are measured in RMS. So the actual peak power should be RMS/0,70, right? For the AHB2 this would be 285 watt peak for a few milliseconds. And I've never seen that a power rating would be A rated. I've never seen a sidenote with that so I've always considered it to be full range performane. Other than that I could imagine speakers getting more power hungry in frequency ranges where the ohm drops but not by huge margins (unless it's a bad speaker design).
You are mixing two different concepts. Expressing Wattage in RMS is the only real way to do watts. Peak voltage make sense Watts is A RMS value but even if you want, and some do, by a stretch of language talk about Peaks watts =RMS Watts/0.7, It's just two way of expressing the same value, It's the energy you got and both numbers equate themselves. But let's only talk about Watts RMS, continuous, or Peak, Yes if your amp has a specified momentary capability more than what it can supply continuously (not the case with all amps, almost never the case in class D), sure that peak value gives you more momentary headroom but it's still RMS, and nothing to do with converting RMS to peak. It's all RMS, it just mean it's capable of Higher power burst if need momentarily. What I was talking about is the fact that when people talk about SPL, it's an average value and it's frequency weighted, if You are listen to a tone at 110 dB SPL at 1k, it's crazy loud! But if you have a SPL meter that shows 85 dB SPL while listening to music, It's A-Weighted so the Bass is much louder than this Value, and It does not correlate with the short Percussive transient, momentarily you have peaks, that demand more wattage, but it's not loud to your ears because it's very short, It's not the level at which you listen.

And you are right, The power specification is full range, but the sensitivity value of speaker is at 1 K which is the reference for A weighting.
 
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Goodfellas27

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Is it possible that XPA is defective? The test reveals bad results. Another news outlet, as pointed out before, didn't show this.
 

garbulky

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@amirm can you test how long the amplifier can keep up its power output? Good Class D amps have great distortion figures and seemingly high power output figures. But put them under constant load and the max power goes down tremendously. Wasn't the Hypex constant power around 40? Would be interested to see what the switching PS of this amp can do under strain. Also can you show us the rest of the frequency range in your 5 watt measurement? Interested in seeing distortion spikes past 20khz
 
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garbulky

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I have my XPA-1 gen 2 - which uses a torroid rather than a switching supply and doesn't have rail switching. I love it. Sounds fantastic to me. Best amp I've heard to date. Able to produce powerful dynamics during listening. I doubt its distortion figures are much better though. It probably also has a large 60hz bump. :)
 

Dzhaughn

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I note that you didn't remove the "Please remove before use" sticker. I mean, c'mon, they said "please." Yet I suspect you nevertheless cut the warning tags of sofa cushions. Some people are just ornery.

Maybe that would make a racy t-shirt for the party-going crowd. Or a very disturbing tatoo. I'll stick with my friend's suggestion of "Not to be used as a personal floatation device."
 

vkvedam

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Wow, look at the harmonic spray starting at third one. SINAD of 64 dB ranks almost at the bottom of nearly 150 amplifiers tested
Woah! That looks like a battalion standing in an order to feast your ears :p
 

stevenswall

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Does Emotiva not have access to an Audio Precision measurement device? They should put a disclaimer on their pages: "This has somewhat poor distortion most will struggle to hear, but we opted for this instead of an increased cost of part XXXX to keep price where we want it." That would be an understandable design goal.

Kali disclosed with the original IN-8 that it hisses because producers feedback was more about lower distortion and higher SPL rather than low hiss which none of them cared much about, and the amp module would have been twice the cost at the time to get down to v2 levels of hiss which if I'm not mistaken they achieved though their own research for less than double the cost.

Hard to not assume incompetence/poor project management at this price point though from an experienced company without understanding their rationale.
 
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amirm

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@amirm can you test how long the amplifier can keep up its power output?
Unfortunately no. To dissipate 1.5 KW continuously you need a massive dummy load that can contain it. Mine will blow themselves up to pieces if I did that! Imagine how hot a plug-in heater gets.
 
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amirm

amirm

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Also can you show us the rest of the frequency range in your 5 watt measurement? Interested in seeing distortion spikes past 20khz
You can pick any power rating you like from this measurement:

index.php


However, note the bandwidth is higher here (45 khz) than the dashboard so performance will sometimes be less. And that the 20 kHz tone's full harmonics can't be captured and hence the reason it looks that good (red).
 

PeteL

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Does Emotiva not have access to an Audio Precision measurement device? They should put a disclaimer on their pages: "This has somewhat poor distortion most will struggle to hear, but we opted for this instead of an increased cost of part XXXX to keep price where we want it." That would be an understandable design goal.

Kali disclosed with the original IN-8 that it hisses because producers feedback was more about lower distortion and higher SPL rather than low hiss which none of them cared much about, and the amp module would have been twice the cost at the time to get down to v2 levels of hiss which if I'm not mistaken they achieved though their own research for less than double the cost.

Hard to not assume incompetence/poor project management at this price point though from an experienced company without understanding their rationale.
Everybody seems to say that, but why would the fact that they don't score well in one metric means that they don't have measuring equipment? Their specified numbers match! You have to look at 100W, So yes it's been measured. They just thought that it was good enough. We don't see much class AB designs (Or H, it's semantics) Which non linear power supply, maybe their design goal was achieved, This amp does a lot of things right, for a good price, they don't score well on THD, some will care and some won't and think it sounds great, which it probably does, Each company sets his design goals, it's up to us and with the help of sites like ASR, to judge if it fits our need as a customer.
 

q3cpma

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Everybody seems to say that, but why would the fact that they don't score well in one metric means that they don't have measuring equipment? Their specified numbers match! You have to look at 100W, So yes it's been measured. They just thought that it was good enough. We don't see much class AB designs (Or H, it's semantics) Which non linear power supply, maybe their design goal was achieved, This amp does a lot of things right, for a good price, they don't score well on THD, some will care and some won't and think it sounds great, which it probably does, Each company sets his design goals, it's up to us and with the help of sites like ASR, to judge if it fits our need as a customer.
https://emotiva.com/products/xpa-dr2:
The XPA-DR2 is a high-powered two-channel audiophile power amplifier that combines the exceptional accuracy and finesse of a true balanced differential design with the power you need to deliver musical crescendos and movie special effects with stunning realism and impact. Whatever your listening preferences, the XPA-DR2 will give you the combination of detail and power than only a fully differential amplifier can provide.

Unless we're in bizarro world where "accuracy", "finesse" and "detail" mean "drowing everything but 12 bits of the input signal into noise", I doubt their goal was achieved. Even if there are some old men shouting at clouds pretending that class D amps aren't "yet there" because they don't go up to 100 kHz for their bat music nor do they offer a free fellatio each evening after making dinner and coffee.
 
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