This is a review and detailed measurements of the Emotiva XPA HC-1 Monoblock amplifier. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $879.
As the name indicates, this is a single channel power amplifier. I have a soft spot for monoblocks and the HC-1 hits it. I especially like the power button which has buttery action and nice orange color when you hit it. Alas, then it switches to the cold, trademark blue color of Emotiva. Wish they would switch to that orange!
Note that the amplifier is *very* deep, probably three times as deep as it is high. Back panel shows nice inclusion of XLR input which is what I used for testing:
The design of the amplifier is Class AB with dual power supply rails in order to keep power consumption low at lower powers. It did that as the amplifier barely generated any heat during my testing. I was not a fan of the protection circuit though as when it clicked in (during 20 kHz sweep), it required power switch in the back to be toggled. I like self-resetting protection circuits and if that is not possible, have the front panel be used for that purpose.
If you are not familiar with my amplifier measurements, I highly suggest watching this video on amplifier measurements.
Emotiva HC-1 Amplifier Measurements
Let's start with our usual 5 watt dashboard using XLR input:
My eye quickly went to the high distortion products which sadly lands the HC-1 at well below average of all amplifiers tested:
Even though SINAD is distortion dominated above, noise performance at 5 watts is not anything to write home about either:
I like to see an amplifier above budget prices to clear 16 bit hurdle of 96 dB at 5 watts. Or else, sensitive speakers may spit out noise.
Frequency response is essentially flat in audible band and good bandwidth:
Multitone test patter shines a familiar light on the amplifier when it comes to distortion:
In an attempt to have more common measurements with other sites, I decided to run the 19+20 kHz intermodulation distortion (although I don't know what power others use):
Spray of intermodulation products around our dual tones don't paint a pretty picture.
Let's run our power sweeps:
We do have a lot of power but alas, that comes at the expensive of noise+distortion. Allowing for 1% THD distortion, we do get a lot of power:
Rail switching design ("Class H") shows distinct change in performance as that happens:
Notice how distortion is lowest around our 1 kHz testing and increased when you go lower or higher in frequency. The latter is kind of expected but not the lower.
Conclusions
The Emotiva brand is one of budget prices but with high performance. Alas, after testing many of their products, the right message here is budget prices with slightly below average performance. Company really needs to retool their products and bring up the objective performance up a notch or two. Then they will have a winning formula. As is, we see products like HC-1 here which underperform more than half the amplifiers ever tested (over 400). Fortunately it is very powerful so likely sounds OK.
I can't recommend the Emotiva XPS HC-1 amplifier. It is an OK amp but we are not here for OK products.
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
As the name indicates, this is a single channel power amplifier. I have a soft spot for monoblocks and the HC-1 hits it. I especially like the power button which has buttery action and nice orange color when you hit it. Alas, then it switches to the cold, trademark blue color of Emotiva. Wish they would switch to that orange!
Note that the amplifier is *very* deep, probably three times as deep as it is high. Back panel shows nice inclusion of XLR input which is what I used for testing:
The design of the amplifier is Class AB with dual power supply rails in order to keep power consumption low at lower powers. It did that as the amplifier barely generated any heat during my testing. I was not a fan of the protection circuit though as when it clicked in (during 20 kHz sweep), it required power switch in the back to be toggled. I like self-resetting protection circuits and if that is not possible, have the front panel be used for that purpose.
If you are not familiar with my amplifier measurements, I highly suggest watching this video on amplifier measurements.
Emotiva HC-1 Amplifier Measurements
Let's start with our usual 5 watt dashboard using XLR input:
My eye quickly went to the high distortion products which sadly lands the HC-1 at well below average of all amplifiers tested:
Even though SINAD is distortion dominated above, noise performance at 5 watts is not anything to write home about either:
I like to see an amplifier above budget prices to clear 16 bit hurdle of 96 dB at 5 watts. Or else, sensitive speakers may spit out noise.
Frequency response is essentially flat in audible band and good bandwidth:
Multitone test patter shines a familiar light on the amplifier when it comes to distortion:
In an attempt to have more common measurements with other sites, I decided to run the 19+20 kHz intermodulation distortion (although I don't know what power others use):
Spray of intermodulation products around our dual tones don't paint a pretty picture.
Let's run our power sweeps:
We do have a lot of power but alas, that comes at the expensive of noise+distortion. Allowing for 1% THD distortion, we do get a lot of power:
Rail switching design ("Class H") shows distinct change in performance as that happens:
Notice how distortion is lowest around our 1 kHz testing and increased when you go lower or higher in frequency. The latter is kind of expected but not the lower.
Conclusions
The Emotiva brand is one of budget prices but with high performance. Alas, after testing many of their products, the right message here is budget prices with slightly below average performance. Company really needs to retool their products and bring up the objective performance up a notch or two. Then they will have a winning formula. As is, we see products like HC-1 here which underperform more than half the amplifiers ever tested (over 400). Fortunately it is very powerful so likely sounds OK.
I can't recommend the Emotiva XPS HC-1 amplifier. It is an OK amp but we are not here for OK products.
----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
Too bad because they have/had a fairly good reputation when it comes to their Amps. 
