This is a review and measurements of the Emotiva XPS-1 Phono stage/pre-amplifier. It is on kind loan from a member. The XPS-1 costs US $199 from Emotiva or Amazon.
The XPS-1 looks and feels fantastic despite its bargain price:
It reminds me of a very high quality piece of instrumentation than home audio gear. Shame that the form factor will probably relegate it to somewhere behind your regular audio gear.
The XPS-1 is powered by a 12 volt/0.5 amp universal switching power supply that is barely bigger than a mobile phone charger.
As you see, the XPS-1 supports both moving coil (MC) and moving magnet (MM) cartridges. There are a set of dip switches which seem to set the input impedance of the XPS-1. To wit, setting it to the lowest value of 47 ohm, severely reduced the output from my analyzer which has an output impedance of 20 ohm.
All in all, the XPS-1 nails the industrial design of a budget phono amplifier.
Phono Stage Audio Measurements
I have been testing phono preamps by adjusting the input until I got 1 volt output. I was chewed out by a couple of members (looking at you @restorer-john
) saying I should set the input to fixed level of 5 millivolt and letting the output fall where it may. So I have done that here:
I had to play a fair bit with grounding to get the mains noise at 60 Hz lower. As it is, it is still dominating the response being even higher than our dominant third harmonic at 3 kHz. This is why I was driving the input higher as to make the hum from being the most signficant. Doing so bought me a couple of dB more (not shown). Going with what we have, this is what we get:
Note that the rest of these bars are with 1 volt output. Had I done the same with XPS-1, it would have landed in second place.
Signal to noise ratio shows what we already know:
That the mains noise limits it.
Instrumenting the noise from the unit with nothing driving it (but connected to my analyzer) shows this:
We see the classic sloping down curve of phono pre-amps (due to RIAA equalization). That aside, we see the power supply and mains noise clearly at 60 Hz and harmonics. Switching power supplies tend to have leakage from input to output in order to pass regulatory certification so that is likely the cause here.
Frequency response measurements show a very slight RIAA equalization error for MM input and bit larger for MC:
For MC, I have tested it at both 1K ohm and 47 ohm showing the significant voltage drop for the latter.
Testing for overload and THD+N versus output level we get:
I fixed the issue that was causing the timeout on the analyzer and showing the "T" symbol in the past so ignore that. We see that the XPS-1 starts pretty close to Cambridge Audio Duo but distortion starts to set in and it gets quite a bit more unhappy than the Duo with higher output cartridges. If my math is right, the MM input hits clipping/overload at 73 millivolts.
Conclusions
The Emotiva is very attractive device which belies its low cost. It gives a pride of ownership that is very hard to find in budget audio products. Electronic performance is not as good but only loses to our class leading Cambridge Audio Duo.
Overall, I am happy to recommend to the Emotiva XPS-1 for the combination of good looks and good measurement results.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
We have been lucky in years past that around this time of year, we would get a nice little harvest of wild morel mushrooms. Sadly, with the dry spring we have been having, none have come up. Still, the craving for them remains so please donate generously so I can buy some using either:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or
upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).
The XPS-1 looks and feels fantastic despite its bargain price:
It reminds me of a very high quality piece of instrumentation than home audio gear. Shame that the form factor will probably relegate it to somewhere behind your regular audio gear.
The XPS-1 is powered by a 12 volt/0.5 amp universal switching power supply that is barely bigger than a mobile phone charger.
As you see, the XPS-1 supports both moving coil (MC) and moving magnet (MM) cartridges. There are a set of dip switches which seem to set the input impedance of the XPS-1. To wit, setting it to the lowest value of 47 ohm, severely reduced the output from my analyzer which has an output impedance of 20 ohm.
All in all, the XPS-1 nails the industrial design of a budget phono amplifier.
Phono Stage Audio Measurements
I have been testing phono preamps by adjusting the input until I got 1 volt output. I was chewed out by a couple of members (looking at you @restorer-john
) saying I should set the input to fixed level of 5 millivolt and letting the output fall where it may. So I have done that here:I had to play a fair bit with grounding to get the mains noise at 60 Hz lower. As it is, it is still dominating the response being even higher than our dominant third harmonic at 3 kHz. This is why I was driving the input higher as to make the hum from being the most signficant. Doing so bought me a couple of dB more (not shown). Going with what we have, this is what we get:
Note that the rest of these bars are with 1 volt output. Had I done the same with XPS-1, it would have landed in second place.
Signal to noise ratio shows what we already know:
That the mains noise limits it.
Instrumenting the noise from the unit with nothing driving it (but connected to my analyzer) shows this:
We see the classic sloping down curve of phono pre-amps (due to RIAA equalization). That aside, we see the power supply and mains noise clearly at 60 Hz and harmonics. Switching power supplies tend to have leakage from input to output in order to pass regulatory certification so that is likely the cause here.
Frequency response measurements show a very slight RIAA equalization error for MM input and bit larger for MC:
For MC, I have tested it at both 1K ohm and 47 ohm showing the significant voltage drop for the latter.
Testing for overload and THD+N versus output level we get:
I fixed the issue that was causing the timeout on the analyzer and showing the "T" symbol in the past so ignore that. We see that the XPS-1 starts pretty close to Cambridge Audio Duo but distortion starts to set in and it gets quite a bit more unhappy than the Duo with higher output cartridges. If my math is right, the MM input hits clipping/overload at 73 millivolts.
Conclusions
The Emotiva is very attractive device which belies its low cost. It gives a pride of ownership that is very hard to find in budget audio products. Electronic performance is not as good but only loses to our class leading Cambridge Audio Duo.
Overall, I am happy to recommend to the Emotiva XPS-1 for the combination of good looks and good measurement results.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
We have been lucky in years past that around this time of year, we would get a nice little harvest of wild morel mushrooms. Sadly, with the dry spring we have been having, none have come up. Still, the craving for them remains so please donate generously so I can buy some using either:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or
upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).
