Originally Posted by
ss9001 
+1, D
I own both class A/B & class D. And I have compared both with MCACC and all processing turned off.
To Jay Bar -
You are entitled, of course, to your own opinion, your own subjective hearing likes & dislikes. Nothing wrong with that.
But I have to ask, if the conversation were not about the econo Emotiva brand, let's say a Krell or some similar amp brand that costs $5-10000+, way beyond normal folk's budget, could you be objective in your hearing comparison? Just for supposing, let's say you just spent $20000 for a Krell Evolution 2 channel amp.
Could you be brutally objective in comparing the 2, or would you be subject to bias since it "has" to be better because it costs you 5 times as much as the whole AVR? Or look at it from the other side...would you like to think the budget amp is as good performance-wise or better sounding because it is so much cheaper and you can afford it but not the Krell? Sure you would...
See where I'm going?
Further,
everytime someone posts anything remotely construed as negative or objective about Emotiva, the fans come running to defend the brand.
You like your Emotiva amps better than Ice amps? That's OK.
For the record, I based my reply to the poster not on fanboyism of the Pioneer (anyone who knows my posting knows that's definitely not the case), but as an answer to someone who "has a friend", who has not compared the 2 in the poster's room with the poster's speakers. Also probably doesn't know the power & capability in the SC-09. The way the poster described his friend's comments, it came across as his friend saying they would "sound better" not someone who has actually objectively compared them, compared power ratings, or even if his speakers would warrant an ext amp at all.
I said my opinion is the amps aren't needed or warranted as a general rule but also gave the types of speakers I thought may warrant an ext amp and my suggestion for the better option if that were the case.
The poster certainly is free to try them out on the 30 day grace period. And if he decides they sound "better", like you, he can plunk down the card for them. Each amp design has its strengths & its weaknesses.
I certainly don't care one way or another. All I'm here for is helping other owners.
Since I beat up on Pioneer as a company & how they've treated Susano owners, I cannot ever be accused of being blindly loyal to the brand or biased subjectively in favor of my SC-09
In fact, ALL my posts about Emotiva are NOT subjectively based at all, but on hard facts about their power supplies, total capacitance & inconsistencies between their multichannel amps & other brands with SIMILAR advertised power ratings.
I question the ability of the XPA-3 and XPA-5 amps specifically to perform as equals to amps like the Parasound A51, Anthem A5, ATI 2007 and Outlaw brands, based not on being anti-Emotiva but on what's in them. How all these companies need twice the transformer capacity & twice the number of capacitors for 5 channels to have the same power output as Emotiva
advertises is a mystery to me
I know the Chinese are good engineers but are they that good?
Maybe they've discovered some breakthrough in physics or EE
I say the same thing about DefTech subs - nice subs just don't expect them to produce anywhere close to their
advertised freq response because they don't.
Sheesh - I hate these endless debates about Emotiva. Makes me "want to throw up" to quote one of our "intellectual" presidential candidates
