Official Emotiva XPA-5 Owners Thread - Page 7

I purchased Emotiva rca cables with my amp purchase and I'm very happy with their cables. They sell XLR's too.

I purchased their RCA cables as well. Owned my XPA-5 for a couple of years now and love it. Just ordered a pair of black trim strips that weren't on their website last time I visited it.
Never heard any humm or hiss from mine that I noticed.

Ok guys, I'm almost convinced. Here's my question: I have M&K speakers that are 4 ohms (7.1)with a stated max of approx. 200 RMS watts. My Denon 3808 has always sounded a bit hollow and underwhelming, especially in the midbass region. With the XPA 5 pushing 300+ at 4 ohms, is this just gonna liquefy my speakers? I've got no experience with Amps at all, so please excuse my ignorance.

No. The XPA-5 will not liquefy your speakers. It will be fine powering them.

You might be surprised how little average power is needed. It's the peak levels in a signal that require a lot of power. At least 10 times for music I think. THX reference level calls for 100 times peak to average power! (Movies are much more dynamic than most music.)

I would say the most dangerous music for speakers is modern rock, pop and rap music that's highly compressed. Highly compressed music gives the speaker drivers less of a rest. In that case, I feel it's not the amp that's the problem but the music itself and the ear damaging levels being listened to

In conclusion, I would say most people will never damage speakers due to having too much amp power. Having too little power paradoxically can cause problems if (a) the amp/receiver is strong enough to do damage when it's clipping and (b) you have no regard for what's coming out of the speakers ( I would think there would be some warning you were overdriving the amp/receiver from the reduction in sound quality.)

I have blown one home audio speaker in my life. I was trying to get sound loud enough to be heard outside. I was clearly overdriving the Yamaha receiver in question, that was not designed for such use, with bookshelf speakers of moderate sensitivity. I feel that was all my fault (and Klipsch kindly replaced the unit, no questions asked.)

Long-ago AES data was 17 dB peak-to-average for music, a factor of 50 (i.e. for music you would need 50 times the average power). Since average power may only be a Watt or a few, that's not all that hard, except with low-sensitivity speakers far away.

I have read here and elsewhere 20 to 30 dB for movies depending upon encoding and the mix (always). 20 dB is a factor of 100, 30 dB is a factor of 1000. That's a lot of power, probably more than most of us have on tap and more than most speakers can handle. However, such peaks tend to be short, and we are not as sensitive to distortion on very loud peaks (I am usually too busy covering my ears). I think based on no more than my own experience having 20 dB headroom suffices for me and requires perhaps 100 W to 300 W depending upon the speaker and room. YMMV - Don

Yeah, that's why I said at least 10 dB. I actually measured it myself on a few songs via a program I wrote that analyzed WAV files. I never did find anything over 12 dB as memory serves. But as I said, I only analyzed a few songs (seems like a waste of programming, now that I think of it, heh.)

The amp won't blow your speakers unless you turn them up 'til it hurts. However, I suspect it won't help the "hollow and underwhelming" sound...

I'd love to have a copy of that program...

The real question is...where is it? heh. I will look around for it.

Just received my black trim strips for the XPA-5. Now it goes better with the receiver. IMHO

I like the look of them too !! I think I may order set for my XPA-5, after it arrives on Friday.

I ordered the black trim set for my first amp after I noticed they had them on sale, then ordered a set of blacks for the next two. I have suggested they offer black trim as an option at ordering but no such luck yet... Maybe if we all yelled?

Why are you cooking your pre by putting it on top?

The amp doesn't get as hot imho

You might just remove the silver ones and voilá ... it's black trim then, somehow.
That's what i did.

Holes show

The answer really comes down to space available. The Emo pretty much runs cold. Not so with the pre.

No.
Just use the screws supplied with the unit(s). Works perfect for all 5 units i got.

I thought of that but wasn't sure if the trim was partly structural or not. In any event they were cheap enough on sale that I didn't quibble.

I've had my XPA-5 for Over a year and love it. Just recently it has been turning itself off when the source changes (like if comercials come on). The power button blinks and the far right led blinks amber (sometimes 2 lights blink amber). I think it's a handshake issue or something. When my receiver switches modes for a different type of source is when it happens most (although not all the time). And it's never done this until just recently. How can I fix this, it's driving me crazy!!! The good news is it never an issues with movies.

Sounds like a problem with the amp. There are no "handshakes" with an amp, that's an HDMI problem and the amp has no HDMI, just analog inputs and outputs.

I have found Emotiva to be more sensitive to cables than any equipment I have used.
I had a similar problem with my XPA-5. It would randomly shut off like yours. The left surround LED would blink. This most often happened when the UMC was muted. Did not happen when switching sources. I twisted interconnect and speaker connection at amp and this seemed to help for a while. Approximately 2 weeks ago I switched out interconnects on the two surround channels and this has not happened since. FWIW, I currently do not use the trigger switch so this was not the problem as I would have expected.
When I first installed the UMC and XPA I got distorted sound from my sub. The sub sounded like it was receiving the full FR spectrum. I switched out two more subs with the same results. Changing out the old interconnects that I was using solved the problem. The outs on the UMC are too close and any defect in the cable apparently causes channels to bleed together. Hope I explained that properly.
Try a new interconnect on the channel that blinks. Hope it works for you.

Hmmm... It could be a cable issue but that seems unlikely. A cheap and easy thing to try, however.

I suspect either the source or the amp. If the AVR (or source -- cable box, whatever) is generating pops or DC when switching due a defect (such as coupling capacitors or muting circuits going bad) it could be triggering the Emo's protection circuits. Since you never have the problem with movies that seems likely. And, of course, something in the amp itself could be going bad.

I have a UPA-5 that turned itself off with blinking center red light. It was the RCA jack that was faulty. I substituted another amp for the center channel and the problem went away.

I have read about the circuit board cracking, which would cause a loose connection and could cause this issue. However, I do not think that or the RCA jack is the problem if it happens when you just change the source (unless you are moving the cabel too). Last time something like this happened to me, it was my preamp going bad.

How do you explain muting the processor would put an amp in protection mode. That is similar to changing sources as the processor mutes during a change.
It could be a number of things, however.

Gents. There I was listening to PentaTone Classic's "Paganini: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 4 - Henryk Szeryng" SACD on my Oppo 95 that is connected via multichannel RCA unbalanced connections first to an Emo UMC-1 then via Silver Serpent interconnects to the XPA-5, when my attention was suddenly drawn to the appearance of an audible hum emanating from a right rear Polk T90e surround speaker.

I walked the room and also heard it coming from the left surround speaker and even more faintly from two front speakers. Through the process of elimination, I narrowed the source down to the XPA-5. I powered it off then on. Still I could hear the hum. After checking the connections and turning off ceiling fans and other electrical appliances on the same circuit, powering it all off then back on, still I could hear the hum. Finally, I flipped off then on the XPA-5's master power switch and voila, hum was gone. Though I'm not flipping out, I'm a bit concerned about why this happened. Should I worry or write it off as some quirky house current phenomena?

Edit: The XPA-5 is about 6 months old and used only by me for hi-res music listening and an occasional BD flick and then only around 5 or 6 times a week.

If coupling caps go bad and allow d.c. at the output, or biasing is fouled up so there is a large change when muting, it could trigger the amp's protection circuit. I have had this happen even when the amp was ac-coupled due to the large swing caused when the muting circuit shorted the outputs, which then swung back to a relatively large d.c. offset when unmuted. It looks like a large low-frequency signal to the amp. That is why I suggested it as an issue since the poster said it went into protection during source changes.