Calling all Polkies:Official Polk thread - Page 471

It came, I have a hernia, it's set up, and all I can say is WOW!

The XPA-2 is a beast. Both in weight and in power. I played a few songs and ran it up to 85 - 90 (I have my AVR max volume at 90 vice 100) and I DO NOT NEED A SUBWOOFER ANY MORE!

The XPA-2 pushes some serious bass. I put in the song "I Love Big Speakers" bass test and I thought the 7" drivers were gonna detach and kill someone. This thing definitely gives the speakers the power they hunger for. At the highest volumes (85+) the XPA-2 starts to clip a little on powerful bass notes. I can't listen to it at that volume anyway. I'm practically deaf right now from the SPL. It evened out the harshness of the highs since it has reserves of power. I definitely can hear total separation of instruments and the sound stage has improved as well. The poor AVR, even as beefy as it is, was never be able to power out the bass like this thing. The XPA-2 has no problem keeping up on the fastest notes either. Even on "Bach Busters tocata en fugue in d minor" which has some seriously hard and fast bass notes combined with super high crystal clear highs.

Not sure if I can even take video of these in action. The sound will no doubt distort the camcorder's mic. I will try to do a comparison video. The least I get out of it is showing how hard the XPA-2 drives the triple 7" bass drivers.

Now to go and take some Motrin for my back!

Very nice climber! That video is tempting me to upgrade. I kinda feel the itch again. lol

Wait till I get a video of the XPA-2 pushing those RTi A9s... There's no comparison.

Do you have the A9 bi-amp with the receiver/amp or straight from XPA-2?

Hehe wait till I post the LSi 15s pushing 500 wpc hehe....

Hoping my other M1.0t purchase goes through so I can drive my center and maybe a passive sub off the other channel....

Just curious. How are you going to drive the LSi15s with 500 WPC when they are only rated to 250? Aren't you running a big risk in blowing them out?


I had them "AVR biamped" before and noticed very little if any difference in power. Now they are running straight off of the XPA-2 at a true 300 WPC and they scream. A neighbor from three houses down came over to listen because he said he could feel the house shaking (NR3009 on Pure Audio mode in stereo).

I think they actually put out better bass than my sub now.

Isn't that a nice little benefit of the XPA-2?

Congrats bro, glad you got the rig. Now, have you seen the XPR-5? Oh yeah, my next amp. That should just about do it for my front stage.

Why dont you biamp with AVR and Amp together. Amp on the low post and AVR on the high post.

Man, that setup looks great........

Congrats!

Or you can buy one of this to bi-amp the fronts and the extra channel for your center speaker........



More details:

http://shop.emotiva.com/collections/amplifiers/products/xpr5

I'm pretty sure that won't give satisfactory benefits. You are bound to have propagation delay in the system. I really don't know how that would work. I actually thought about it when I was cabling everything up.

Thanks man. I went on this morning to check the delivery status and saw the XPR-5. That thing is absolutely incredible. Not a horrible price either. You could set up a killer system with that baby. Don't try and give me your bug man. I have had my shots (XPA-2) and am immune from the upgrade bug for a while. Next purchase is a home...

That would be 800 WPC. I know the speakers can't handle that for a fact! I'm still wondering what Ender is going to do with 500 WPC on the LSi15s...

Unfortunately, the mic on my camcorder can't detect the difference at normal listening levels with the XPA-2. It just can't detect those extremely low freqs. The video is a little grainy (night time) but is sounds good none-the-less. It does rattle the foundation though. Something that only my 12" 250W powered sub could do previously. Now my RTi A9s rock the house.
Edited by climber07 - 7/4/12 at 12:07am

Climber

Don't you have a 3009. It's 140 wpc. So 140 from AVR + 300 from amp is 440 wpc total. I'm just talking about the front 2 channels. I understand what you mean by delay. I should look into that..,but isn't that how true biamping really works. Two amps feeding into a speaker. Also, how much of a delay can it really be.

Not sure. I'll do a little research and check.. You have two full signals feeding a speaker so it's passive since they do not get electronically crossed over prior to the amp...

All speakers can take more than their rated wattage. Much less risk blowing them by over powering than under. But more than likely my ears would explode before I got that loud.

Yes, 2 amps feeding a speaker is bi-amping. I had both my XPA-2 and 3 feeding my A9's once just to experiment however, I had to run "Y" RCA connectors from the pre-outs of my AVR to then connect to the amps.

Once you have a channel dedicated on the AVR, that's it, you can't reuse it without proper connection, in other words, you can't use the pre-outs for L/R and then utilize the posts for L/R at the same time. I don't have a more technical explanation for you for other than it just doesn't work like that. Most of us have wanted it to work like that though

So now that I'm ordering CM8s I moved my polks to my computer room and connected them to a marantz 5.1 setup using the 5.1 out of my PC.
Battle Field 3 never sounded so good.
check it out I think it looks nice. The center has a blown tweeter but I'm mailing it back to Polk for a new one. so for now I have my B&W CMC.

That's a nice lookin rack you got there man. I want to do something like that in a closet or in a false wall...

I've heard about you serious gamer types..

Very nice set up! I dig the picturless frames. Good to see Seth (Avatar?) guarding the grounds.

I have read several articles from speakers designers indicating that properly powered speakers receive 1.5 to 2 times the max watt rating.

Wow really. They must be talking about super high end speakers.

It's all about headroom in the amp and dynamic peaks in the source material. Climber was clipping a 300w amp. It was probably drawing about 30w average, even at that level of volume, but bass and kickdrum peaks might be recorded at 10db or 20db higher (not usually with modern compressed mixes) . A 10db peak asks for 10X the power. A 20db peak wants 100x. If you want the best sound quality, it's always good to have plenty of headroom....especially when playing at spirited levels. My SDAs are fairly demanding. I'm assisting them with 350x/550 peak amp. I've played material at 90dbs at the LP (loud, but not damaging) average. I've watched the needles peg (550w) when bass/kick peaks come into play. This is in 2 channel mode. For HT, where 20 and 30db peaks are the norm, reference level playback is very hard to acheive (105/115dbs) with just an AVR, though the demand on the power supply with crossovers engaged is usually less because all channels ask for varying power during playback, rarely demanding simultaneous peaks in all channels...then again few of us listen to our HTs at reference level.
Edited by Ron Temple - 7/4/12 at 1:34pm

Nice post Ron. True, I was playing some demanding music (Black Eyed Peas) and it wasn't a very good mp3. I don't get the clipping as often from CDs or FLAC files that I rip. mp3s can be such crap files. 128kbps is terrible for a quality system. You really can hear how washed out and flat it is.

When I was experiencing the clipping (minor clipping at that) I was averaging in the middle of the amp range believe it or not. I rarely see clipping unless I am at the 85 and above level on my AVR (max is 100).

It's mind boggling to think that my speakers can accept 500 WPC continuous. Driving them with a 500 WPC each would crack drywall...

I do try....believe me, but my wife says always "no"..........what are we talking about? Oh, never mind.......

Downside of higher end audio equipment is discovering how poor the source material is.



My wife is not an audiophile, but with her recliner being positioned right between our twin 12" subs she definitely "notices" good LFE material!

Just got on board and glad to be here.....and all u can say WOW to this thread

Welcome! Just grab a beer and have fun......

I bet. I havent played bf3 on my HT system yet, just bfbc2. That was amazing. Having a copper fly in felt like I was getting punched inteh chest. I bet BF3 is amazing! Having a LAN party on Sat. What is your gamertag? my in hb-Jackson. I will add you as a friend!

Chip

So this is what I am rocking. My signature has the specs. Here are some pics:

This is a front view. You can't really see the vtf3-mk4 in this picture.



Here is an isometric view. You can see the front soundstage.


Here is a picture of the 4 tc-60i's. I use these for the rear and rear surround channels.


Please comment. My next purchase will be an amp. Probable the Emotiva XPA-2. It seems like a pretty good bang for the buck.