Lately, Emotiva has been cranking out a lot of interesting audio products. The company's latest is another must-have for discerning audiophiles, but at a price that the rest of us can actually afford.
The company just started shipping its XPA-1L Monoblock Amplifier. This latest product has a switchable Class A/Class AB topology. That basically means that you can get all of the benefits and bragging rights of a Class A amp, but with the ease, power saving and sleek design that's typically associated with those Class AB models.
In Class A mode, the XPA-1L can crank out 35 watts of pure Class A audio bliss. Once a user pushes the amp past the 35-watt threshold, it will automatically flip into AB mode for a little extra power. When set to AB mode, the XPA-1L can deliver 250 watts into eights ohms (or 500 watts into four ohms), with the promise of low noise and distortion.
The slick chassis that you see below measures a mere 17-by-3.88-by-19 inches, but packs in a rated power bandwidth of 20Hz to 20kHz (± 0.15dB), a frequency response of 10Hz to 80kHz (+0/-2dB), and a total harmonic distortion plus noise rating of less than 0.005 percent. It also has a balanced XLR input, a gold-plated unbalanced RCA input, gold-plated audiophile-grade speaker terminals, and a solid milled aluminum faceplate with an individually laser-etched serial number plate.
Emotiva has made this component to pack a punch, thanks to a power supply with 90,000 uF of storage capacitance and a 450VA heavy-duty toroidal transformer.
Other features include a trigger input and output, automatic 115/230 AC line voltage detection and switching, a soft-touch power switch, a front-panel halo-lit standby switch, and a status LED that can be disabled via a switch on the back panel.
"For me, the XPA-1L is a dream made real," says Dan Laufman, Emotiva's president. "It truly delivers everything you could hope for in a monoblock amplifier: the unparalleled purity of a Class A design, seamlessly mated with the power handling of a Class AB amp; with a fully balanced, fully discrete, quad differential signal path to boot, all at a price that anyone can afford."
Emotiva is selling the XPA-1L Monoblock Amplifier now, with an MSRP of $699.
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