Deleted member 49750
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I’ve been using a NAD T973 on the end of an Anthem MRX 300 with my M&K S-125s/S-85s for the last few years, and for the last couple of months with my KK Q-125s/Q-85s. I’ve always been happy with the NAD’s sound and ability to drive my speakers to pretty good SPLs without sounding too strained or harsh.
But recently my NAD failed to switch on and displayed a row of solid red lights whilst carrying out its power up test routine. This isn’t the first time the NAD’s had issues, I had to get it repaired a couple of years ago, so I decided it was time to spend my (already allocated subwoofer) budget on some new amplification.
I’m extremely conscious of diminishing returns, and the higher-end consumer hi-fi brands’ power amp’s SRPs are, quite frankly, astronomical in my opinion. In the past I’ve used a number of active monitors, namely; Mackie, Genelec, Blue Sky, PMC, Miller & Kreisel, so I’m more than willing to consider professional gear to achieve the desired results.
With this in-mind I started to look at pro power amps. I found a YouTube video review by Andrew Robinson in which he highly recommended Crown’s XLS DriveCore 2 Series amps for home cinema use. After watching this, and upon realising their incredible power (see table below) at unheard of price points when compared to consumer brands, I started to research further and turned up a number of threads on various US based forums, where I found nothing but positive reports. I also found this video by Crown, in which the engineers describe the DriveCore chip replacing around 500 components found in traditional, analogue amplifiers!
Due to the incredible reviews and extremely agreeable pricing, I’m now powering my LCR speakers with two 2502s (775W into 4Ω) and my rears with a single 2002 (650W into 4Ω). These turned up on Monday of this week, but initially I was convinced they were going to have to go back, due to a rather loud and intrusive hum from all channels.
However, with the help of Jase (Dr Manhattan) via Google hangouts, we eventually tracked the problem down to a ground-loop hum which seemed to originate from the HDMI connection between the plasma and the Anthem receiver. In the end this was fixed by simply using phono to XLR adapters and connecting the Anthem to the balanced inputs on the Crowns.
After level matching and running a few test scenes, along with playing plenty of music, I’m extremely happy with the way my system now sounds. As I said at the beginning, I was always happy with the sound of the NAD behind my speakers, but these sound much more open and effortless at higher SPLs. I’m yet to hear anything that sounds harsh or grating or notice any sibilance whatsoever. All of this seems all the more weird to me as these things weigh around 5kg each (the NAD weighs 32kg) and seemingly never even get warm, never mind hot!
No doubt I’ll continue to thrash them for the next few nights and for most of the weekend, so if I find anything to the contrary I’ll report back. In the meantime, if you’re in the market for a new power amp, do yourself a favour and check these out.
But recently my NAD failed to switch on and displayed a row of solid red lights whilst carrying out its power up test routine. This isn’t the first time the NAD’s had issues, I had to get it repaired a couple of years ago, so I decided it was time to spend my (already allocated subwoofer) budget on some new amplification.
I’m extremely conscious of diminishing returns, and the higher-end consumer hi-fi brands’ power amp’s SRPs are, quite frankly, astronomical in my opinion. In the past I’ve used a number of active monitors, namely; Mackie, Genelec, Blue Sky, PMC, Miller & Kreisel, so I’m more than willing to consider professional gear to achieve the desired results.
With this in-mind I started to look at pro power amps. I found a YouTube video review by Andrew Robinson in which he highly recommended Crown’s XLS DriveCore 2 Series amps for home cinema use. After watching this, and upon realising their incredible power (see table below) at unheard of price points when compared to consumer brands, I started to research further and turned up a number of threads on various US based forums, where I found nothing but positive reports. I also found this video by Crown, in which the engineers describe the DriveCore chip replacing around 500 components found in traditional, analogue amplifiers!
Due to the incredible reviews and extremely agreeable pricing, I’m now powering my LCR speakers with two 2502s (775W into 4Ω) and my rears with a single 2002 (650W into 4Ω). These turned up on Monday of this week, but initially I was convinced they were going to have to go back, due to a rather loud and intrusive hum from all channels.
However, with the help of Jase (Dr Manhattan) via Google hangouts, we eventually tracked the problem down to a ground-loop hum which seemed to originate from the HDMI connection between the plasma and the Anthem receiver. In the end this was fixed by simply using phono to XLR adapters and connecting the Anthem to the balanced inputs on the Crowns.
After level matching and running a few test scenes, along with playing plenty of music, I’m extremely happy with the way my system now sounds. As I said at the beginning, I was always happy with the sound of the NAD behind my speakers, but these sound much more open and effortless at higher SPLs. I’m yet to hear anything that sounds harsh or grating or notice any sibilance whatsoever. All of this seems all the more weird to me as these things weigh around 5kg each (the NAD weighs 32kg) and seemingly never even get warm, never mind hot!
No doubt I’ll continue to thrash them for the next few nights and for most of the weekend, so if I find anything to the contrary I’ll report back. In the meantime, if you’re in the market for a new power amp, do yourself a favour and check these out.
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