The Crown XLS DriveCore Thread

[jinjuku]

Most roll their eyes in person or words when I mention even the ATI, so the Crown would be a bit of a surprise. In fact, sometimes I wonder if you and I are the only people running the Salon 2 with AT3000 amps.

People lie to themselves all the time. What I find particularly poignant is that any time I have put up some cash for them to put a towel over the equipment it has been a zero bite proposition every time.

[Irvrobinson]

And I bet they also buy Kimber Kable and the likes. Some of them are kind of stuck up.

They probably hate me.

I don't know about hating you, but I definitely know Salon 2 owners that are using exotic cables. They just think you and I are missing out on a very audible difference. The cable brands I remember were MIT and Nordost. Ugh.

But then you might be always wondering "what if". I know I would wonder regardless of what others may say.

Yes... but for $3500 versus $20K I just might let my myself wonder.

[Irvrobinson]

People lie to themselves all the time. What I find particularly poignant is that any time I have put up some cash for them to put a towel over the equipment it has been a zero bite proposition every time.

I wouldn't take the bet with modern equipment either. Even when I've felt one amp was superior to another it was usually a listening fatigue sort of thing that depended on the program material. I never thought I could pick out the better one in an A/B test. Well, there was one exception where I might have taken the bet, but that was with speakers with some measured load weirdness, and that was 15 years ago.

And you're right, people lie to themselves all the time, and with a lot more than just amplifiers.

[AcuDefTechGuy]

And you're right, people lie to themselves all the time, and with a lot more than just amplifiers.

Amps, preamp, Pre-pro, AVR, speakers, DAC, wires, CD players, Vinyl, etc.

Music - wise, I'm confident you would be very happy with the philharmonic or Salk. But come on, seriously, how many guys would just love to own Salon2, but will never get to (and will never admit)?

[psbfan9]

If it's been mentioned, I missed it. Is there a multi channel amp in the Crown XLS series?

[Irvrobinson]

how many guys would just love to own Salon2, but will never get to (and will never admit)?

Perhaps, but that wasn't my point. My point was that there's a contender for about 15% of the price. Even if the Phil 3 really isn't as good, and I've never seen or heard one, it sounds like a game changer.

Not that I'm planning to make a change. The Salon 2s still thrill me, even more so now that I know they can reproduce my wife's drum kit. In fact, I'm beginning to think we are reaching the point of diminishing returns even with speakers. The only question I'm raising is price-performance, and the comparison to the Crown, which may be in a similar category as the Phil 3.

[Irvrobinson]

If it's been mentioned, I missed it. Is there a multi channel amp in the Crown XLS series?

No, but why bother when the amps are this light, compact, and cheap?

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Perhaps, but that wasn't my point. My point was that there's a contender for about 15% of the price. Even if the Phil 3 really isn't as good, and I've never seen or heard one, it sounds like a game changer.

Not that I'm planning to make a change. The Salon 2s still thrill me, even more so now that I know they can reproduce my wife's drum kit. In fact, I'm beginning to think we are reaching the point of diminishing returns even with speakers. The only question I'm raising is price-performance, and the comparison to the Crown, which may be in a similar category as the Phil 3.

I see your point.

I think the game changer is the Phil2 for $ 2000 & Crown XLS 1500 for $350, especially if you use subwoofers.

With dual subwoofers, I think they will sound almost as good as the Salon2, KEF 207/2, and Soundscape 12 (Dennis can attest to the SQ of the Philharmonic 2/3 & the Soundscape 10 sitting next to them since he built them all).

[GranteedEV]

Or not, because when you're around live music a lot you know that speakers that have trouble with >105db peaks don't cut it.

I would say this is probably true of the phiharmonics, but probably not their sibling soundscape 8s, which are still half the price of the salons......

There's also the imaging factor, which doesn't have a signal metric.

technically it does

[DS-21]

If it's been mentioned, I missed it. Is there a multi channel amp in the Crown XLS series?

Sorta/kinda/not really.

The closest thing is the Lexicon DD-8/Crown CT8150. They go for roughly the same price.

Not the same value proposition, but astoundingly compact for an 8-channel 100+W/channel fanless amp. I'll admit it, I want one. Perhaps if when I move in August there happens to not be any room for the 7-channel Sherwood bruiser I bought to biamp my mains, I'll probably get one.

No, but why bother when the amps are this light, compact, and cheap?

I don't consider a 2RU 2-channel amp particularly compact, though the Crowns are fairly shallow at least.

A stack of 2-channel 2RU amps sufficient to run a multisub system, and/or biamped front three mains, will still take up quite a bit of volume. If I switched over to XLS DriveCores, for instance, I'd need at least five of them: one for each mains channel (surrounds can run off the AVR, so that's three), and two to run 4 subs.