Guitar Center/musiciansfriend.com had a sale on their pro amps the other week, so I thought I'd try one out. The Crown XLS 402 was $250 shipped/otd which was a small savings over the ebay vendor(previously the cheapest source I've seen). I've read quite a bit about this amp on avsforum. I knew the fans would be loud, but there are modifications to alleviate the problem. I wanted to see how much of a difference it would make powering my Bic DV64 towers.
First impressions - the amp feels very solid, and has some heft to it. I was suprised at how heavy it was when I carried it out of the store. There is nothing fancy looking about this amp, it's all business. I plugged it into my pioneer 1015 preouts with xlr-rca cables that I picked up at GC. The fans are pretty loud unless you have the volume up or if there are silent parts in music/movies. I wasn't worried because there are ways to slow the fan down or install silent fans. I set the gain for both channels at 75% and ran the auto mcacc on my receiver. I kept the speakers set to large and turned off the sub. I also tried setting the gain to 100% and recalibrating as well. I prefered the 100% gain setting.
I was mostly interested in using this amp for 2 channel music, so I put on some different varieties of music from Sarah Maclachlan(SP?), Norah Jones, Dianna Krall, Robbie Williams, Over the Rhine, Radiohead etc. I mostly used music with strong vocals.
The first thing I noticed was music being more dynamic and fuller sounding. It sounded like there was an extra layer added to the music. What can I say, it sounded good and I was pleased with my purchase.
Now, fast forward to yesterday. I just returned the amp. Why??? well after listening to the same material and switching back and forth between the Crown, and my Pioneer's amp, I could barely tell a difference. I think the Crown was still slightly more dynamic, but the Pioneer sounded cleaner and more precise. I wouldn't have minded keeping the Crown because I'm sure I could find a use for it, but I also could use the money. The reason I couldn't tell much of a difference is probably that my speakers are 90 dB and 8 ohms. They are a fairly easy load and probably don't need 260 watts per channel. There would probably be a night and day difference with harder to drive speakers.
In the end I feel good knowing that adding a power amp to my setup really didn't make a substantial difference for me. Now I don't have to second guess. I wouldn't have minded the fans or manually turning the Crown on and off if there was a more significant sonic difference. However I am relieved to have the extra space, silence and the convenience of my remote control.
Nevertheless, I would definitely recommend this amp to anyone that could make use of the extra power.
