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I purchased my first Crown amplifier, a D150 in the 70s when I was a teenager. While the dealer recommended buying the equivalently priced HK Citation 12, I found the D150 a more impressive choice. It had rack ears. More power at 4 ohms to drive my double Advents. And that "professional" panache. Short story is while I found it utterly reliable, I sold it less than two years later.
A couple of years ago, I tried another Crown amp that others here and elsewhere had touted but found that one lacking as well. Like all the other Crown's in my experience, it was a conventional AB+B design. More recently there has been a lot of buzz around the latest crop of Crown amps now almost exclusively of the switching design. So, two weeks ago, I purchased my first switching amp!
A little backdrop here. To help fund a panel upgrade, I "de-contented" the garage system a bit and run a single pair of New Advents driven by a NAD 326BEE purchased used for $300 - the same price as the almost brand new XLS1500. For the past week, I have been comparing them extensively to determine the keeper. The results are in.
I really, really wanted to like the more powerful of the two because Advents can really crank with 300 watts behind them even if that would make Henry turn over in his grave. Playing the A-Trak remix of Yeah, Yeah, Yeah's Heads Will Roll wide open provides incredible slam well out into the driveway and over at the neighbor's house. That's what I'm talking about!
When I listen to anything with upper octave content like percussion, however, the modest NAD is clearly superior. Andreas Vollenweider's White Winds contains a wealth of tasty instruments ranging from his harp to a number of chimes and reedy things bathed in upper harmonics. With the Crown, everything is clean - not at all like older units that were glassy and hard at the top. What is lacking is the harmonic extension. You hear the fundamental then it dies and goes flat. Natural extension and decay is absent. Mechanical sounding. There is simply more space and depth around the music with the NAD.
I was listening to the 24/96 release of A Chorus Line that has a very natural live sound overall. In Music and the Mirror, there's a section with brushes that sounds fat and lifeless on the Crown. With the NAD, you hear the life and air around the instrument. And Donna's voice is part of the space. And it's just not a matter of the NAD sounding brighter. If anything, the NAD house sound is a touch dark.
I'm sticking with the cheap NAD for a more realistic and natural presentation even if it doesn't provide the same power and efficiency. The beauty and subtlety of the top end and the very life of live music is not to be found with the Crown.
Cool Factor: Crown ++++ NAD ++
Efficiency: Crown +++++ NAD ++
Power for the money: Crown +++++ NAD +++
Top to bottom transparency: Crown ++ NAD ++++
Follow Ups:
I had bought a few of the XLS2000 on close out and felt the same, the timbre was so bad on classical i could not live with it and similarly, in the past i have never been a fan of Crown amplifiers, especially their woody bass, the XLS2000 did not have this issue, bass wise, but of course the whole top octave was just wrong..
May i suggest an adcom-555, add by pass caps in the PSU and re-bias them to fit your load. best value for money (typically 300-400)anywhere any time.
Regards
I really wasn't looking or needing a replacement for the NAD. Every time I've commented on my less than stellar experience with Crown products, the response is "you haven't heard a recent one".Actually, this is the best I've heard one sound and I find their sins are largely of omission instead of sounding hard and closed in. Top end refinement just isn't there. It's a really good eight octave amp!
On the other hand, I can leave it powered up in the garage closet without getting warm whereas the NAD gets downright hot under those circumstances and every once in a while I do like having the extra power to project the sound outside.
Edits: 04/08/16
On the NAD was the soft clipping engaged in your comparison?
"The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat" - Confucius
On the NAD was the soft clipping engaged in your comparison?
Always off with tone controls bypassed as well. I use my ears for that function. :)
Crown clipping circuit off as well although I rarely got the -10 db lights to blink.
You see I don't understand that... I would alway leave the clipping protection on!
-10dB indications mean perhaps you had peak levels at -8dB relative to 70Volts of so clipping point of the 300 Watt into 8 ohm XLS1500. 70 Volts - 8dB is about 28 Volts. The 50 Watt NAD clipping point is very near that.
Of course, there is a lot of uncertainty here with my napkin math. The two amps likely do not have calibrated indicators.
It's an easy test to confirm, either turn on the NAD soft clipping or turn down the volume a little (-5dB or so) and reconfirm your observations.
I'm not saying the XLS1500 is sonically better than the NAD - it is probably not. Its design purpose is not for discriminating audio. But you should give it a fair shake.
Note: When I read you review, and I see the adjectives "Transparency", "Air" and "Chimes and reedy things bathed in upper harmonics", I think that we might be concerned about a DC offset in your Advent's woofers, caused by the clipping NAD on asymmetrical (all music clipping is of this type of wave form (especially percussive sounds) causing an increase in distortion that (just like a "good" SET) has lots of "Air" and "Transparency".
I'm sure you have read the various Elliot Sound Labs articles on amplifier clipping.
"The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat" - Confucius
You see I don't understand that... I would alway leave the clipping protection on!
I find no use for superfluous circuitry in the signal path. Perhaps it is a good idea in the pro world to protect gear from roadies and hard-of-hearing rockers at the gain controls.
The 50 Watt NAD clipping point is very near that.
I did a lot of listening to the Crown at much louder levels than I do with the NAD - because I could. Having said that, I can get pretty reasonable levels with 100 continuous watts and did the comparison within its range. The NAD design offers double that much IHF dynamic power.
Its design purpose is not for discriminating audio.
A good thing since that's essentially my conclusion given the extensive listening tests. I do acknowledge the value of low power consumption, compactness, ruggedness and watts-per-dollar in the pro world.
But you should give it a fair shake.
I listened to both with an open mind. It clearly has some strengths, but not those that are most important to me.
When I read you review, and I see the adjectives "Transparency", "Air" and "Chimes and reedy things bathed in upper harmonics", I think that we might be concerned...
Perhaps I'm not doing a great job verbalizing the live, unamplified experience or you might understand to what I refer. I struggled trying to describe the nature of the Crown's deficiency in getting the top right and sounding artificial. For me, it is not difficult to appreciate hearing an instrument with its harmonics in step and consistent with the fundamentals. Or a series of performers in the same space where you can perceive the acoustic and "air" of the room.
The Crown, however, is the proverbial "bull in a china shop" in terms of top end delicacy. It's like watching a defensive lineman attempting a plie . :)
I'm sure you have read the various Elliot Sound Labs articles on amplifier clipping.
No, but thank you for the link. I can certainly hear when the amplifier's character changes - which most often means the top end gets hard, screechy, closed in and loses sound quality - not *improve* it!
I think he makes a compelling case as to why you should never use soft clipping circuits. I didn't fully understand the depth to which detrimental effects occur:
"In general, for anything other than guitar amps, I would not recommend any form of soft clipping. The idea of hi-fi is to minimise distortion, and introducing non-linear elements into the circuit just increases the distortion at lower levels...
Unfortunately, at lower levels there will still be some distortion. For any circuit to clip 'softly', it must start to introduce distortion well below the clipping voltage (set by the power amp's supply rail voltage). As discussed in greater detail below, you will end up with 1-2% distortion at around half power (sometimes even less), with the distortion climbing rapidly as the amp delivers more power. This is not hi-fi!"
Amen!
I can't help but think that your entire trajectory would have been different if you had made the right choice and gone with the Citation way back when.
Too much is never enough
I had a Citation 12 (kit version but checked out) when I added a second pair of Advents to stack them. I was happy for a couple of months until the Citation failed. The tech who repaired it for me said it probably was not appropriate driving the load of the Double Advents at anything more than moderate listening levels.
I also had the Citation 11 but never felt it had the same sonic quality as the 12.
So I bought and built Dynakits PAT-5 and 400. Those proved to be trouble free with no issues with the Double Advent load. I think the additional power helped too.
Some years later I built Hafler 101 and 200. But due to elapsed time and a different speaker system I couldn't comment on sonics compared to the Citations.
"You can't know what the "best" is unless you have heard everything, and keep in mind that given individual tastes, there really isn't any such thing." HP
> Some years later I built Hafler 101 and 200. But due to elapsed time and a different speaker system I couldn't comment on sonics compared to the Citations.
I went directly from the Citation 11/12 to the Hafler 101/200. The Hafler kits clobbered the Citation components. I was actually shocked at how much better the Hafler 101 sounded compared to the Citation 11. The difference between the Hafler 200 and the Citation 12 was not nearly as great, but I still thought the Hafler sounded better.
Best regards,
John Elison
The tech who repaired it for me said it probably was not appropriate driving the load of the Double Advents...
At some frequencies, double Advents drop to 2.3 ohms - a figure not all amps are happy about delivering. I used doubles plus Microstatic Add on tweeters for the 1974 Miss RHS pageant. As the resident audio geek in high school, I was asked to provide the sound system for contestant's music.
The Crown was certainly rugged. During setup under a covered table, I inadvertently shorted the outputs with a screwdriver while it was powered up. It actually lightly fused the darn thing to the posts! Shut down amp, let protection circuit reset, yanked screwdriver off and powered back up. No problemo!
Thanks E-Stat. I suspected the Double Advent load dropped below 4 ohms, at least at some frequency. But I never saw a plot of the load. Even though the Citation was likely well engineered, they most likely didn't intend loads at or below 3 ohms.
"You can't know what the "best" is unless you have heard everything, and keep in mind that given individual tastes, there really isn't any such thing." HP
for my adolescent years and short lived. It resolutely taught me that THD was a largely irrelevant metric.
Two years later, I got back on track with a Julius Siknius designed Audire One power amp now driving MG-IIs. That was when Frank Van Alstine entered the market with his Dyna mods. I replaced the 11 with his FET-5 and took a page from the Double Dyna and boosted the power supply of the Audire. I added another 60,000 uF to the stock 20,000 uF along with a new bridge. That change improved transparency and dynamic kick.
While that was a good amp, the Acoustat X speakers that replaced the Maggies had their own servo amps which I used for several years. Next amp purchase was a Threshold Stasis 3 to drive Acoustat 2+2s that only recently did I part with.
For the past 15 years, I've been quite happy using VTL MB-450 mono amps to drive the stats. A new S-400 or Series III version of my current amps would be nice though!
I owned the Citation 11 and 12 back in the day. They weren't very good at all but I didn't know it at the time. It wasn't until I decided to build the Hafler DH-101 preamp and DH-200 power amplifier just for fun that I discovered the true nature of the Citation components. I couldn't believe how absolutely horrible the Citation 11 sounded compared to the DH-101. The Citation 12 fared better against DH-200 but still came in second.
After living with Hafler components for a while I went to an audio store that carried Crown and Hafler. My friend had the Crown IC-150 and DC-300 and swore by them. After listening to them at the store I asked if they could switch to the Hafler components and I was shocked at how much more musically pleasing Hafler was compared to Crown. Anyway, I lived with my Hafler components for quite some time until switching to the top-of-the-line Yamaha C-2x preamp and B-2x amplifier.
Best regards,
John Elison
I am always surprised how good it sounds. In my system a little attenuation at 1kHz and a gentle roll off from 16 to 20 kHz on the digital EQ sounds very nice. I do prefer my Cary CAD 200 no EQ needed, but the Crown is no slouch.
Edits: 03/29/16
the old amps and current switchers are fine for subs or multi-way duty when they don't have to perform at the top.
When I bought my D150, the dealer's killer system used a DC-300A to drive the woofer panels of a tri-amped Tympani III. ARC D76 amps were used for mid and high ranges.
I think the pair retailed for about $3000 which was a very high end price in the early 70s. I had to have them so put my hard-earned summer job money down. I used them with Infinity 2000As first, and then Magneplanar T-1Ds.
Beautiful to behold with vanishing low distortion, .05% or less. Early op amp front ends coupled with gobs of NFB produced sounds like nails on a chalk board. Was especially awful with the very rare Crown ES 212 & 224 speakers that might have sounded decent given a chance.
The worst audio purchase I made in 45 years!
Me good!--after the the big Blab story of the fire at the Factory early 70's I admit to feeling sorry and bought the Combo to assist the rebuild /etc/etc
Worst decision I ever made--the freaking amp sounded like Hyenas mating --when it had enough of that it blew DC into the Speakers and fried all the drivers solid
Absolute POS--both of them--Meh and double Meh!
Des
I think the pair retailed for about $3000...
Actually, the amp was $429 including optional faceplate while the preamp was $299. Click here for the line brochure at the time.
I did listen to the dealer (later mentor and boss) and purchased the Citation 11 preamp instead. We compared it to the ICK and it was no contest. The 11 was arguably one of the best SS preamps of that day. It wasn't until the John Curl designed Mark Levinson JC-2 that I heard better.
What I really wanted, but was outside my budget was the $695 Audio Research SP-3 and the $995 Dual 75. It wasn't until 1981 that I purchased an ARC preamp.
Actually, the inexpensive Hafler DH-101 clobbered the Citation 11. It was like night-and-day in favor of the Hafler. I owned them both. I was fooled by Citation's sales demonstration of square wave performance that caused me to buy the Citation 11 and 12. I listened to them for more than a year before buying Hafler kits just for fun. I'm sure glad I discovered Hafler.
Good luck,
John Elison
Actually, the inexpensive Hafler DH-101 clobbered the Citation 11.
Such is the case of technology moving on. The DH-101 wasn't introduced until many years after the Citation was released (1978 vs. 1971 ). I purchased mine in '74.
By 1978, the JC-2 was available which raised the bar even further. I opted for the even better Audio Research SP-6 a few years later.
Much better than the Crown. Bought the companion DH200 amp and Pooged it and rebuilt the power supply. Kept these for several years.
Okay, I guess I was wrong about the time frame. I bought my Citation 11 and 12 at the Bitburg Air Base Audio Club in either 1976 or 1977. I guess I played them for a few years until moving to Albuquerque, NM in 1980 when I bought the Hafler kits. However, the Citation 11 and 12 were nothing like previous Citation components. They used high negative feedback and had very low distortion on repetitive waveforms like square waves and sine waves. On music, they didn't sound very good at all, but being the technical guy that I am, I was impressed with their square wave performance. Let this be a lesson: Whenever a salesman uses test tones in his sales pitch, beware! ;-)
Best regards,
John Elison
Honestly, in the early 70s at the dawn of SS designs, nothing sounded as good as the best tube units. The other prominent SS player at the time, the McIntosh C-28, was a toad.
From my perspective, it was John Curl who changed the rules for what SS could do. I had two friends who bought the JC-2 when it was introduced - a truly exceptional product. Arguably, Bongiorno's Thaedra that followed was pretty good, too. JWC had both of those in his system for comparison circa '76 or so. I still preferred both the sound and the aesthetics of the JC-2. :)
Whenever a salesman uses test tones in his sales pitch, beware!
Which is essentially all we get today with THD and distortion spectrum graphs using a 50 hz sine wave. Similarly, switching amps excel using that criteria.
> > > Honestly, in the early 70s at the dawn of SS designs, nothing sounded as good as the best tube units < < < <
I still think it's true, especially for preamps. Wish I had gotten into tubes long before I did. Oh well. I'm fine now.
While I was using the Cit 11/D-150, the dealer allowed me to borrow the SP-3a over a weekend to hear in my system. I still recall one piece of music that illustrated a key difference - Do It Again by Steely Dan.
The shakers and cymbal strikes that open the piece sounded real with the Audio Research preamp.
I STILL lust after a fine example of the SP-3A (anybody want to swap for an SP-6C?).
Si vis pacem, para bellum
My first ARC preamp was an SP-6C that was quickly updated to an SP-6C-1 following the failure of a component. While the SP-3 was phenomenal in its day, I find that the SP-6 series was clearly superior with its stiffer power supply and improved coupling caps.
Perhaps you just need to have yours brought to current specs.
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