Crown XLS 1502.... real life test.

Well, I did it. I ordered a Crown XLS 1502 from Amazon today. It won't be here until around May 8th. This will be the first time for Class D in my system and I am very curious to see how it compares to my other amps. Obviously, at its low price I am not going to make a global judgement about all Class D amplifiers based on the way this one sounds.

My main motive is to see what it does for lower efficiency speakers that like power, and of course its overall sound quality. I will report my findings once I have given it a fair try.  

Update...

The Crown XLS 1502 that I bought came a few days early. I have already given it a good audition, compared it to my Mac on my less efficient speakers, and the verdict is...it's going back.

I'll start by saying that this would be a really good choice for a young person on a budget, like a college student, or just someone with a lot of other things more pressing that require their hard earned dollars. However, to my ears, it is not a destination amplifier; not that I really expected it to be.  So, sonically it wasn't very good, but I was surprised that it didn't seem more powerful, given that it was driving a 4 ohm load that would have put it at over 500 watts per channel. It didn't sound any more dynamic than my old Mac 2105 at 105 wpc.

So...the sonics. Not really bad. Everything was ok, and instrumental separation was quite good, but that was almost part of the problem. If my 8 watt 300b integrated would be considered a model for musical "wholeness", and I think that it is, then the 1502 would be towards the other end of the spectrum. It was hard to quantify, but somehow, after listening to a number of different discs of jazz, rock etc.; I came to feel that the parts of the music were a little disjointed, not all of one piece. It was a little distracting. In addition to that, the upper vocal range and lower treble were slightly prominent and somewhat dry sounding. The trait that I found most distracting was really hard to describe, but easier to feel. I noticed, especially during slower more intimate passages of music, like Suzanne Vega's "Small Blue Thing", that even when music was slow and thoughtful, this amp subliminally made it feel "busy" to me.

To conclude, it was not possible with this amp to suspend disbelief, because it didn't sound close enough to reality. Returning to the Mac 2105 last night was like coming home. I am glad that I tried it, and I certainly won't let this experience keep me from experimenting with better quality class D amps in the future. I am sure this is a great amp for it's intended purposes of DJ gigs and sound reinforcement.

John