XTZ Class A100D3 Amplifier - partial report

[Macca]

Only partial? Yes that's right. So much going on with this amp I have not had the chance to try everything yet. But, here are is the story (almost) so far:

This is a big, heavy amp. I was warned to watch my back by a helpful member, unfortuately I still managed to stretch a muscle somewhere lugging this thing back home and into position. Giving me jip as I type...

As some will know I was after a really chunky power amp to drive my Celestions. They have seen off a lot of amps, integrateds and power amps. Look on the net you will see this in users comments and even in for sale adds 'difficult load, you will need a powerful amp.' The Linn LK100 I am using does a fair job but I have a large-ish room to fill and it is easy to hear it clipping on peaks sometimes. With seriously deep bass programme there is a little lack of bottom end definition, making things a bit to 'thuddy' to be convincing. I have a slight 'midrange bloom' as they say - slight but enough to irritate me a little. This may be down to the Croft pre amp though.

Also Dave DSJR is always banging on about the 'coarse and grainy' sound of the LK100 and that I should really be using something 'a lot better'. Whilst I don't agree that the LK100 is coarse and grainy, I do respect Dave's opinions and the Linn is perhaps a little old and outclassed in my system.

Nevertheless a Brio-R integrated jsut won't cut it in this situation so I had to look elsewhere. One suggestion thrown up on my wanted thread was the XTZ Class A power amp. 112 watts into 8 oms 196 into 4 ohms, more currents than a Marks and Spencer tea cake, and switchable between class A and class B (or AB as they call it) modes. Euros 720 brand new delivered. Then I discover that for just another 60 Euros you can have the same power amp but with a built in pre amp section that has:

4 line level inputs
MC and MM phono stages
Built in DAC with 3 coax inputs and 1 optical
2 line level outputs for powered subs
Aluminium remote control

All on a sesame seed bun. (no, not really).

Now as Magnum P.I. always used to say: 'I know what your thinking and you're right.' Surely for 60 Euros this will be a cheap DAC and a load of integrated circuits and is no way better than my Croft pre. But for just 60 more euros I thought: 'what the hell lets have all the bells and whistles.' Plus - Take out the bridging link and you just have the power amp so no downside.

The first thing you do when you buy anything electrical is plug it in and see if it works. So I plonked it down, set to intergrated, class AB, hooked up a CD player and off we went.

Next installment tomorrow - same Bat Time, same Bat Channel...

[isuckedmandelsonslemons]

Excellent. Enjoyed reading that. You definitely have a gift for writing

[Macca]

Excellent. Enjoyed reading that. You definitely have a gift for writing

Thanks Harry. Knowing your background that is quite a compliment. I can't believe Alan Sircom turned me down! Seriously though any slight ability I might have to string words together is down to my having been fortunate enough to have received a very good Grammer School education, and nothing at all to do with my nascent genius (or lack of it )

[AlfaGTV]

Good writeup! Reading with interest as i used to own its sister product, Advance Acoustic MAP 303 II, which only differs in spec'ing of some components.
(Though mine did not have the DAC part)

Regards //Mike

[isuckedmandelsonslemons]

Thanks Harry. Knowing your background that is quite a compliment. I can't believe Alan Sircom turned me down! Seriously though any slight ability I might have to string words together is down to my having been fortunate enough to have received a very good Grammer School education, and nothing at all to do with my nascent genius (or lack of it )

Bring back the Grammar Schools. Them people will know how to spell :-)

RE getting turned down. I've wa turned down for a shitty PR job despite working as a newspaper editor and three years on the second best selling Sunday newspaper. That was because I didn't have a degree.

Anyway, very enjoyable read. Looking forward to next instalment.

[Effem]

I will be interested in the next instalment too Martin as like what I 'as the same bloomin' amp guvnor ( to grammar sckool edoocayshun)

[Macca]

Bring back the Grammar Schools. Them people will know how to spell :-)

.

I gave my sub the day off

Anyways, on with part two, I will attempt to make less typos this time.

First things first I want to outline my philosphy towards amplification as this is quite relevant to what follows. I am not really comfortable with describing the 'sound of an amplifier'. If the notionally perfect amplifier is a straight wire with gain, adding nothing to the sound, then by definition any amplifier that has its own sound is fundementally flawed. When we describe amplifiers as being 'warm', 'bright', 'Bass heavy', 'bass light' and so forth we are really describing the sound of the loudspeakers being driven by that amp and not the amp itself. Many people use woefully under-powered amps for they volume levels they play at, looking at the specs and saying 'well the speakers are 90dB and the amp has 40 watts out put so I will get 105 dB in room and that is plenty' but it just doesn't work that way in practice. You get clipping and distortion, making the sound 'hard' and collapsing the sound stage into a ball of mush between the speakers. Okay if you have a valve amp it clips more smoothly and doesn't sound so bad, but this is still something to be avoided and so my solution is to go for overkill on power and current delivery. It's the only way to be sure.

Consquently I was not expecting this amp to show night and day differences to the Linn Lk100. What I was hoping for was to gain some improvements in the following areas:
Bass distortion
Midrange bloom
Lack of headroom

So where were we? Oh yeah - I'd hooked up a Sony CDP761E. It already had a copy of 'All Saints - All Hits' inside as this was the last thing I had listened to on the previous amplification (Croft Micro Basic pre/Linn Lk100 for those not keeping up). A good recording, it is not massively dynamic but it does not suffer from loudness and it has some very well recorded female vocal harmonies plus some deep 'club' bass on some tracks so a reasonable first test.

First thing I noticed was that blacks were blacker. An old cliche I know but the noise floor drop (if that is what causes this phenomona) was marked. Track 2 'Never Ever' is a pleasing little piece of commercial hip-hop with a lot of unsupported vocal harmonies. These do sound utterly enchanting reproduced well, one of those little things that sets a decent sound system apart from an i-pod dock. However I thought they sounded slightly less beautiful then previously - possibly the Croft being missed here? It was the slightest of differences, though.

I ran throught the rest of the album, increasing the volume at one point to party levels just to see at what point things would break up. Quite astonishingly, there was absolutly no clipping, no collapsing of the sound, even though I knew I was playing very loud it did not sound loud, just 'big'. In the end I was worried about the loudspeakers so I backed off again without finding the upper limit. But there was never, ever any sign of strain. Marvelous!

A few more albums followed, Santana Abraxas once again showing up those blacker blacks, especially when Tito goes for it with the Tom Toms. I tried pushing the volume on this album too. with the same result, the sound just got bigger with no loudness/distortion evident.

Well it can't all be upsides and one thing I had noticed was that although I was getting a crystal clear and very hi-fi sound, it was, ultimately, a little too forensic and consequently just a little bit bland. I swapped interconnects from the Belkin Pure AV to Audioquest Turquoise. This usually makes quite an improvement. Not today, it didn't. I decided to try another CD player so hooked up a Sony XB930E QS with its fancy fixed laser mech. This has a digital out so I thought I would kill two birds with one stone and hook it straight into the DAC and see what that sounded like. I put the All Saints CD on again and sat back. Whoa! Now we were cooking on gas! Blandness gone, bass even better, deeper with more texture, female vocal harmonies sounding very pretty indeed. I wanted to walk to the other end of the room and start chatting them up. There was a 'fruitiness' to the sound (I know, but how to describe these things?) that was not there before.

I decided to jump straight to thebig one - Steely Dan's 'Gaucho' - Just tremendously good sound. The best I have heard this album reproduced was the DVD-A played through a friend's not dissimilar 'big rig'. Now this was only the re-mastered CD ( I have nothinf that will play the DVD-A) but it was so beautifully reproduced I was starting to think my can of Murphy's had been spiked...

I've never been much for the transport/DAC route in the past, this has opened my eyes a bit.

Still to come - testing the MM stage, testing in pure class A mode, and testing as a stand alone power amp with my Croft pre. So will leave it there for the moment. As always, your comments are invited.

[Macca]

I will be interested in the next instalment too Martin as like what I 'as the same bloomin' amp guvnor ( to grammar sckool edoocayshun)

Never spotted that Frank - How long have you had it (the amp, not the edoocayshun) ?

[lurcher]

Interesting write up, more to come I guess, but without wanting to cause a argument, just interested in your view, how do you see the following statements from your text.

I am not really comfortable with describing the 'sound of an amplifier'. If the notionally perfect amplifier is a straight wire with gain, adding nothing to the sound, then by definition any amplifier that has its own sound is fundementally flawed. When we describe amplifiers as being 'warm', 'bright', 'Bass heavy', 'bass light' and so forth we are really describing the sound of the loudspeakers being driven by that amp and not the amp itself.

and

it was, ultimately, a little too forensic and consequently just a little bit bland.

First thing I noticed was that blacks were blacker.

The second two seem to be pointing to the amplifier itself having a sound.

[Effem]

Never spotted that Frank - How long have you had it (the amp, not the edoocayshun) ?

I have owned it for at least 2 years now Martin. I won't make any comments about your findings with this amp until you have had a chance to put it through it's paces in full