emotiva mono block amps any good?

Funny. Mitch, I'm sorry your speakers make both people and intimate objects cry. That doesn't sound very nice at all. And calling my preference regarding amps "laughable" isn't very nice either. I know you're into your hungry, inefficient speakers. And I know you rightly appreciate your full loom of Pass power plants. That's cool. I get it. But assuming that everyone is running absurdly inefficient speakers and that anything churning out less than 500 wpc is a toy just makes you sound willfully ignorant. Or congenitally stupid. And strangely proud about it, in the process. I know none of those things are true. At all. So let's take the rhetoric down a notch.

I would absolutely prefer 50 wpc of class A, high current refinement -- and the Plinius is exceptional, as would be, for example, a Pass Aleph -- to any 150lb, 500-1,000 wpc monster, Emotiva or otherwise. In fact, I think the reflex for bigger, hotter, more is a little silly, at best, and likely just the tail end of a particularly insidious marketing push over the past couple decades (which has been written about here, by myself and others, over the years).

I'm not saying you're wrong. At all. I'd love to hear your setup. But let's all agree not to pretend there only one side to this story. We have no idea what the OP was even talking about, what he might want to feed with it, or anything. Yet the rhetoric has polarized around the old and hackneyed false dichotomy of crushing, hungry more v. inferior little toys. Come on. We all know better.

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Mezz, Ouch!! Ok, ok...my apologies if I offended anyone with my comments. Purely unintentional. I only meant to disagree, I had no intention of being disagreeable.

After being on the 'Gon for 11 or 12 years, I've seen a lot of bashing of mfgs that were not members of the venerable audio upper crust. While spending serious cash to create my own system, with absolutely no regrets on the money I've spent, I can't help but wonder if folk like Emotiva have found a way to do great hifi without charging insane amounts of money.

When I look at my own system, sometimes I think to myself, I spent $9k for a cd player?? Don't get me wrong, I have no regrets. I'm actually saving my money to get their newest one that sells for $13k. Because I love audio, I'll spend the money and won't look back...never have. But something in the back of my head keeps asking me, 'do you really have to spend this kind of money to get great sound?'.

In the next 12 to 18 months I'm planning on revamping my system. I'm considering the Magnepan 20.7. They need serious amplification. Because of this, I've been looking long and hard at the new kids on the block...class D amps. Serious power in a small box with a small price and a smaller electric bill.

Basic human nature hates change. We have to be dragged kicking and screaming to change to something new and different. Audiophiles are no different. We tend to cling to the tried and true. The vinyl guys, bash cd. The cd guys refuse to move on to music stored on a hard drive. Emotiva shows up with all of these products at insanely comparatively low prices, and the audio enthusiast establishment looks at them as interlopers. How dare they sell directly at such low prices?

If you look at my system page, you'll see that my room is 22 feet wide and 70 feet long with a 22 foot high ceiling. That kind of room demands prodigious power and oversized speaker displacement. That is the reason I was asking for a comparison to the Emotiva monoblocs. No offense, but a 50 wpc amp would be laughable in my place. So...no 50 wpc amplifier is ever going to play a speaker that I'll own in this room. For those enthusiasts with conventional sized rooms..a 50 wpc amp may be more than enough. I lived for years in a much smaller place with a 40 wpc reciever (Sansui 771)and it was more than enough.

I have my eye on a pair of Pass Labs X-600.5 monoblocs when I upgrade. They sell for $8k-10k a pair used. The Emotiva 1,000 wpc monoblocs sell for $2500 a pair. So, I believe a mfg like Emotiva has to be given a fair chance. When I get ready to make changes, I will have to give the XPR-1 monoblocs a try. Free 30 day trial, I have nothing to lose.

At those prices and the free 30 day trial, I have to give the new kid on the block a fair audition.

All of that being said, I will always own an Audio Research Reference preamp of some model, price be damned.

Again, I apologize if I ruffled any feathers..I did not intend to be insulting, a smartass or condescending.
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Lowrider,

There is surprisingly little info about the XPR, or I just didn't find it. I did a little looking during some downtime at work and didn't find much in the form of reviews.

What I have run across is a pic of the inside of an XPR-1...

http://www.technologytell.com/hometech/files/2013/01/Internals-of-Emotiva-XPR-1-Mono-block-Reference-Power-Amplifier.jpg

I've also found out that the XPR-1 is actually two amps running in bridged mode running to a bank of 24 10KuF caps that are manufactured by Emotiva for the XPR line.

Many are raving about them on the Emotiva boards. They are also saying that the XPR amps are apparently a healthy step up from the XPA line.

It looks like a beast under the hood.

What I'd really like to know is how many of those watts are available in pure Class A.

Sometimes the best part of the upper crust is the flakiest.

Tony, that's good research. Reviews of the XPA have been very mixed, but the XPR looks like a step forward. Funny...I was wondering about the Class A wattage myself.