Emotiva equipmet, how good is it?

Wow this is all very helpful. I am going to try and audition a few items at my local shop.  They sell the Emotiva and others.  I like some of the other suggestions and am looking at those too.  I also look at the Cambridge AUDIO CXA80 and wondered if anyone had thoughts on this.



Please keep it coming it is good to be educated. 

I currently own an XSP-1 and I just upgraded from my 2 XPA 2 GEN 2  to 2 XPR 2.  The older Emotiva amps had huge trsnsfomers and lots of headroom.  The newer amps all have switch mode power supplies.  I still have both of my XPA 2s with over 2 years warranty left and transferable if anyone is  interested!

I had 2 Emotiva XPA-1 amps.  My late 1970s Amber Stereo 70s in bridged monoblock mode sonically sounded so much better than the XPA-1s, but the Ambers did not provide extra overall oomph that the higher power XPA-1s delivered in my current larger listening room.  I now use Bryston 7B3s, but for the money, Emotivas deliver a pretty good package for the price point.

I’ve been using an Emotiva setup for 3 years and love it. I have a setup close to the initial system that someone else above started with. It’s their XSP-1 stereo pre-amp and the 2nd gen XPA-2 amplifier. Nothing but love for it. FWIW, which probably isn’t much for the internet, a couple buddies and I did a bunch of component head to head listening events. All blind taste testing for ears. When we did the pre-amps, several people picked my XSP-1 as their favorite, most picked a Spectral as the winner. We demoed like 11 pre-amps that people had in their houses either in active use or storage. The XPA-2 amp was similar. Power in spades though compared to some of the smaller high end stuff that people brought to the get together.

I have the Sherbourn PA-50 which is pretty much they same as the small Emotiva amp you’re looking at. It’s a nice little amp that’ll power most any smaller bookshelf. For its footprint it’s hard to beat.  

 IMHO the difference an amplifier makes in sound is subtle - to my ears. 

 I have 3 power amps - a Emotiva XP2, an old Cambridge 200 watt and an even older Phase Linear 400 S2. Remarkably the old Phase sounds really good powering some Yamaha 1000's running without a preamp as the Phase has volume controls.