I'm pretty sure I can explain what is happening.
First, the person you spoke with does not know what he is talking about. The amplifier does not see the 4 ohm or whatever impedance of the sub's driver. It sees the input impedance of the sub's amplifier, which is many thousands of ohms (100,000 ohms for the high level input of many of the REL subs), which is therefore a completely negligible load.
The problem is almost certainly that you are connecting the sub's ground to the negative output terminal of the amplifier. The XPA-1 is a fully balanced amplifier, and its negative output terminal therefore drives a signal, rather than being grounded. From the manual for the XPA-1:
Regards,
-- Al
First, the person you spoke with does not know what he is talking about. The amplifier does not see the 4 ohm or whatever impedance of the sub's driver. It sees the input impedance of the sub's amplifier, which is many thousands of ohms (100,000 ohms for the high level input of many of the REL subs), which is therefore a completely negligible load.
The problem is almost certainly that you are connecting the sub's ground to the negative output terminal of the amplifier. The XPA-1 is a fully balanced amplifier, and its negative output terminal therefore drives a signal, rather than being grounded. From the manual for the XPA-1:
DO NOT connect the negative (-) speaker terminal of the XPA-1 to ground, or to the negative speaker terminal of another amplifier. (Do not connect the XPA-1 to any speaker which requires connections between the left and right speakers.) The XPA-1 is a fully differential amplifier and the negative speaker terminal is NOT at ground potential. Connecting the negative speaker terminal of the XPA-1 to ground, or to the negative speaker terminal of another amplifier (including another XPA-1) will cause damage to the XPA-1 or your other equipment.What you should do is to connect the red and yellow wires of the Neutrik cable to the + output of the amp, and connect the black wire to a circuit ground point on the amp. A way to do that, if you are using the amp's balanced XLR input (and its RCA input is therefore unused), would be to obtain an RCA plug, solder the black wire to the ground sleeve connection of that plug (while leaving the center pin unconnected), and insert that plug into the amp's RCA input connector.
Regards,
-- Al