Vintage Power Amp vs new age power amp

i suspect in most of cases budget oriented componets are built with less complexity and expense for better profits and certainly less performance. having all these factors reversed for the modern amp will bring retail price to quite large numbers(consider accuphase, pass, bryston examples of all advanced amplification design). going vintage in this case will get you the most advanced engineering audio amplification technologies for less money. you need to know how to service vintage components though.

IMO, the difference between the Emotiva and Marantz may be a toss-up, provided the latter has been recapped, bias and DC offset checked and adjusted, etc., so that the amp is operating at original specs. Vintage Marantz amps are not cheap to acquire, and you have to factor in the additional cost of refurbishing the amp into your decision, particularly when you are not doing the job yourself. I have owned a collection of vintage and modern amps. The vintage amps have all held their own pretty well versus my modern amps, but to my ears, the modern amps had the edge in transparency and more natural presentation.

I purchased Emotiva UPA 1 amps to power my Magneplanar speakers (MGI imp and MMG). These amps have the same basic layout as your XPA 3 but with a beefier power supply (far more capacitance). They are a very good amplifier and have quite a bit of power and a modern very detailed forward sound. At first I was quite taken by this precise detailed sound but over time I started to miss the warm musical sound of my prior amps (Marantz 1200 and Creek 4330) so I started searching for a warm musical but powerful amp and settled on a Conrad Johnson MF 2300A. It has far more bass cojones than the Emotiva and is very musical and am very satisfied with this amp. It's much mellower than the Emo and to my ears far more like real music.

I found that with the Emo I was always futzing with cables, interconnects, speaker placement and so forth. Once I put the CJ in the system (over a year ago) I pretty much thought "sounds about right" and haven't really futzed with it. But the amp is 16 years old and just sent it to CJ for a refurbishing. I put the Emos back in the system and first thing my wife said is "it's brighter isn't it?". Well, yes it is not in a drive you out of the room way but definitely noticeable. So I put the MG I's back in since they have a mellower sound than the QR planars and it sounds pretty good but can't wait for my CJ to come back.

Argh... definitely cannot compare either Marantz or Emotiva with brands like Conrad Johnson, Mcintosh, ML.. etc.. be it vintage or new hahah

Unless you are prepared to recap, bias and have the DC offset checked and adjusted, best to go with new. Aged, that is over ten years old, will not meet their original specs. Enjoy the music and stop fuzzing with the 'gear'.