Crown XLS1000 Power Amplifier

Through the years I have purchased many items from Amazon...CDs, books, computers, tablets and various electronics. To my knowledge I have written only a few reviews. I am the type that expects the products I buy to match up to my expectations and feel no need to express my opinion unless some item is truly bad and I feel the need to warn others, and that has seldom happened. But now I have a product that so completely surprised me with its quality that I am compelled to write something in praise of it.I have been an audio nut for decades. I have owned many different pieces of gear in a never ending search for great musical sound. Now that i am retired and live on a reduced income I no longer can afford expensive gear and have to live within my means. I own a very excellent Peachtree Idecco which is a great DAC, headphone amp, preamp and amp in one box. I highly recommend this item. But it has only about 30 watts per channel into 8 ohms which is not truly sufficient to drive my 84db efficient speakers (Ellis Audio) to my satisfaction. So I have been looking for a good external amp to feed from the pre-amp outs on the Peachtree. I spent many months looking at reviews and blogs.A while back I started looking at the information about the Crown XLS series of amps which are made and marketed for professional DJs. My concern was would one of these amps work in my home audio system? I finally took the plunge and ordered the least powerful model as I figured it would still be enough to properly drive my speakers. If it did not sound good enough for my ears I would return it and continue my searching.Well I am surprised. This amp is excellent. I am very happy with its lack of sonic character. That is right...lack of character. It sends the signals from my pre-amp to my speakers without adding any sound of its own. It is not dry, not warm. It just does the job with no distortion. From six inches away from the speakers when no music is playing it is dead silent. The music comes through with grace and clarity and the bass is very strong while the treble has no grain in human voices which sometimes mars amps not properly made. My Peachtree has a tube in the signal path so I get a slightly warm sound sent to the Crown which is transfered to my speakers untouched.To demonstrate how accurate this amp is I played several old Cds from the 1980s which were poorly mastered and I knew in advance were harsh sounding. They sounded very harsh still. You can't really fix a poorly done recording. When I put on newer, well done recordings (such as Chantel Chamberlain and Madeleine Peyreaux) the results were stunning.This amp will not accept spade endings on speaker wire, but I purchased a cheap adapter to use the banana plugs and this works just fine.The only "negative" I can mention is that at low listening levels it does not resolve music quite as well as some more expensive amps designed solely for home use. Some details get lost, but it is still good. At moderate to loud volumes the amp shines. I consider my $291 to be well worth it.

Crown's XLS1000 power amp is an excellent, relatively inexpensive, high-power (215 watts/ch into 8 ohms', 350 watts/ch into 4 ohms and 550 watts/ch into 2 ohms) professional, stereo power amplifier. It is small and lightweight (8.6 lbs) and quiet and effortless driving even low-impedance speakers such as older Acoustic Research AR-3s, AR-3as and AR-LSTs -- speakers known for their very difficult low-impedance, capacitive-reactive and low-efficiency loads for an amplifier. However, many a lesser amp would suffer overheating or self-destruction driving many of these older speaker designs at high-output levels, but the new pro-level Crown drives them effortlessly, rarely activating its quiet fan. Nevertheless, as with any linear, low-distortion power amp, this amp has no "personality" of its own: it sounds neither better than nor worse than any other amp with this level of low distortion, and it is simply "clean." I know of a friend who uses a single XLS 1000 to drive two huge HSU subwoofers (set to below 20 Hz cutoff), and he reports that the amp (set in "Stereo Bypass" mode) can easily power them both in a large listening room without strain.There are many safety features built into this design, such as output current limiting, DC-offset protection, thermal protection and so forth. The amp's back panel is very flexible for inputs/outputs with 4-pole, Class II, Speakon-type connectors (pro-level speaker connection) in addition to the standard binding posts that will accept banana plugs or bare wire; input connection is made by balanced XLR, ¼-inch jack or the consumer-grade unbalanced RCA phono connectors.In my experience, these new pro amps offer an excellent alternative to consumer amps for driving any type of loudspeaker -- professional or consumer. I use QSC and Crown pro amps almost exclusively now for about everything, and the older consumer-type power amps can't easily compete with the reliable, efficient design of this professional-type amplifier. The Crown XLS 1000 amp is an advanced class-D design, and the result is a cool-running, reliable powerhouse that is unaffected by the usual problems associated with class A, A/B and class B power amps of the past.This is a highly recommended power amp!

Very nice Class D amp. I believe Class D amps are the future of amplifiers (IMHO). Very nice build quality through and through. Great binding posts, quality buttons and case. The sound is incredible with a big punch for bass all the way through detailed highs. The price is a steal for the performance.The reason for 4 stars is only because it wasn't totally clear that the line voltage for "pre out" has to be much higher than consumer equipment typically puts out.I was planning on running my Sonus Faber fronts through the Crown, fed by my Denon surround processor. Apparently the voltage was too low and no sound came out of the speakers at normal levels. I don't recall the line voltage-in the Crown requires (2-3v?) and I didn't measure mine.So how do I know this was such a great sounding amp? My lowly MP3 player had plenty of line voltage. If the MP3 player was to be my use case, I'd still own that wonderful, clear, simple, powerful, cool-running little amp (returned for a full refund -- great service Amazon!)My new rule of thumb is not to mix consumer and pro electronics.