Emotiva’s E-Club Snags 40% Off XPA-1L 250wpc Monoblock Amps with Class A Mode

July 16, 2014

1750

The Emotiva XPA1L Monoblock Amplifier is on sale for $549 from $699. With E-club membership, you can save an additional 20%

I wrote about Emotiva’s E-club membership and special promotional period that gives you 20% off any product. I was so intrigued by the promotion that I decided to sign up for it and give it a test-run so that I could report back here on what I thought.

Here’s my first impression: I decided to purchase two XPA-1L monoblock amplifiers that are now on clearance. The XPA-1L amplifiers, which sold for $699 each ($1,398 for the pair) are now on sale for $549 each (or $1,098 each). The sale price is 21.5% off.

Add the Emotiva 20% E-club membership discount and you can now snag a pair of 250wpc monoblock amplifiers that have the option to run in Class A mode for $878.40. That’s a total of 41.5% off the original price.

While $878.40 is certainly not chump change, you’ll be hard pressed to find a deal like that anywhere—even on the used or demo market. I’m very curious to see what the performance of these XPA-1Ls is like and I’ll be updating my findings and impressions here.

3 COMMENTS

Fred von Lohmann July 16, 2014 at 11:54 PM

Have been very curious about these in their 35w in Class A mode. Is it better than a Pass Aleph 3 (which still fetches $1000 on the used market)?
- info@pooraudiophile.com July 17, 2014 at 5:11 PM
  
  I placed my order for the XPA-1Ls and they will be arriving over the next few days. I'll be sure to report back. From what I've read online some have said that they cannot tell the difference between Class A and Class A/B mode. I personally have not heard the Pass Aleph 3. It's an older amp (circa 1997). The power difference between the Aleph and the XPA-1 200w vs 250w should be nominal. I'll do a special article just on the XPA-1Ls when I get them. There appear to be have been early reports of production issues with this model that appear to have been resolved now. Because there was no return allowed on these — final sale— I thought long and hard before I made the purchase.
- info@pooraudiophile.com August 30, 2014 at 4:21 PM
  
  Fred, I've been playing these for a few weeks now in almost exclusively AB mode. Doing a "flick" of the A/AB switch doesn't produce any "wow" audible difference. I have not done extended listening sessions in Class A to tell you one way or the other. These amps also run pretty warm even in AB mode. I have a hunch they are biased into Class A for quite a few watts even without flicking the switch to Class A.