Crown amps


Hi, I'm new to this board and am blown away by this thread. Every other board I go to seems to think Pro Amps are mid fi. Is anyone using a Crown XTI-2000 amp in a home stereo? My Phase Linear finally died and I need a new amp. I remember the Crown DC300a was a great sounding amp. I will be driving it with a Crown IC 150 pre-amp in mint condition.
tony3d

Showing 1 response by whart

Man, I remember those things from back in the day, early 70's.
The amps were bulletproof, and built to withstand heavy road use. If memory serves, the D150 sounded better than the 300a, but(sorry) the IC 150 was no sonic marvel, even in its day- it had the characteristic sound of a transistor device. This takes me back a while, but i think the Mac C-24 was extant at that time, there was an odd Quintessence preamp that had great unit to unit variability, and all of them sounded lifeless compared to an SP3-a-1 (which, today, would be considered overly romantic). I did not have any hands-on experience with that first Levinson preamp, and maybe I am drawing a blank here, but I cannot remember too many other audiophile preamps from that era (modified Dyna Pas 3's, Marantz 7c, what else?)