For all those sound persons feeling guilty about not stimulating the Elkhart Indiana economy, consider buying a Crown XTi6000 power amplifier. I got the blunt reminder after looking at the rear panel and seeing the decal with the U.S. flag and the words “designed and manufactured in the USA.”
What Crown Audio does not tell you explicitly is that the XTi6000 is beautiful bargain of an amplifier, with the Class I amplifiers, DSP preamps, and Switcher power supply very much similar to the newer Macrotech and iTech amplifiers.
What the Crown Audio XTi6000 does disclose is the 2100 watts per channel at 4-ohms loadings, which is right up there to what the old Macrotech 5000 delivered at 4-ohms. But the 24 pound weight and 19-inch-by-3.5-inch-by-16.2-inch depth of the XTi6000 is plenty less than the old beast. At full tilt, as defined by 1/8th power pink noise per channel, the XTi6000 draws 15.3 amperes at 120VAC and almost all of it comes out the speaker connections with less than 10 percent of the power coming out as heat through the rear fan exhaust.
In other specifications, the Crown Audio XTi6000 puts out 3000 watts per channel at 2-ohms and 1200 watts per channel at 8-ohms. With all fancy electronics, the Total Harmonic Distortion at full power is a modest 0.5 percent, and the damping ratio is a righteous greater than 500 at 8-ohms.
Panels
The front panel is the usual XTi standard two detended encoders as level controls, and 6 bargraph LEDS per channel as ready, signal, -20dB, -10dB, clip, and Thermal overload indications. The common Liquid Crystal Display provides user information plus three push buttons for set/enter, prev/up, and next/down selections on the LCD. And the Power On/Off switch and now standard blue LED provide the power supply status for the XTi6000.
The rear panel for the XTi6000 is a bit different than the other XTi smaller offerings, in that the IEC connector is a 20 ampere type, and the speaker binding posts and pair of NL4 jacks are grouped together in a more vertical pattern. The standard 3.5-inch exhaust fan separates the inputs and outputs, with XLR in and through jacks for the audio signal inputs before the amplifier puts 37.5dB of gain to the signal. Access to the DSP preamp is also by a USB jack for HiQnet connections for uploading presets from Harman/Crown Audio System Architect software that comes with the amplifier. The USB A/B patch cable does not come with the amplifier, but most computer-savvy persons should have plenty of these cables from previous accessory purchases.
Road Testing
In the shop, I just had to pop off the bottom cover and peek inside. Because the XTi 6000 did not promote its digital circuitry, I was compelled to do the peeking as a service to the readership of this review. Having recently done the same to the chassis for both the new Macrotech and iTech, the guts of the XTi6000 are very similar but just a touch different, reflecting a cost sensitive design and XTi family interfacing. There are plenty of circuit boards inside this amplifier, and that would be normally worrisome in terms of reliability, but the direct and ribbon-cable interconnects were done with a lot of attention to maintaining solid mechanical integrity even when thinking about the road abuse these amplifiers would likely endure.
Out at the club gigs, I put the XTi6000 through hell as both a subwoofer amplifier, and alternately as a top-box amplifier for some loud rock band gigs. In keeping with its Class I pedigree, the exhaust fan blew nothing more than slightly warm air while at full-tilt during the gigs. With the manual providing thorough instructions, programming the DSP preamps was straightforward and refreshingly simpler than dealing with the fuller featured Macrotech or iTech amplifiers.
Had I had the XTi6000 amplifier a couple years ago, I wouldn’t have had to choose between the wimpy-powered entry-level power amplifiers that I could afford, and the tour-grade and tour-priced amplifiers that seemed out my budget back then. Looking for shortcomings, I really could not complain when thinking about the value this amplifier offers when 2100 watts per channel is perfect big subwoofer drive. Yeah, the mechanicals could be beefed up on the front panel, but whole idea of the XTi family was to keep the feature set basic and still professional.
