Great unit. Plenty of power. Running preamp to this brings new life to my speakers and the joy of listening in stereo.

A bit heavy, have not compared this to the class D crowns if weight is a concern.

Buy without reservation.

I bought this amp to replace a hand-me-down Crown D75A I was using with a set of KEF Q300's, which I use as monitors in my home studio. I refuse to believe I need to spend a fortune to get a good amp with how far technology has come these days, so I was looking for the best stereo power amp I could find for under $300, keeping in mind that I needed something quiet.

This amp is perfect. I can definitely notice a huge improvement over my old D75A right off the bat. This amp sounds much better: it feels like it really gives the music the body and depth I knew it had in it, and does this without coloring the sound. Also, I am running it in stereo mode, and the gain between the two channels is much tighter, so my center image is right down center whereas it used to be a little off to the right. Finally, it's way more power than I could ever need for my Q300's, but I love knowing I have all that clean headroom.

I was a little mislead by other reviews I read, which implied that the fans are so quiet you can't ever hear them: they certainly make a noise, but it is a very quiet and low in frequency, and in fact is a rather warm and pleasant feeling hum (unlike the nasty sounding hums of some amps). Significantly though, it is masked by even the quietest content playing on my speakers, so it is no trouble at all for mixing. I will have to turn it off when I am recording, but it's so easy to switch on (doesn't make any pops and instantly delivers the gain you need) so I could just turn it on between takes anyway if I needed. All in all, sufficiently quiet enough for my home studio purposes.

Also, worth noting: this seems to be the european version of the amp, judging by the binding posts on the back. From the manual: "Binding posts on European models come with safety plugs installed to prevent European power cords from being inserted. The side entry positions for these connectors should therefore be used for European models". This amazon listing came with safety plugs, and so you have to use the side entry positions (which was a little annoying, because I'd prefer to use banana plugs, but oh well).

Brilliant amplifier, does what it says well. This is a quite heavy amp with 1 stereo rca and 1 stereo xlr input with separated potentiometers, fault-clip-good signal sensors, a ground lift, bridge audio and an on-off button (that's it). If you want more control and options look an Crown XLR model. XLi uses a simple is always better approach.

Quality sound system deliver a quality power amps and this amps delivers all the time. I used the Crown XLi800 to drive my top-end speaker. The quality is super clear and crisp and with no distortion. This is a very good amp to have whenever you need good quality of music to hit your ears drums.

So far this is a great amp with great sound. Much better than our previous amp of a different brand.