Emotiva UPA-500 Five Channel Power Amplifier Introduction

When a box unexpectedly showed up at my door from Emotiva, I thought it was a preamp, given its unusually compact size. Instead I was surprised to discover it was their new UPA-500 five channel power amplifier. I’ve never been able to one arm an Emotiva up my flight of steps to the Audioholics Showcase Theater Room for testing until now. This little guy weighs less than a mid-fi receiver (about 23 lbs), making it very manageable to lug around and install in tight spaces. But can it pack a punch? Rated at 80wpc x 5 into 8 ohms and 120wpc into 4 ohms it certainly sounds like it does on paper but, let’s find out.

Design Overview

The UPA-500 is a traditional class A/B amplifier design utilizing a single large 350VA toroidal power transformer and large capacitance bank for its power supply. Having a singular larger sized power supply is an advantage that allows the amplifier to deliver more power to any given channel if the output devices can handle it. This, in turn, provides more available headroom, which is critical for effortlessly producing large dynamics and peaks in music and movies. Emotiva claims the UPA-500 has 40,000uF total power supply capacitance and, peering under the hood, you could see their claim is correct with the four 10,000uF, 63V parts connected in parallel. 63V parts provide more than enough margin above the rail voltage needed to hit the 80wpc rating that Emotiva is claiming. The amp module topology is very similar to its bigger XPA series sibling, but in a more compact surface mount form factor. Emotiva also employs a trick circuit that senses the line voltage and automatically switches between 120VAC and 220VAC. Why more amplifier manufacturers don’t do this is beyond me. The UPA-500, like all Emotiva amplifiers, has the CE mark which is a rigorous international safety and regulatory test to ensure the amp will cause no harm to your home or interfere with any of your household electronics or pacemaker (should you have one). 

Emotiva UPA-500 Back view                                              

The back view of the UPA-500 is a bit pedestrian, but the connector spacing is well laid out. The speaker 5-way binding posts and analog RCA connections are all spaced apart 1.5". Try tugging on any of the connectors and you will notice how firmly planted they are into the back panel. Emotiva really knows how to build a durable amp. The UPA-500 doesn’t have balanced inputs, but would you expect otherwise at this price? Most users considering this amp are mating it with a budget A/V receiver or pre/pro that also doesn’t feature balanced connectors. There is a 3.5mm mini-plug trigger input compatible for 5-12V systems and the UPA-500 comes with a detachable two-prong 18AWG power cord.

Emotiva UPA-500 front panel View

The front panel sports Emotiva's same industrial look found in all of their current products. It includes their infamous silver power switch embroidered backlit with their logo (yellow for 'off' state, blue for 'on' state). There are five defeatable LED indicators (one for each channel) that illuminate blue when the amplifier is operating under normal conditions and flash red when all hell breaks loose. I was unable to create such a fault condition in my testing until I accidentally shorted the amp to the ground plate of my lab's 8-ohm test resistors and attempted to conduct a power sweep. Emotiva states that this amplifier is protected from all fault conditions which, to me, is very important and often overlooked by product engineers. I can't tell you how many times I've swapped cables during comparative listening tests where I accidentally shorted the leads. On competently designed amplifiers such as the UPA-500, the amplifier will simply shut down and protect itself and the foolish consumer (or in my case, reviewer) who forget to shut it off before swapping speaker connections. On poorly designed amplifiers, they will either blow output devices or... um, catch fire. In the 12+ years of reviewing amplifiers, I am proud to say I've only blown up one not so well engineered amplifier, which is a testament to all of other brands engineering their products correctly with consumer safety being of utmost importance. Of course, I blew up three samples of that one particular amp, but, moving on...

Set-Up

The UPA-500 was as easy as pie to move around. In fact, I consider it a one-hander amp - even for users ridden with back issues like myself. I connected the UPA-500 to my Marantz SR6004 A/V receiver and Yamaha MCX-2000 MusicCAST and tried it out on a pair of Infinity P363’s I had in for review along with a set of older JBL Pro III surround speakers. This represented a pretty tough load for the UPA-500, since all four speakers are rated at 4-ohms. All speaker cables were Kimber 8PR's along with Impact Acoustics Sonicwave interconnects. The listening tests were conducted in the Audioholics Showcase Theater Room which is a moderately acoustically treated 6,000 ft^3 room courtesy of Auralex Acoustics.