I own the latest model with XLR connections and I am very impressed with the Earthquake Cinenova Grande 5. Definitely, the best multichannel amp I have ever heard. It provides great clean power with finesse.The bass is tight and defined. Detail is very good, I'm hearing subtle things which I didn't hear before. The highs are extended without being bright. I can listen to music at low volumes with great dynamics and at high volumes without fatiguing to my ears. I haven't found any coloration or any distortion at low and high volumes. It is very, I said VERY well built, which brings a lot of value to cost. It can be easily converted to 230V. It has many advantages to other multichannel amps (too many to list). I have heard many high end amps on this price range and up and I have to tell you, unless you go towards high end monoblocks you really can't beat this giant. It is truly A MASTERPIECE.

Folks I was looking around for what you guys have been posting here about Cinenova. GOD
Thank you guys!!!!!
The making of Cinenova.
Back in the 90's, I was in Boston Ma. at Joel Cohen home He was hosting an audio society gathering at his home, Joel is one of founder of the surround processor as we know it. Joel founded Audio Concept and have since retired and moved to Australia. During the conference Joel award Earthquake of been “ unconventionally better than the product look” Joel said this in front of Engineers from Harman, Bose, and many others. In fact Joel repeated these comments in many reviews.
In 1990, I had built 4 subwoofers for Joel that were 7th order band pass, for those of you who don’t know what that is. It’s a box where the subwoofer is place in the middle inside the box firing into two opposite enclosures. Each of the enclosure is tuned with a port,one octave apart. In any event, Joel had placed these four enclosures in the corner of his home theater room. During this conference, Joel was bragging about getting some 110 DB at 13 Hz in this room ( not sure about the number). Joel then asked me why don’t I make a five channel amplifier that can deliver a 36 dB dynamic headroom over 5 watt note. I liked his idea and ran with it to my engineers in CA. At that time I had a German Engineer name Kirk Bracht. Kirk and I did not hit the drawing board , we hit the listening room. Armed with an Audio Precision, HP,Fluke analyzers, we placed our own version of Titan speakers in a reasonably sized room. We had acquired several tube amplifiers, solid state, class A, Class AB, we tested it all. We went from MOSFET to bipolar; from class A to class D; listening, measuring, time energy frequency plot, blind folded listening test we did it all.
When it was all said and done, we knew that it will be class AB TUNED feedback that we have to build. We knew that it will be bipolar, and it better have a massive current and massive damping factor.
Each channel of the Cinenova is loaded with the best Toshiba devices ever made. Each device has an RMS rating of 300Watts. WE USED 10 PER BOARD. Then we went on to make the amplifier modular to save the user freight cost in the event of failures. And placed a massive 40 lbs transformer by filer design to deliver total channel isolation. The amplifier has one toroid but each channel has its own power supply
The result was a 110 lbs monster amp that delivered the following stats.
5 channel x 300 WRMS 8 ohm ( actually measured 360WRMS in different reviews)
Distortion THD+ NOISE wide band 0.003
Signal to noise well over 110dBA over full bandwidth
Channel separation also 110dBA
Now then what is the damping factor which is a measure of quality a 25 damping factor and up is good. Well guys it was so high that we could not measure it. I think we report about 1500++

Enough stats since this is about audio, you are the judges, thank you very much for your kind words. One more thing. If you have a Cinenova 3,5,7 that is serial number starts with 95 up until 20, you might want to call us for an estimate on a tune up for it. We offer a tune up for these amplifiers that includes changing all of the capacitors ( our cost on the caps $50 per channel) installing an input hush circuit, soft start. Typically $350 on the 3 channel and about 500$ on the 5 and the 7 channel. The replacement capacitor uses thin film technology with 100 Vdc up from 8 Vdc.
I read on this form that one of you had seen the clip light indicator flashing. It will flash as follow. IF the user hits 70 to 80 % of the max output it will flash That is fine and normal. If the LED is continually on, then you are clipping flashing is normal .
Again thanks for this form and for you that you share your experience with other users,
Your brother in audiophile
Joseph Sahyoun, ESC president.

I have used this amp for 5 months now.i previously used a rotel rmb 1095.In 5 channel dvd,sacd audio it is a good improvment.The amp really puts power to all the speakers without stress.It seems to have more punch and sounds more open.I love listening to music loud on occasions,and with the rotel after 20 to 30 minutes of extreme listening it would get too hot and shut down.The cinenova stays warm and keeps on going.Now when i say loud i mean 110dbs or more.Most audiophiles don't listen at those levels i know.I grew up with cerwin vegas and klipsch,so i still love rockin out at times.It's the kid in me yet i guess.I did prefer my rotel rmb 1090 for 2 channel listening as it could play as loud as i could want were the cinenova's clip lights will come on if i try to reach the same volumes i did with the 1090.I read alot of reviews before buying this amp how everyone said "i never saw the clip lights come on no matter how hard i pushed it".Well they come on for me?!The rotel 1090 was not as fast as the nova but i think it had more detail and just all around more power.The cinenova is great for movies.Alot more detail than the rotel 1095.Not a very technical review i know.This is a great amp though for its price which can be bought new for around $2500 if you look.

powerful clean sound

nada

this amp has the most powerful clean sound my pre amp i use a pioneer vsx-92 for the new audio formats like tru-hd paid 700.00 for the receiver what a good pair speakers are top of the line studio jbl l890, lc2, l820, this combination competes with my neighbors 30.000 dollar system

Customer Service

none

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emotiva lpa-1

Tonally correct. Powerful for small effecient speakers.

Hugh and heavy. Single ended only. Small cheap plastic speaker connections. Unable to drive inefficient speakers with dynamic sound reproduction.

I purchased this amp for my surround system and for that purpose, it does a better job than all multichannel amps I've tried. Tonally correct, quick, and non fatiguing at high SPL. Home theater has never sounding so good.

I listen to a lot of music in 2 channel with B&W 802's and this amp, while sounding good, just doesn't have the impact or dynamics with percussion. I find myself getting bored with the music.

If your front left and right speakers that need amps instead of shear voltage them, or use this amp to listen in 2 channel purchase the 3 channel version and power you left and right with different amps.

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Classe, Adcom, Rotel

Customer service
Build Quality
Superior sound musically as well as Home Theater mode.

None

Cinenova Grande is simply, "Awesome"!
Its all what is described in these reviews but I am in the customer service business of High Tech components.
I had an issue with a buzzing in my 3 fronts. I'm Bi Amping. I called Earthquake and was handle professionally as well as directed in what to do to take care of the problem.
It came down the the point where I even received phone calls from the President / Head engineer.
I do not know of any other company today in which this type of postion being held by a professional, would be involved at the customer level.
My hats off to this company because its obvious by the reviews posted on this site that Earthquake sound should be considered by all Audiophiles going forward.
These folks were great and my problem has been solved. It required a little work but we are solved and listening to that zero floor noise that these Amps are known for.
Thanks again Earthquake sound, you folks are appreciated.

Customer Service

Second to None!

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B&K Adcom

Build,Power,Looks

So far so good, NONE.

Just is a great amp all the way around! I have had it over a year, and it seems to just get better! For the money, you just can not beat how it sounds and how well its put together! More power then i will ever need. If you get a chance to pick one up, i would!

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B&K, Fosgate, SAE, Marantz, Anthem

Power; Looks; Price; Clean Sound; No Distortion.

Now that they have Balanced Inputs, None!

I have had this amazing amp for about two and a half years and I ‘d have to say it is the best piece of audio I have ever owned. As everyone here as already stated, it is a beast. But it is a beauty as well. Since this thing weighs about 20 lbs. more than my wife. (My wife’s about a buck twenty). I keep it on an amp stand that I built on the floor in front of my rack. It doesn't fit on my rack anyway and the amp stand has wheels, which comes in handy when moving it around. Why does this thing weigh so much? Well to start with, there is an enormous 40 pound, 3.6kVA, ferrite core toroidal power transformer. You will definitely need the 2 large handles on the front if you plan on moving this mammoth into a rack. I get statements all the time like “what the hell is that thing sitting in the middle of your floor? The military crate that it comes in is a nice touch but what’s inside the crate is what we’re here to talk about. I have two pair of main speakers that I use, Klipsch La Scalas for theater and Tannoy Dual Concentric Monitor Royals for music with a Parasound 2500u for my pre/pro. I’d have to say the Cinenova powering the Tannoys is one of the best musical experiences I have ever heard. I have brought tears to the eyes of my audiophile friends. Of course this happens only after a couple of bottles of vino. The sign of a good piece of audio, IMO, is one that adds nothing to the music. No color, no distortion, no noise. Well, mission accomplished with this combo. This amp is dead silent. Earthquake is so bold that they even include a hand written spec sheet with actual bench test results for each of the 5 individual channels. The results of mine were just as amazing as they claim. Looks. Some people (mostly women) don’t care for the looks. I love the way this thing looks. Why else would I have this thing front and center? A good description of the front panel comes courtesy of Richard Hardesty: “The front panel is made from a thick, aluminum extension. Six polished horizontal fins and the CineNova Grande badge are produced by CNC machining on the face of this extrusion and the result is an elegant, if somewhat less than subtle, three-dimensional look. There is a power switch at the lower left of the front panel with an integral LED power indicator and five LEDs labeled LF, Center, RF, LS, RS are centered on the lower section of the panel. These LEDs show when the indicated channel is over-driven (clipping) but I never saw them light up and I doubt that most users will either. Driving an amplifier with this much power into clipping is likely to damage your speakers and your ears”. I have not owned any other amp in this class, but I did listen to others in it’s class before I bought it and I can say nothing I listened to sounded better at any price. Some I listened to were more than twice the price. There is absolutely no distortion that I can hear at any volume setting. Only amazing sound. It never sounds strained. It's like it kind of laughs when you try to give it a real test. As if to say: "Bring it on" and "That’s all ya got?" I was pretty much set on an all-in-one receiver when I decided to look at separates and I’m so happy I discovered this great amp. The new model has balanced inputs, which is nice, but I can certainly live without those. My pre/pro doesn’t have them anyway. I highly recommend this amp to anyone who wants to hear music and/or theater at it’s very best. “An amplifier like the Earthquake CineNova Grande is the kind of component that other manufacturers fear, neighbors dread and men lust after.” -Clint Walker

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Nothing close.

Clean, honest, neutral power.

Weight...130lbs!

This amp took a while to burn in, but the wait was well worth it. Huge soundstage, great separation and very tranparent...overall an amazing amp. You really would have to spend close to 10 grand to better this beast.

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Rotel, Anthem, Nakamichi, HK.

Value, power, 10 year warranty, true monoblock design, clarity, detail, cleanliness, depth, and tightness. Super high-quality build and design throughout.

Very flimsy power cord included. Probably want to upgrade simultaneously. If you aren't strong enough, you'll need a couple of folks to help you hoist it into position in your cabinet/tower. This unit is a 2 year old model and didn't have balanced inputs (didn't matter to me though) although the newer "Signature" model will have balanced inputs.

This is one heck of a beast! They tell you in the manual to make certain you don't hurt your back --- they're right. This amp comes shipped to you in a wooden military artillery crate --- with rope handles. No other amp that I am aware of comes in such an enclosure. Second, it weighs a ton. Third, you can feel and see the high quality that went into its build/design. This is a 300W X 5 @ 8 ohm amp (600W @ 4 ohms and 1,000W @ 2 ohms). This makes it one of the most powerful multi-channel amps available for home use. Second, it is five monoblocks housed in one container. If one of the amps go bad, all you do is detach it and send it in for repair --- not the whole amp; you get to use the remaining four channels while the bad one is being fixed. Third, the louder you play it the better its THD performance. Fourth, this amp actually runs cool. The clarity, detail, depth, tightness, cleanliness, and range is superb. I use this amp to power my Def Tech BPVX surrounds and it performs flawlessly. I run a Bryston 14B SST (600W X 2 @ 8 ohms) for my fronts and a Bryston 7B SST (600W @ 8 ohms monoblock) for my center (I have a Rotel RSP-1098 as my pre-pro). The CineNova complements the Brystons beautifully. I needed an amp with brute force yet honest and clean performance to sonically match the Brystons and the CineNova has accomplished it. For kicks I disconnected my Brystons and hooked up the CineNova to my c/l/r and side surrounds and it performed extremely well. I'd venture to say that if I were blindfolded, I'd have a difficult time telling it apart from the Bryston. The only area I noticed is in some drum riffs. The Bryston had a more realistic sound whereas the CineNova got a tad muffled but other than that, it sounded indistinguishable. It performs extremely well for both multi-channel music and movies. I was watching Superman the other night and I was hearing things of infinitesimal detail (beeper, shattering glass) that I never heard with my Rotel RMB-1095. Elton John's recently released Goodbye Yellow Brick Road SACD sounded incredible throughout all amps in my system. I'd venture to say that this amp could easily rival some extremely expensive alternatives like Classe' and Krell to name a few. Whatever advantages they may have over the CineNova would be miniscule and hardly audible with the naked ear. If you are in the market for a very high-end amp that holds the test of time, sound quality, power, and value, this amp is for you.

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Bryston 14B SST, Bryston 7B SST, Rotel RMB-1095, Denon AVR-5803.