The PASS XA-amp(An amazing experience for me)

[kevinlin1013]

Hello everyone:
I come from Taiwan and I'm a freshman of audioDIY. I have
listened the PASS Labs XA-160 AMP in an audio dealer.With the
dCS digital source and spectral DMC-30 preamp and the lumenwhite whitelight loudspeaker. This system is the most beautiful sound I have ever heard. Very smooth/natural/detail in high and mid. As a classical music lover,I feel this system can reproduct the sound I need. I know XA160/XA200 are very good but expensive and I found PASS Labs will release XA30/XA60/XA100 How about them? The old Aleph amps are pure class ,too. What the different between the Aleph and the new samll-XA amps?
Thanks a lot (My english writing is poor ,sorry!)

[eLarson]

Basically an XA is a super-symmetric amp that also uses the Aleph idea. There's a white paper over at PassLabs.com that describes it: http://www.passlabs.com/downloads/xa_paper.pdf

cheers,
eL
(and welcome to the forum!)

[Variac]

I believe that the Aleph X which has been a DIY project on this forum is very similar...

[tiefbassuebertr]

Originally Posted by kevinlin1013

Hello everyone:
I come from Taiwan and I'm a freshman of audioDIY. I have
listened the PASS Labs XA-160 AMP in an audio dealer.With the
dCS digital source and spectral DMC-30 preamp and the lumenwhite whitelight loudspeaker. This system is the most beautiful sound I have ever heard. Very smooth/natural/detail in high and mid. As a classical music lover,I feel this system can reproduct the sound I need. I know XA160/XA200 are very good but expensive and I found PASS Labs will release XA30/XA60/XA100 How about them? The old Aleph amps are pure class ,too. What the different between the Aleph and the new samll-XA amps?
Thanks a lot (My english writing is poor ,sorry!)

In order to the attenuation of the cost you must know, that the use of Passlabs amps (like Aleph series, ZEN or XA-Series) for the low frequency aera below 400- max 600 Hz isn't essential. Normal Class-AB power amps with level control is possible to be use without audible disadvantages (NAD 2400 or 2600 from "Monitor" series in good used condition is e. g. an appropriate choice).

This means at one hand at first look the much more complicated bi-amping mode, because a level and polarity adjust between both rails is necessary.
On the other hand you can save a lot of money through this, because the costs of Class AB instead Class-A is much more lower. Additional the needed power output for mid- and high frequency aera now is much more lower and thus the costs therefore. Independend of the efficiency of your transducers for the upper range the smallest version of XA- or Aleph series must actually be enough. An other posibility is looking for a used diy project, e. g. like "ZEN" or "DOZ". For the preamp I would choice a passive version with high quality volume control and source select rotary switch like ELMA

If you use normally single amping mode, you must calculate, that significantly higher costs are to invest, because you need now approximately a 5-8 times more power output.

[Nelson Pass]

Of course given the date of the original posting, it's worth
noting that the XA.5 series are different, most specifically
they do not use the Aleph current source.