Anybody ever audition the Pass XA series amps?

You're lucky to be able to demo these amps. When I wanted to upgrade from my Aleph 3, the only Pass dealer near me never had anything to demo, even though he was running ads here selling the stuff!! I ended up buying a pair of Atma-sphere MA-1s. I would love to hear your results. PLEASE keep us up to date with your findings!!!

Wanted to revive this thread as I too am interested in the answer, especially compared with some tube amp alternatives. I currently use a CAT JL2.

Pubul - One of the best systems I heard at CES (or anywhere) used CAT monoblocks (along with a Reimyo CD Player and Ascendo speakers). They will probably be tough to upgrade from.

Heard XA-160's on the show for about an hour or so ... with Avalons ... I think you can't get much better than Pass XA series independently from the price range.

By the way, an american guy, who is director of Vienna Opera music archieve here in Vienna, uses XA-160 (with Watt Puppies 7) ... and this guy has a real budget at his disposal. Simply, he couldn't find anything better, he said.

So if you have cash - go for it ... that is probably the end ... and if not, then probably very near to it :-)

Hi Honest1. I will not be upgrading from the CAT, I'm looking for a cooler running alternative for the summer months. I recently bought a Pass Aleph J, which I think works quite well with my Merlins - they do not need a lot of power and the do not need a lot of damping for the bass. I am however, wondering if moving to the XA-30.5 would bring any improvement over the J - it might not given that the J is very easy to drive with a tube pre and it has low damping which is a good thing with the Merlins. Has anyone actually auditoned the J and the XA-30/.5? I'm also assuming my Joule 150 MKII will not have a problem with the 15 kohm input impedance of Pass, I know the Joule OTLs have an input impedance of 20 kohms so it would seem this should not be an issue with this tube pre.

Pubul57,

If this can be of any help to you ... I tried Pass Labs X150.5 with my Bent Audio passive TVC. As you know passive TVC's are even more critical to amps input impedance than tube pre-amps. I used RCA (11 KOhms) and XLR (22 KOhms) inputs of Pass Labs X150.5 and couldn't hear any issues on any of these two configurations. It was working just fine in both cases. So I guess you will not have any problems either ...

Dejanm thanks for your comments. I called Jud at Joule and he said there would be no problem with the 15Kohm input. In fact the Joule has an internal switch that would bring the output impedance down to 400ohms (from 1200 ohms) - he said that would not be necessary. I called Pass and they said the same thing. I guess some people still think the 10:1 rule for impedance matching is true.