Recommend Class a Amp

I drove Martin Logan CLS IIz for years with McCormack monoblocks and they never failed me. Best sweet sound I ever experienced, and those speakers were not exactly ballerinas.

As stated, a Pass INT-30A owner:

While I've not heard other low watt Pass designs, I completely agree with Abrew regards the trade off: even with high efficiency speakers (Al, I'm now running the Ulysses :), you are trading low end authority for super yummy mids and highs. The very fine Odyssey dual mono that my Pass replaced was conspicuously superior down under (up the range, not so much :)

I mostly listen to "small" music, particularly of the "girl with guitar" variety, so as Mark at Reno HiFi promised, a good trade off for me.

But I think, not for everybody, depending on speaker preference and listening habits.

John

Wow! Congratulations, John. I seem to recall that you were thinking of the Ulysses a while back. Hope you are enjoying them as much as I do mine!

And re the INT-30A, I **would** expect your experience with it to be likely to have relevance to the XA30.5, in contrast to what I said about the Aleph 5.

Best regards,
-- Al

Almarg, yes I know you are right when you said we should not lump the Aleph and XA.5 designs together. For that reason, I almost didn't comment at all on the post about the xa30.5. But I have heard too many commentaries from xa30.5 owners that sounded similar to my own experience with the A5 to ignore a conclusion. Even Pass factory folks themselves are aware of the pros and cons of both A and AB designs (hence the reason they offer 2 separate designs of course) and they are always interested in 2 things when you probe for recommendations, especially regarding their class A amps: what kind of music you will be listening to, and what speakers you will be driving.

I own B&W speakers that are not inefficient but which respond well to the grunt that the AB designs deliver. They specifically recommend the AB designs in my specific application over the class A models.

I own B&W speakers that are not inefficient but which respond well to the grunt that the AB designs deliver.

isn't this a contradictory statement (it sure looks like one to me)?
Since the passing of John Bowers himself in the mid-1980s I haven't seen a B&W that is efficient. Yeah, they have a 90dB or sometimes even a 92dB SPL number but they almost always (with rare exception) respond best to high current current amps.

it's interesting to see that Pass Labs recommends their class-A/class-AB design over their pure class-A design for B&W. I'll have to dig around a little to figure out why.....