Is the Pass Labs X350.5 and X1 "warm"?

Thoooe,

I just sold my Pass set up because of a move to a much smaller room until I get a dedicated room built. The X350.5 is a great amp. It has the sonic characteristics you are looking for. I mated mine with Thiel CS 2.4 and Thiel CS 7.2, which are revealing speakers, and it was a great combo.
As far as the Pass X1 is concerned that depends on what you are looking for. It is a good pre amp which is on the shady side of neutral.I do not know if balanced is a priority to you or not. However, I would also encourage you to audition some tube pre amps which work well with revealing speakers.

Tboooe, yes, the 350.5 has a overall sonic signature that could be called "warm" or "musical" yet still has great details/dynamics/extension.

I believe you asked this question before, the .5-series is a vast improvement over the first generation X-series amps, that were "cooler" sounding.

The .5 amps add some of the Aleph/XA series "sweet/warmth" to the overall sonics. The 350.5 is a great piece and one of the better single chassis amps out there today.

Thanks for the responses. Teajay, do you have any experience with Pass preamps?

If you are sticking with your B&W 804S speakers, I would not go with Pass labs. Both Classe audio and especially Jeff Rowland would be much more suited to your speakers. One of my friends had a nice Pass Labs B&W setup. While it sounded good, it was nothing compared to the Classe system and the Jeff Rowland system with B&W.

The X1 is not a warm preamp. To my ears, it has a rather clinical and bare midrange that does not have a cohesiveness to it. Voices do not sound "whole", they sound pieced together. When a singer hits a note, the various elements of the voice do not line up together-- the vocal cords, cavity resonance and the lips. Otherwise, the preamp has great bass, clarity and high end extension. Since I use tube preamps as my reference, they are a hard act to follow.

I heard one of the new point 5 series. Very good, very detailed, powerful, dynamic. Very clear, and able to unravel every thread of a complex passage. They have a certain warmth in the lower midrange that could be considered a coloration. However, above that range, they are a bit forward and slightly aggressive-sounding to my ears, but the amp I borrowed may not have been fully broken in.......