Pass Labs XA- ".5" ???

The meter thing is sure weird. I have 87Db 4ohm speaker in a 25x 18 ft room and play at medium level. The x350.5 meter only moves when I play double bass or organ stuff very loud. I barely shakes a hair on loud orchestral passages. I think the meter moves only when I switch out of class A to AB and I guess 350.5 is at least 50W class A.

With the same speaker, if the Mac meter is correct, I rarely exceed 30W.

kevziek..calm down dude...no offense meant. I heard the x350.5 with Vienna Acoustics Mahler and at what I consider loud, the meter did not move. And yes, I know that the meters on the XA do not move (I do own them after all).

What speakers do you have? The Mahlers are 90db at a nominal impedance of 6ohms.

Anyway, as I said in my post, this is just my opinion and my experiences....

Kevziek is right though, the meter on the XA series is just a "nice-to-have" feature and does not perform any function.

On the X.5 series, the meter, when it starts moving, indicates that bias on the amp is going from Class A to A/B operation.

My B&W N803s make the meter move on my X250.5.
Playing a recording with some decent bass/mid-bass, I have to get the preamp volume above the 10 o'clock position and the meter on the amp starts moving.
But I love the Class A operation of the X250.5 amplifier when listening on low levels. Plenty of drive, slam and detail.

Tboooe,

I had the X-350 paired w/ Audio Physic Virgo II's. The Virgo's are 4 ohm and 90db. When I listend to Jazz the meter never moved... and I have a large room. But if I put on Led Zepplin 1...
I could get it bounc'in! I think the original 350 was rated 20 watts class A.

Greg

Driving VSA jr's, said to be 88 db, the meter would swing to 2 or 3 pm on quite loud levels of big band jazz. And it would regularly swing to 1 pm at "regular" loud levels.

Pass Labs told me the amp could handle much more than what I described, without distorting and the amp would be just fine.