Passlabs XA .5 vs Ayre MXR

I had mentioned a while back on an old thread that had auditioned the Ayre MXR's and thought they were ok, but no were as "musical" and lacked the liquidity of my Pass Labs XA-100's.

Of course personnal taste and system synergy are always going to alter what the listner experiences, but that was my experience at listening to the two sets of amps.

My experience with SS amps is that they are on the dry and cold side from reality. Since the XA100 is designed to be in the middle of SS and tube, do you find it tipping to the other side, being warmer and prettier than reality. Also do you have enough base in the music. I heard that the XA .5 series is a major improvement over the XA as well.

I think the .5 is a "major" improvement if you have speakers with unsmooth impedance curves with dips below 4ohms - the .5 is better able to handle that, with a speaker that is "tube" friendly I can't imagine much if any difference as they don't need huge current to run their best, they are made to sound good with tubes (the XA are more like tubes in that sense than the .5 - the follow a voltage paradigm). Don't know abouth this warm/cold divide, the XA30.5 sounded true in terms of timbre. Ultimatelyu I prefer tubes with my speakers becuase I like the soundstaging effects caused by tube distortion (more 3D and layered to my ears).