pass lab owners: can i afford one?


not to buy it - to run it! i just read an old stereophile review of an aleph, and the reviewer said his electric bill went up 40% (gulp) after he got it? can that be right? i have found in the past that the cost of running something involves more than just the rated watts (getting a two hundred dollar increase after running a space heater one winter showed me that). could some pass owners give me an idea of how much of an increase they saw in their electric bills (please not "a lot", in dollars or even a percentage to your best guess). thanx, mike
ratso1
I don't think saying "my electric bill went up xx%" is the best way to put it. If your bill was $20 and AP (After Pass) it's $40 then it went up 100%. If your bill was 200 and AP it's 220, then it only went up 10%.

Going with hard facts, my 100.5' monos draw 300 watts each (600 total) from the wall. Our electricity costs 13 cents per Kilowatt hour. 600 watts times 5 hours equals 3000 watts or 3 kilowatts, so it costs me 39 cents to run it 5 hours. "If" I did that every day for a month, it would cost me $12 a month. Worst case of leaving it on 24/7: 720 hrs in a month X 600 = 432000 watts or 432 kw which would cost me $56 a month. Some parts of the country could easily be twice that depending on how much you pay per kw hour.

The great thing about Nelsons newest amps is that their standby switch keeps the caps charged while only drawing a few watts. (figures to about 93 cents a month for me to leave them in standy the whole time). With the caps charged you only have to flip the switch and start listening. The warm up is painless. It sounds good right away, better after 30 minutes and best after an hour.

The Pass website shows the different wattage draws for their various amps. Pick one, find out how much you pay for electricity and do the math. To me it's worth it for the sound quality, and I don't think it's anti-green if you are smart about it and don't obsess about 24/7.

I seem to remember a thread where Ralph from Atmasphere mentioned that it takes a solid state amp a very long time to stabilize and provide the best sound possible;this being the case and seeing the math that Onemug just did it would seem to me not to be a expensive situation to leave them in a standby condition 24/7 if your amps are able.
I have the XA160.5 also, and while the spec is 600W each, I measure about 410W at idle and when running in class A. I suspect the higher power consumption spec includes overhead because the XA.5's can go into AB when they reach rated power, and will draw more during those peaks.

I assume specs for the X600.5 etc. are even more conservative, but I don't have one to check.
My Pass X350 pulls about 0.5kW at idle. We pay $0.09/kWh here, so about 4.5cents/hour to use. Our big screen, LCD TV consumes 0.25kW. (big TVs are power hogs) My wife has the TV on all day long, so it costs me much more to operate than my amp. I do not leave my amp on all the time simply because I would not get anything done around the house. The stereo pulls me in like a magnet. I leave the amp on over weekends sometimes in the winter. It sounds a little smoother after being on for 40 hours, I think.