Pass Labs amps and Avantgarde speakers

sounds like you have a great plan.. Besides, if it you don't like it, authorized dealers have a return policy with perhaps a restock fee...

I have no idea whether your amplifier choice will work or not, but please report back with your findings. There are quite a few of us horn users who wouldn't mind a bit of feedback :)

I agree, the XA30.5 along with the Avantgarde Acoustic Duo speakers would be an excellent match.

I go with the consensus and think the gamble will pay off.

I own the 30.5 and am impressed with how well it does at low power levels which is where I would imagine you would be with your AG's.

Below is a quote from Nelson Pass's paper, "Leaving Class A" at the Passlabs website:

"We apply a single-ended Class A bias at about 10% of the push-pull Class A bias. This is sufficient to improve the performance around 1 watt and below." also that single ended class A is considered the "king of class A".

Food for thought:

If a speaker is rated to give 100 db from 1 watt, it will take 1/10th of a watt to produce 90 db, 1/100 of a watt for 80, 1/1000 of a watt for 70. Of course other factors like room size and distance from speakers have to be figured in but I believe that not only that "the first watt" is important but the fractions below it are too, especially if you like low level listening and/or the decay of notes/sounds. Good luck.

Have you been running your DCS directly to the amps in the past? Why are you replacing your existing amps? Have you tried any preamps between the DCS and the amps?

I only mention these items as I used to have a DCS stack and tried with many different amp and speaker combos running the DCS direct. Never got quite the same results running direct as I did with running the DCS through a preamp. I only bring this up as a possible consideration if there is something you are finding is not just quite perfect with your system.

I like the all class-A Pass amps. Just sold an Aleph 5 which was/is designed as a SS class A SET based amp, per Nelson P.