More things to know Speaker Interface | Pass Labs XA60 specification

More things to know

Speaker Interface

Interconnects and Speaker Cables

XA60 Owner’s Manual

a big deal. You should be able to put your hands on the heat sinks without discomfort for 10 seconds or so.

The amplifier has a thermal cutout that will disconnect AC power if the temperature exceeds 75 degrees Centigrade. This thermal cutout should never occur in real life.

You may remotely operate the stand-by mode by applying 12 volts DC to the single pair of 5 way connectors on the rear of the amplifier. The positive of the 12 volts DC goes to the red connector, negative to the black. This connection has an actual operating range of about 9 volts to 15 volts. This switching feature will override the front panel button, only when the front panel button is in the standby position and the rear panel switch is in the “on” position.

The XA60 is optimized for 8-ohm speaker loads. Having said that; we are not aware of any speaker on the market that presents an unusual or difficult load for these amplifiers.

The XA amplifiers do not care particularly about the reactivity of the load. Reactive loads typically will have slightly less distortion at a given voltage/current level than resistive loads. The XA circuit was designed to be quite happy driving electrostatic speakers and any other esoteric loads we know of.

We have a general recommendation about interconnects, and speaker cables; which is that they should cost less than the amplifier, and contain at least some conductive material. We have tried a lot of products and most work well, but as a practical matter we cannot make blanket recommendations.

The amplifier is not sensitive to source interconnects. It is also not sensitive to radio frequency pickup, which allows some flexibility in choosing source interconnects without shields, though shields are always in good taste. For long runs balanced cables are highly recommended for their inherent rejection of common mode noise.

We prefer speaker cables that are short and stout, oxygen free copper and silver are the suggested materials. If you find any really exceptional cable made of gold, please gift us a couple hundred meters length.

Fortunately this amplifier is not sensitive to the capacitive/inductive character of some of the specialty speaker cables, so feel free to experiment.