Pass Labs XA100 owner manual More things to know Speaker Interface

More things to know

Speaker Interface

Interconnects and Speaker Cables

XA100 Owner’s Manual

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.

The XA100 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 feet.

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

We have found that about 90 per cent of bad sounding cables are really bad sounding connections, and we recommend that attention be paid to cleanliness of electrical contact surfaces and proper connector fit.

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