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Pass INT-30A with Acoustic Zen Adagio

I'm currently using a Pass INT-30A with a pair of Acoustic Zen Adagio speakers.  Based on all review I've read, the reviews of both the speakers and the amp led me to believe that this would be a very smooth, musical combination.  However, I'm finding it to be rather analytical.  Good recordings sound fantastic, but any recordings that are just a hair short of spectacular come across as sounding very bad.  This is not what I was looking to get into, having only a portion of my music that I can listen to due to this problem.  

I have been racking my brain for days now trying to decide if I should switch out the amp or the speakers.  The amp does so many things so well, but so do the speakers.  I was considering a pair of LSA2 towers, since I used to own the LSA1 bookshelves and found them to be the smoothest, most musical speakers I've ever owned.  On the other hand, I could swap out the amp and go back to tubes and get that smoothness back that way.

Has anyone had experience with this amp, the speakers, or even both in combination?
jwglista

Showing 2 responses by missioncoonery

missioncoonery
1,190 posts
 

"rather analytical"...

  This is exactly my impressions of this integrated with various speakers .I owned Pass in the past and got away from their line ,way too pricey for what I heard coming out,just my opinion.Im sure you can find something to pair it with but for me after thinking about what was ahead of  to much of a hassle and struggle so I opted out and went in another direction. They do have a super great customer service which I had to use more than once for service on a new amplifier.

missioncoonery
1,190 posts
 
 I had a Pass x250.5 and a 150.5 amp a few years ago,Focal Utopias,Dynaudio C4 and then Raidho C3s at that time as well..The best combo was with the C4s with the Pass stuff .I wound up with a Plinius amp running the C4s which I really liked if I remember correctly then a MC402 which actually sounded better to me as it had less speed and accuracy I guess,if that makes sense.A far as this integrated you have I heard it with Dynaudios(not sure of the model) which always seemed a speaker paired with Pass and Wilsons.I actually just bought a newer Plinius this time as  an integrated,havent received it yet but hoping it will do what I want it to.I know this is vague but I wasn't taking notes and have no speaker suggestions for you.
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