Hi Erik,
I am one of a number of members here who are happy owners of a Pass XA25. I use it with my Daedalus Ulysses speakers, which have an unusually flat and benign impedance curve, a 6 ohm nominal impedance, and 97.5 db/1 watt/1 meter efficiency. I have been delighted with the amp.
For context, my listening is about 90% classical, 5% rock, 5% miscellaneous.
I purchased the amp just about a year ago, on the basis of the many glowing reviews and user comments it has received, and with the knowledge that if I didn't like it I could return it under Reno HiFi's generous return policy.
For the previous seven years, since shortly after I purchased the speakers, I had been using a VAC Renaissance 70/70 MkIII, which employs four 300B tubes per channel in a push-pull parallel configuration, is biased in class A, and provides close to 70 watts per channel.
The only other amp I have used since purchasing the Daedalus speakers was a Chinese-made Paxthon VTA-160, which employs four EL34's per channel and is rated at 80 watts. I used it for a short while before purchasing the VAC. It was reasonably decent sounding, but had a design problem (no grid stopper resistors on the small signal tubes) which caused it to crackle at times on high volume dynamic peaks, e.g. Telarc bass drum beats.
As you may be aware the design of the XA25 differs in various ways from that of other Pass XA amplifiers (for starters, it is not balanced, and does not even provide XLR inputs), and in various ways from the First Watt amps as well.
Regarding the reviews, I found Teajay’s (Terry London’s) review to be especially accurate in its characterization of the amp’s sonics, at least with my easy to drive speakers.
Following are some comments about the XA25 that I had occasion to post a while back in a thread that was mainly on a different subject:
Best regards,
-- Al
I am one of a number of members here who are happy owners of a Pass XA25. I use it with my Daedalus Ulysses speakers, which have an unusually flat and benign impedance curve, a 6 ohm nominal impedance, and 97.5 db/1 watt/1 meter efficiency. I have been delighted with the amp.
For context, my listening is about 90% classical, 5% rock, 5% miscellaneous.
I purchased the amp just about a year ago, on the basis of the many glowing reviews and user comments it has received, and with the knowledge that if I didn't like it I could return it under Reno HiFi's generous return policy.
For the previous seven years, since shortly after I purchased the speakers, I had been using a VAC Renaissance 70/70 MkIII, which employs four 300B tubes per channel in a push-pull parallel configuration, is biased in class A, and provides close to 70 watts per channel.
The only other amp I have used since purchasing the Daedalus speakers was a Chinese-made Paxthon VTA-160, which employs four EL34's per channel and is rated at 80 watts. I used it for a short while before purchasing the VAC. It was reasonably decent sounding, but had a design problem (no grid stopper resistors on the small signal tubes) which caused it to crackle at times on high volume dynamic peaks, e.g. Telarc bass drum beats.
As you may be aware the design of the XA25 differs in various ways from that of other Pass XA amplifiers (for starters, it is not balanced, and does not even provide XLR inputs), and in various ways from the First Watt amps as well.
Regarding the reviews, I found Teajay’s (Terry London’s) review to be especially accurate in its characterization of the amp’s sonics, at least with my easy to drive speakers.
Following are some comments about the XA25 that I had occasion to post a while back in a thread that was mainly on a different subject:
It comes amazingly close to the VAC with respect to dimensionality, imaging, liquidity, and other traditional fortes of high quality tube amps. It’s a bit less rich sounding than the VAC, but I interpret that as an increase in accuracy, which is fine as far as I am concerned.
There are also some non-sonic factors favoring the XA25, including the likelihood of greater reliability in the years ahead considering the age of the VAC; the fact that even though both amps operate in class A the XA25 puts only 240 watts of heat into the room compared to what I believe is upwards of 700 watts for the VAC; and the cost that would be involved in re-tubing eight 300Bs if and when that were to become necessary.
This is the first time I’ve had a high quality solid state amp in my system in about 25 years, and I believe I’ve picked the right time and the right model with which to do so again.
Best regards,
-- Al