Pass labs XA60.5 anything wrong with them.


These amps, more often than other (pass lab amps) appear in the used market, from what I have observed.

I am considering getting one for my system (after listening of course). Moving up from an integrated, but as a noob, wondering why so many are in the used market.
essrand
Wow!
The first two reponses are terrific!
Wish I could think of something that clever!

All I can think of to say is that they are only 60 wpc and probably the people
selling them need more power. Oh and being full Class "A" amps they are
going to run fairly hot, and it it summer so thenowners might want a cooler
running amp.
(Sorry I could not be as funny as the first two repondents.)
Yeah, that's possibly it, and imo, the bigger and more powerful Class A amps just sound better on the overall. Plus, you need pretty efficient speakers for the 60W amps to work, imo.
60 Watts is a lot of power even for speakers not so efficient. Lets say you have a speaker that outputs 89dB at 1Watt/1meter. That results in an SPL of 97dB at 3 meters with 64Watts. That is pretty loud unless your goal is permanent hearing loss. 100dB is standing next to a pneumatic jackhammer, for example. I guess the question is does a class A amp still sound as good at maximum output as it does at 1 Watt.
Nothing wrong with the 60.5's. For this line of amps, they are the cheapest mono blocks offered. If you are not set on monos, the XA30.5 is their stereo amp of the same design. I own it and the XA100.5's and they are much more alike than different. The 30.5 is about half the cost of the 60.5's.

All of their XA.5 amps put out much more power, maybe 3 to 4 times as much as their rating. Example: the 30.5 is rated at 30 wpc. That is the amount of pure class A. When Stereophile tested it, it put out around 130 wpc into 8 ohms and about 200 into 4 ohms. It just transitions to class AB after 30. I think you would be surprised at how loud even 10 watts can be but it is nice to have all that headroom.
I had some different model Pass amps and I thought the power rating was very conservative. I had the Aleph 0 rated at 40 watts/ch. It was a while ago, but it had no problem driving my B&W 802 s3's in a medium size room at fairly high volumes. At the time, I was interested in a Krell KAV 250 and had that in my system, as well. That was a nice amp too, but I ended up keeping the Pass. Power wasn't an issue.