Anybody ever audition the Pass XA series amps?

Hi Honest1. I will not be upgrading from the CAT, I'm looking for a cooler running alternative for the summer months. I recently bought a Pass Aleph J, which I think works quite well with my Merlins - they do not need a lot of power and the do not need a lot of damping for the bass. I am however, wondering if moving to the XA-30.5 would bring any improvement over the J - it might not given that the J is very easy to drive with a tube pre and it has low damping which is a good thing with the Merlins. Has anyone actually auditoned the J and the XA-30/.5? I'm also assuming my Joule 150 MKII will not have a problem with the 15 kohm input impedance of Pass, I know the Joule OTLs have an input impedance of 20 kohms so it would seem this should not be an issue with this tube pre.

Wanted to revive this thread as I too am interested in the answer, especially compared with some tube amp alternatives. I currently use a CAT JL2.

Dejanm thanks for your comments. I called Jud at Joule and he said there would be no problem with the 15Kohm input. In fact the Joule has an internal switch that would bring the output impedance down to 400ohms (from 1200 ohms) - he said that would not be necessary. I called Pass and they said the same thing. I guess some people still think the 10:1 rule for impedance matching is true.