Pass XA200.8 Review - Fun measurements

shadorne,
i have nearly all from Benchmark, all dac models and amps. Used the AHB2 in mono on Tannoy GRF90 through very good tube preamp. Very nice sound, fast and dynamic, which to me are the strong points of these little marvels. Tried the XA160.8 on same: so much better in just about every aspect of sound; especially tones, bass, coherence, soundstage and overall musicality. No comparison. But i still love my Benchmark gear. They are better adapted to other speaker types, and Pass is very well suited to Tannoy in general. Nelson Pass does lots of evaluation on Tannoy, and Desmond Harrington, president of Pass has Tannoy at home!! As much as I think we can say Pass XA are not adapted to the Wilson.

yes, it is, and they say so themselves, but a bit in a disguised way. They built amps for what one hears, not for measurements. If one likes the sound, who cares of measurements?? which even excellent sounding tube amp measures well... none!!
either you buy on sound quality/performance, or on specs/measurements. My Benchmark AHB2 are good amps and measure brilliantly well, but in performance against the Pass, not many will choose the Benchmark!

by the way this is a nice and intelligent post Erik.

Erik,

I think i did catch the sense of your post, and i have responded to it my way, cannot do otherwise. I do not own any Pass amps at this stage. Heard them several times and I cannot objectively say that they are bad sounding amps, on the contrary. In my thread I also said that they bettered by far my beloved Benchmark AHB2 amps on the Tannoy GRF90, but these are efficient speakers. This assessment was without appeal before a panel of over 10 experienced audiophile, with only one of them actually owning Pass. I cannot say neither that they measure badly, but they certainly have drawbacks. I don't think that it is neither a learnt or acquired taste, except maybe for a few beginners or marketing influenced few. At this level of price, I think that many buyers are well advised audiophiles. From my continuous observations, I have come to conclusion that Pass try to achieve the good sound that good tube amps provide, so it seems logical to me that the measurements correlate in some way, although the Pass actually do measure far better...but they are not tubes, so they'd better!! And, from my various experiments with them, I also think that in most cases they must/should be associated with quite efficient speakers, especially as concerns XA.8 models, due to their lack of dynamics (for my taste). They have beautiful tones and other qualities, they are easy listening amps and maybe this is a large part of what attracts people to them, but in my view, dynamics and attack are essential to perfectly reproduced music, and this is maybe where the measurements are at fault !!...slew rate, damping, available current, type of fets used, whatever, but it must correlate to measurements at some point. The distortion certainly makes for the nice tones, but some energy is missing for the dynamics, and for such power consuming, heat producing, price of amps, I think it is an issue that Pass should address ASAP.