6
XA200.5 Owner’s Manual
The amplifier’s voltage and current rating are indicated on the
rear panel. It will be either 240 volts, 230 volts, 220 volts, 120
volts or 100 volts. The larger amplifiers have a circuit breaker of
the appropriate capacity. The smaller power amplifiers use a slow-
blow 3AG type fuse. The frequency rating of the AC line source
is 50 to 60 Hz. Please verify that the amplifiers indicated voltage
requirements are consistent with the supplied voltage and current at
your location.
On the rear panel you will find both RCA and XLR type input
connections for single-ended or balanced inputs. If you use the RCA
input, be certain that the XLR connector has a gold shorting plug
between pins 1 and 3, which connects the “minus” input to ground,
otherwise the amplifier will not operate properly. If you lose this
plug, just contact the factory – we give them away all the time.
The question comes up all the time – are balanced inputs (XLR)
better than single-ended (RCA)? The answer is that balanced lines
generally give lower noise and slightly less distortion. They are
recommended unless your favorite source component has only RCA
outputs.
Also on the rear panel are the output connections for the
loudspeakers. On stereo amplifiers there is one pair per channel, and
on mono amplifiers we provide two pairs wired in parallel to facilitate
“bi-wiring” a loudspeaker. As you are probably familiar, the red one
is positive polarity, and the black one is negative.
Please note that, being a balanced output, both of these terminals
are electrically live – neither is grounded and should not be treated
as ground. This is particularly important if you are using the
output of the amp to also drive a subwoofer amplifier or other
active component. If there is any question, please contact the
manufacturers of the products involved – both they and we will be
happy to advise you.
If you happen to need a clean signal ground connection for any
reason, we provide a dedicated 5 way binding post just for that on
the rear of the amplifier.
On the rear panel you will also find a pair of 5 way binding posts
for external turn-on control. Applying 5 to 12 volts DC at this
connection will override the front panel stand-by switch and turn the
amplifier on.
