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XP-25 Owner’s Manual
The addition of a user selectable high pass (low cut) filter makes
possible the playing of recordings with excessive subsonic
information.
The addition of a user selectable mute control makes possible the
cuing of records and needle drop in absolute silence.
The XP-25 is an uncommonly fine match with very low output
moving coil cartridges which would normally require a transformer
first stage.
By the early 1980’s it was generally acknowledged that lower output
moving coil cartridges were capable of retrieving significantly more
fine detail from record grooves than higher output moving magnet
cartridges. In many instances this was simply a case of having lower
moving mass to accelerate in the electrical generator mechanism of
the phono-cartridge. Moving coils with 3 or 4 turns of the finest
wire attached to the lightest and stiffest cantilevers were capable of
accurately tracking complex musical passages that a few years prior
would have seemed impossible tasks to engineer and listener alike.
The really astute cartridge makers had clearly taken a page from the
automotive and motorcycle racing cognoscenti, whose engineers who
were doing everything in their power to lower “un-sprung mass”
in an effort to get tires to say in intimate contact with the roughest
terrain at the highest possible speeds. In both worlds the ability to
accurately track the impossible landscape is the ultimate goal…..
minimal moving mass associated with a compliant suspension is a big
part of the answer.
Unfortunately the active electronics that were capable of extracting
signal at those low levels, frequently then buried much of that signal
in their own noise floor. Step-up transformers generally addressed
the noise issues, but frequently lost the very fine detail somewhere
in the transformers iron core. For the time, the promise of the best
moving coil cartridges went un-realized
The XP-25’s high gain and exceptionally low noise figure allow for
ample output and detail from cartridges providing as little as 40 uV
(micro-volts) of signal at the phono input.
The adjustable gain options of the XP-25 make this unit immune
from overload with any high output cartridge of which we are
familiar.
The XP-25 is as much a pleasure to use as it is to listen through,
thank you for trusting your ears and your vinyl collection with us.
