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amplifiers is almost non-existent.  This is small comfort to the few, but take it easy and give us
a call if you have problems.

People are interested in how long it takes for these amplifiers to break in.  It takes about an
hour for them to warm up, and this is where we adjust them first.  Then we adjust them again
and again over a couple of days, keeping the bias and offset in the sweet spot.  Our
environment is about 23 degrees Centigrade, room temperature, and the heat sinks will rise to
about 22 degrees C. above that, for a heat sink temperature of 45 degrees C.

In your setup the temperature may vary a bit due to line voltage and ventilation, but it is not a
big deal.  You should be able to put your hands on the heat sinks without discomfort.

The amplifier has a thermal cutout that will disconnect AC power if the temperature exceeds 75
degrees Centigrade.  This should never occur in real life.

More things to know:  You can remotely operate the stand-by mode by applying 12 volts DC to
the single pair of 5 way connectors on the rear of the amplifier.  The positive of the 12 volts DC
goes to the red connector.  This connection has an actual operating range of about 9 volts to
15 volts.  This switching will override the front panel button, so if you want the button to
operate, leave the rear connection open.

So much for essential information.

Speaker Interface

The X5 is optimized for loads nominally rated at 4 ohms and above.  You can run the
amplifiers into a lower nominal impedance without difficulty, and we are not aware of a speaker
on the market that presents unusual difficulty with these amplifiers.

The X amplifiers do not care particularly about the reactivity of the load.  Reactive loads
typically will have slightly less distortion at a given voltage/current level than resistive loads,
but will make the amplifier run a little hotter.  The X circuit was designed to be quite happy
driving electrostatic and other speakers, since it is unconditionally stable.

When driving transformer-coupled loads directly, as in some electrostatic and ribbon designs,
some attention must be paid to the DC character of the situation.  If the transformer primary is
being driven raw with no protection from DC and your source has DC voltage, or in cases
where the small offset of the power amplifier is still too much, you may create distortion in the
transformer and get less than optimal performance from it.  Generally this is not the case with
transformer coupled loudspeakers, but it does occasionally surface.  In these cases, take
special care that the source does not contain a differential DC component, and confirm the
differential DC offset of the amplifier is sufficiently low.  This is easily adjusted by a qualified
technician armed with the service manual.  Again, consult your dealer or call us.

Содержание Pass X5

Страница 1: ...Page 1 Pass X5 Owner s Manual ...

Страница 2: ...y distorted signal Supersymmetry seeks merely to create perfect matching Matched balanced power circuitry typically sees a distortion and noise reduction of about 90 20 dB through a balanced connection without any additional effort TheSupersymmetric circuit delivers another 90 reduction so that the X series has about 1 100 of the distortion of a conventionally simple amplifier Actually this ordina...

Страница 3: ... the switch on up The lights in your house will blink when the power supply charges the capacitors On the front panel the Standby LED indicator should be glowing blue indicating that the power is on The Power LED should not be on If the Power LED is on don t get excited just use the front panel stand by button to go to stand by mode with the Standby LED on and the Power LED off OK so the amplifier...

Страница 4: ...onnection open So much for essential information Speaker Interface The X5 is optimized for loads nominally rated at 4 ohms and above You can run the amplifiers into a lower nominal impedance without difficulty and we are not aware of a speaker on the market that presents unusual difficulty with these amplifiers The X amplifiers do not care particularly about the reactivity of the load Reactive loa...

Страница 5: ...in the amplifier the transformer will deliver about 1800 watts for short duration To avoid huge inrush of current during charge up each of the transformer primary coils has its own inrush suppressor which keeps the inrush down to 100 amps or so The X5 has 4 computer grade the old large style computer capacitor cans not the new dinky ones capacitor cans at 31 000 uF and 50 volts each These are used...

Страница 6: ...mplifiers operating in the field in excess of 20 years with no particular mortality except capacitors The answer is I don t have good information beyond that More to the point I would suggest that you not worry about it This is a conservatively built industrial design not a tweaky tube circuit run on the brink If it breaks we will simply get it fixed so sleep well Warranty Information This product...

Страница 7: ...t with the result that the amplifier did not sound very good in spite of good distortion measurements Push pull circuits while allowing high efficiency and cheap manufacture did not improve the character of the sound at lower levels where we do most of our listening a deficiency which designers often use feedback to cover up It appears that the human sense of hearing is more subtle in some ways th...

Страница 8: ... with fast amplification high slew rate In retrospect the idea was at least half right but I believe not completely for the following reasons First it presumed that there was really fast signal in music Research conducted independently by Peter Walker and myself showed conclusively that real music contained very little signal with appreciable slew rate therefore slew rate limiting on the order pro...

Страница 9: ...e input look like the output in the conventional sense Instead it works to make two halves of an already symmetric balanced circuit behave identically with respect to distortion and noise dramatically lowering the differential distortion and noise but not the distortion and noise of each half of the circuit considered by itself If you build such a symmetric balanced circuit you get much of this ef...

Страница 10: ...terestingly the single ended nature of each half of the balanced circuit doesn t give rise to much in the way of odd order distortion and when the even order components and noise are cancelled there isn t much distortion and noise left In any case Balanced single ended is a phrase that accurately describes the circuit For the amplifier s front end a balanced single ended gain stage was developed w...

Страница 11: ...signal symmetry with respect to both the voltage and current axis and anti symmetry for distortion and noise This means that the distortion and noise of each half appears identically and cancels The diagram on the patent cover sheet shows an example of this topology Each of the two input devices 20 and 21 are driven by an input signal and their outputs run through a folded cascode formed by device...

Страница 12: ...unwanted components As long as the two halves are matched this performance tends to be frequency independent and does not deteriorate over the audio band With mid level distortion figures on the order of 002 this is very high performance for a single balanced gain stage The following pages include a typical distortion curve of the amplifier a list of specifications for the amplifier and where to r...

Страница 13: ...inus 10 amps Input Impedance 22 kohm balanced Damping factor 200 ref 8 ohms nominal Slew rate plus minus 50 V uS Output Noise 300 uV unweighted 20 20 kHz Random noise floor approximately 2 uV Dynamic range 140 dB random noise floor to peak output Balanced CMRR 85 dB 1 kHz input common mode rejection ratio DC offset 100 mv Power Consumption 200 watts idle 600 watts maximum Temperature 20 degrees C ...

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