Pass Labs XA100 - Manual (Page 7)

7 XA100 Owner’s Manual
You may 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,
negative to the black. This connection has an actual operating range
of about 9 volts to 15 volts. This switching feature will override
the front panel button, only when the front panel button is in the
standby position.
The XA100 is optimized for 8-ohm speaker loads. Having said that;
we are not aware of any speaker on the market that presents an
unusual or difficult load for these amplifiers.
The XA 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. The XA circuit
was designed to be quite happy driving electrostatic speakers and any
other esoteric loads we know of.
We have a general recommendation about interconnects, and speaker
cables; which is that they should cost less than the amplifier, and
contain at least some conductive material. We have tried a lot of
products and most work well, but as a practical matter we cannot
make blanket recommendations.
The amplifier is not sensitive to source interconnects. It is also not
sensitive to radio frequency pickup, which allows some flexibility
in choosing source interconnects without shields, though shields
are always in good taste. For long runs balanced cables are highly
recommended for their inherent rejection of common mode noise.
We prefer speaker cables that are short and stout, oxygen free
copper and silver are the suggested materials. If you find any really
exceptional cable made of gold, please gift us a couple hundred feet.
Fortunately this amplifier is not sensitive to the capacitive/inductive
character of some of the specialty speaker cables, so feel free to
experiment.
We have found that about 90 per cent of bad sounding cables are
really bad sounding connections, and we recommend that attention
be paid to cleanliness of electrical contact surfaces and proper
connector fit.
Speaker Interface
Interconnects and Speaker
Cables
More things to know