Pass Labs XA200 - Manual (Page 7)

7 XA200 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 XA200 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 con-
tain 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 sen-
sitive to radio frequency pickup, which allows some flexibility in choos-
ing 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 experi-
ment.
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 cables should be firmly tightened down at the speaker output
terminals, but not with a wrench. Output terminals will not withstand
the levels of torque that may be easily applied by wrench. Hand tighten-
Speaker Interface
Interconnects and Speaker
Cables
More things to know