Powerful Mono-Block Design Boasts Low-Noise Super-Symmetry Circuit, Explosive Dynamics, and Sweet, Clear, Highly Detailed Performance
Pass Laboratories, Inc. will introduce the X260.5 Power Amplifier at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show. The X260.5 is a powerful 260-watt mono-block amplifier embodying the design technology and refinements of Pass Labs’ acclaimed X Series amplifiers, including extensions of its patented Super-Symmetry™ circuit.
The Super-Symmetry topology, developed by audio innovator and company founder Nelson Pass following 19 years of research, earned its patent in 1994. It improves performance by precisely matching characteristics of the two halves of a balanced amplifier. To the extent that distortion and noise can be made to appear identical at the two output connections, the X260.5’s balanced output will not detect them.
In conventional amplifiers, under ideal conditions, ordinary matching techniques can achieve improvements by a factor of about 10. In the X260.5, Super-Symmetry lowers distortion and noise by an additional order of magnitude. It delivers the sweetness, staging, and detail of very simple circuitry up to kilowatt power levels and beyond.
The X260.5 also has the tremendous dynamic range needed to do justice to the high-resolution of the latest 24-bit digital recordings, and the elegance to retrieve the micro-dynamics the most sensitive loudspeakers now offer. The amplifier’s simple, powerful circuitry moves easily from total silence to explosive transients and back to silence without any information loss. Unlike conventional high-power amplifiers, it provides this power with a subtlety befitting the better tube amplifiers. The X260.5 performance is consistent across the audio spectrum, and unconditionally stable into all speaker loads.
In addition, the X260.5 incorporates certain refinements from the balanced single-ended Class A circuits of Pass Labs’ XA series amplifiers that significantly improves its performance while retaining its high power and reliability. The changes include improved power transformers and AC EMI filters, paralleled high-speed/soft recovery rectifiers, more paralleled power supply capacitors and supply RC filtering, refinements to the front-end input circuits, and the addition of single-ended Class A bias circuits for balanced single-ended Class A results at low power levels.
The X260.5’s thick aluminum front panel includes Pass labs’ distinctive meter as well as buttons and blue LED indicators for Power On, Off and Standby. The rear panel includes an IEC 320 AC power cord receptacle, a main power switch, two pairs of output connectors, a pair of binding post connectors for remote turn-on, one RCA input connector, and one XLR balanced input connector.
The X260.5 Power Amplifier is available now from authorized dealers at a suggested price of $11,000 per pair (U.S. MSRP).
