Pass Labs XP-12

There are people who do not know that Wayne Colburn has designed the Pass Labs preamplifier products for the last 20 years.

Wayne’s modesty has tended to keep him out of the spotlight. When we began development of the Xs power amplifier five years ago, we knew that we would also need a companion piece.

Of course, back then we thought we could have this done in a year or so… Wayne was given carte blanche on the design and an unlimited budget, and lots of time to play with many exotic parts and materials.

Naturally the comparison will be made with its predecessor, XP-30 line stage preamp.

The most obvious difference is that the Xs comes in only two chassis, where the XP-30 had at least three chassis, one for supply and control, and one chassis per channel for as many channels as you might reasonably want.

The Xs designed solely for two channel operation, and it fits in two (larger) boxes. The volume controls are improved in performance with 0.5 dB steps, expanded dynamic range and lower noise.

XP-12

The new XP-12 starts with a new power supply. It uses an efficient toroidal design with both an electrostatic and Mu metal shield along with vacuum impregnating and epoxy fill.

This gives us a very quiet transformer both electrically and mechanically. The power supply circuitry itself is also lower noise and has additional filtering, a little more complicated but worth it.

The XP-12 uses the single stage volume control borrowed from the XS line preamp.

This gives us one hundred 1 dB steps with lower noise and distortion while removing some signal path parts

XP-12 omistajan käsikirja ja vapaa sana esivahvistinta koskien

Tekniset tiedot

Tyyppi: Yksikoteloinen esivahvistin
Otot: 3x RCA, 2x XLR
Lähdöt: XLR/RCA
Vahvistus (dB): 9.3 (balansoitu)
Tehon kulutus: 30 W
Mitat (L x K x S): 482 x 102 x 305 mm
Paino: 9.07 kg

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