Let us know what you think of the 30.8.
I think all markets in high end audio are niche. What I should have written is that Pass has the X line and the XA line which appeal to different tastes and may work differently with speaker demands. For a while, they were also selling both the .5 and the .8 series. If you include the integrated amps, and the XS line plus the First Watt stuff, that is a lot of product, not including all of the preamps and phonos. I don't happen to think that Pass Labs products appeal to the mass market. They are just too expensive. I do think that the production runs for the First Watt amps are much smaller than are the runs for the main Pass products, except for possibly the XS line.
It's relative. First Watt is the ideas platform. It caters to DIY. And while some of those ideas have caught on big, Pass is intended to be mainstream (probably the better term as opposed to mass market).
More importantly, cjfrbw I'd be very interested to hear your XA25 vs XA30.8 thoughts. The XA25 reviews are just over the top glowing, and I was considering it when I called Reno, but went with the 30.8 primarily based on the writings of Jack Roberts. As I'm listening this evening as I type, I do think that after 50 hours of on time, it has settled down a bit. But I think what I'm grappling with is the seemingly accentuated extremes. If I have an early complaint it would be that it calls attention to itself instead of simply letting the music flow. It's like that athletic kid you grew up with that wasn't humble about his skills. It really wants to make all bass slam and all treble shimmer, even when seemingly not called for. It's a show off; unabashedly Class A and proud of it. But, wow, the air and space, clarity, scale, textures, micro dynamics, and image precision. And, hey, Mark said no critical listening until Sunday.
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