For those who don't explode their preamplifiers with audiophile aftermarket fuses, the XP-22 is warranted for is three years, assuming you buy from an authorized dealer, though Pass Labs has a reputation for aggressively supporting its products well past the warranty period. "[W]e service everything we have ever built, usually for free," Colburn told me. "Some of the work on old stuff costs some money, but it's pretty cheap—and a smile is usually good for a discount."
Listening: the ghost in the machine
First, some quasi-objective observations. The XP-22, I noticed, has rather low gain—as do Pass Labs' own XA60.8 monoblocks. (Unless otherwise noted, the XP-22 fed the XA60.8s, which drove Revel Ultima Salon2 loudspeakers.) As a result, to get satisfying levels, I had to turn the XP-22's volume control up higher than I typically would. This was not a problem: There was volume to spare. With these 86dB speakers—not especially sensitive—I never had to go above the high "70"s in the volume control's range of "0"–"99" to get all the volume I needed. (In general, a volume control sounds best in the broad middle of its range.) Imaging with the XP-22 was pinpoint; the soundstage was large. At very low volumes the soundstage shrank a little, but it always remained precise. Soundstage depth was as good as I've heard with my current system, but not better. Toward the end of track 6 of disc 1 of Eric Dolphy's Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Studio Sessions (3 CDs, Resonance HCD-2035)—"Muses for Richard Davis," a previously unissued second alternate take from Dolphy's album Conversations—Davis's bowed double bass, a few feet behind Dolphy's bass clarinet, was visceral and seemed the right size: big.
A later track on this album—"Flying Colors: Alone Together (alternate take)"—to me is very special. There's a feeling to this kind of spare jazz, here a bass clarinet and an double bass, often playing in the same register. The track is recorded in excellent, very clear, very enjoyable sound, though not quite so good that the last veil lifted and the musicians appeared in my living room. About 8:25 in, Davis begins a walking bass line, then Dolphy enters on bass clarinet with a hushed, complementary walking line. This continues until about 11:30, when Dolphy starts a legato melodic line, soon followed by Davis's bowing. It's a witty sequence, musically intense, and it sounded just right through this system with the XP-22 in command.
In the frequency range where music lies—where the notes are—the XP-22 had no discernible impact on apparent frequency response. This system plumbed depths—bass impact was impressive—and conveyed acoustic spaces in a way that seemed true and vivid, the recording venue's reverberation sounding clear and natural. I noticed no emphasis within any register.
I listened to all of Nojima Plays Liszt (24-bit/176.4kHz download, Reference RR25), especially Mephisto Waltz 1, La Campanella, and the Piano Sonata in b. Minoru Nojima's piano sounded nicely woody, and his high notes sparkled in a way that, to me, seemed exceedingly natural—this recording has a lovely balance of direct sound and room sound. At the end of the Mephisto Waltz, the piano thundered. And when the final track, the Sonata in b, began, the music's grandeur and scale distracted me from my writing. I sat up and listened hard until it was over, 30 minutes later. How could Clara Schumann have considered this music "blind noise"?
In my review of PS Audio's BHK Signature preamp in June 2017, I invoked music and spirit:
John Atkinson has described the preamp as the "heart" of an audio system. Within a humanistic context, "heart" is an appropriate metaphor for a preamp, though other views are possible. From a naïve scientific perspective—and perhaps also from a sophisticated one—this sounds like nonsense. Audio systems don't have hearts in any sense, and certainly not in the sense the poets mean. Plus, from a technical standpoint, it's hard to refute the objectivist argument that adding a preamp to a system can only degrade that system's sound.
One problem with this objectivist argument is that it has repeatedly failed to hold up to listening. It's true that aural memory is poor, and that our brains are demonstrably sensitive to unconscious bias. And yet, even unstructured experience—unstructured, that is, by scientific methodology—can lead to knowledge. I'm talking about the kind of everyday experience from which we learn most of what we know about the world: None of it is proven, but does that mean we should ignore the evidence of our senses, lest we run the risk of being wrong once in a while? The scientific perspective—I write this as someone who has done original scientific research—is not the only perspective that's relevant in the realm of music and perception. Perspectives can coexist.
When, in 2013, JA reviewed Pass Labs' three-box XP-30 preamp, he found that music sounded more alive with the preamp in his system than it did without. I experienced the same thing when I reviewed PS Audio's BHK Signature preamp. I've just experienced it again with the Pass Labs XP-22. The difference was easy to hear.
Could it be we're hearing noise and distortion that make us think the music sounds better when, from a technical fidelity perspective, it's actually worse? Possibly, though most of the preamps I'm thinking of produce very low levels of noise and distortion—below levels one would expect to be audible, in fact. JA measured the XP-30's THD+N at about 0.003% at 2kHz, where the ear is most sensitive. Similarly, with these preamplifiers there's almost no deviation from linearity in frequency response within the audioband: JA's measurements found the XP-30 down a fraction of a dB at 10Hz and 20kHz with a normal load (footnote 2). I know I can't hear such tiny deviations.
Much as JA did with the Pass XP-30, I found music more lively, robust, and alive with the XP-22 in my system; to be clear, I've found the same thing with some other preamps I've tried.
Thumbs up, thumbs down
I've listened to a lot of preamplifiers over the last couple of years, but only one at a similar price: the Ayre Acoustics KX-5 Twenty, which, when I reviewed it in June 2018, cost $9950. But I reviewed the Ayre with a very different system, and with the relatively bandwidth-limited and much less expensive DeVore Fidelity Gibbon Nine loudspeakers. That, plus the intervening year or so, would make for a poor comparison.
I do, however, have one other preamplifier on hand: the PS Audio BHK Signature, which I own. The PS Audio ($5999) is 37% cheaper than the Pass—but I've found that the BHK Signature performs above its price class. That made for a good comparison.
Smitten by the XP-22, I expected to hear big differences. But when I listened to the Pass Labs and PS Audio preamps in direct, volume-matched comparisons, I was surprised how close they were in sound. The Pass seemed a tad more open, and perhaps more extended at the extremes. The soundstage was a touch more precise. Yet, through the PS Audio, music sounded more visceral, more embodied, to a small but meaningful degree. That quality is important to me—a big success for the much cheaper PS Audio preamp.
The Pass, though, won big on volume control. The PSA's volume control, which is innovative, may be technically better—I can't say, since I've heard either volume control only in the context of an entire preamp—but its feel is far inferior to that of the Pass's volume knob. It makes some noise (see my review); the XP-22's volume control was silent. What's more, if you turn the BHK's volume knob very slowly, the volume doesn't change at all no matter how much you turn it. Changing the volume with the XP-22's big, smooth-turning knob was a pleasure. To me such things are of marginal importance—but in perfectionist audio, marginal matters. You decide how much they matter to you.
Summing up
Absolute performance is important, but I suspect that most audiophiles don't buy only on that basis—or on specifications, although they may factor those in. Nor do they base their purchase decisions on feature sets or warranties—although features are important, and a good warranty is a source of reassurance. Reviews like this one surely factor in to high-end consumers' buying decisions—I hope they do—but I'm thinking that reviews, while significant, are rarely decisive. I think most of us choose what we buy based on the entire experience—on how a component makes us feel. That feeling comes from how the music sounds, but also from a lot of other things. It's highly individual. We buy a product when it checks our emotional boxes. We buy when we fall in love. In concert with the rest of my system, Pass Laboratories' XP-22 sounded great: full-bodied, rich-toned, robust, resolving, spacious, essentially neutral. But it was the whole experience of using the XP-22—its rugged, understated look; the subtle texture of its faceplate; the feel of the volume knob's action—that won me over. It just clicked for me, in a way that's entirely reasonable and yet transcends reason.
Footnote 2: As with many preamplifiers, JA found the XP-30 to be bass-shy when feeding amplifiers with very low input impedance.
First, some quasi-objective observations. The XP-22, I noticed, has rather low gain—as do Pass Labs' own XA60.8 monoblocks. (Unless otherwise noted, the XP-22 fed the XA60.8s, which drove Revel Ultima Salon2 loudspeakers.) As a result, to get satisfying levels, I had to turn the XP-22's volume control up higher than I typically would. This was not a problem: There was volume to spare. With these 86dB speakers—not especially sensitive—I never had to go above the high "70"s in the volume control's range of "0"–"99" to get all the volume I needed. (In general, a volume control sounds best in the broad middle of its range.) Imaging with the XP-22 was pinpoint; the soundstage was large. At very low volumes the soundstage shrank a little, but it always remained precise. Soundstage depth was as good as I've heard with my current system, but not better. Toward the end of track 6 of disc 1 of Eric Dolphy's Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Studio Sessions (3 CDs, Resonance HCD-2035)—"Muses for Richard Davis," a previously unissued second alternate take from Dolphy's album Conversations—Davis's bowed double bass, a few feet behind Dolphy's bass clarinet, was visceral and seemed the right size: big.
There is a certain vitality in music that is best perceived, in my experience, in the sound of a bowed string instrument played up close by a skilled musician. An instrument on a tabletop or stand is, of course, inert—dead. If I pick it up and try to play, I can make scratchy noises, but the instrument is in no sense enlivened. But when a talented player picks it up and plays, there's a tangible transfer of vitality from player to instrument. The instrument becomes, in a sense almost literal, an extension of the musician's spirit. This is true with wind players, too, and especially in jazz: They breathe spirit into their instruments; the instruments channel that spirit and give it voice.As I found in that review—and as I find again in this one—a system with a first-rate preamp is better at conveying that sense of living, breathing musicians than a system without a preamp.
I've listened to a lot of preamplifiers over the last couple of years, but only one at a similar price: the Ayre Acoustics KX-5 Twenty, which, when I reviewed it in June 2018, cost $9950. But I reviewed the Ayre with a very different system, and with the relatively bandwidth-limited and much less expensive DeVore Fidelity Gibbon Nine loudspeakers. That, plus the intervening year or so, would make for a poor comparison.
Absolute performance is important, but I suspect that most audiophiles don't buy only on that basis—or on specifications, although they may factor those in. Nor do they base their purchase decisions on feature sets or warranties—although features are important, and a good warranty is a source of reassurance. Reviews like this one surely factor in to high-end consumers' buying decisions—I hope they do—but I'm thinking that reviews, while significant, are rarely decisive. I think most of us choose what we buy based on the entire experience—on how a component makes us feel. That feeling comes from how the music sounds, but also from a lot of other things. It's highly individual. We buy a product when it checks our emotional boxes. We buy when we fall in love. In concert with the rest of my system, Pass Laboratories' XP-22 sounded great: full-bodied, rich-toned, robust, resolving, spacious, essentially neutral. But it was the whole experience of using the XP-22—its rugged, understated look; the subtle texture of its faceplate; the feel of the volume knob's action—that won me over. It just clicked for me, in a way that's entirely reasonable and yet transcends reason.
Footnote 2: As with many preamplifiers, JA found the XP-30 to be bass-shy when feeding amplifiers with very low input impedance.
