SIT 5 monos

Oh, man. I would love to have a pair of those. I love my little Amp Camp amps I built up a few years ago.

BTW, my audiophile club, San Francisco Audiophile Foundation, spent three hours in a Zoom meeting yesterday with Nelson Pass. What a wonderful person, generous and gracious.
 
SIT-5 OPERATING TEMPERATURES

Hey guys,

I just got my SIT-5s and set them up to burn in for a few days before listening. After 48 hours I took a video of the steady state temperatures, as the operating temperatures of these seems to be something people ask about or remark upon.

Looks like the tops get to be about 111 degrees and the cooing fins to about 128 degrees. Not really that hot to the touch.

Like they say, give them space to breathe.
 
TIME TO TEMPERATURE

I got the SIT-5s set up last night. After power up, 30 minutes in they are just starting to get warm. 90 minutes much better.

Two hours though to get totally up to steady state temperature in my hands. I turn them on when I get home from work but weekends just leave them on the whole time.
 
I have heard several of the Pass designs on the DIY side and there is definitely great magic in the low watt Pass class A.
 
Guys,

So a this point I have now racked up quite a few hours listening to the SIT-5s in my system, after burning them in for 72 hours.

I am streaming Qobuz into a dCs LINA, with the LINA clock and a good set of clock cables, (which is another topic) then into a Pass XP-32 to biamped Rockport Orions, that after 9 months are finally broken in! The SIT-5 is thus only responsible for the 7" woofer and 1.25" tweeter, with the lower crossover at 120 hz. So it runs everything above that, and thank you Andy Payor for the low cross over point. I really, really love the Orions at this point.

Below 120 hz, the 13" woofers are driven by Pass X260.8s, which are sized perfectly for them, absolutely controlling them, complementing the dual Perlisten D12 subs on the very bottom. The XP-32 allows for adjusting the gain between the amps, as the X260.8 is 26dB, and the SIT-5 is 19 dB. Prior to this I was using dual XA25s per channel for the highs, which are like 20dB gain which also worked great.

With the XP-32 you just dial back the Slave 6 or 7 db, which makes the outputs matched. I touched it up with REW, which works great.

In terms of listening, there aren't enough adjectives and superlatives to describe the phenomenal sound quality of the SIT-5 and it's attributes. You can run through the standard reviewers lexicon and check all the boxes, but it's even beyond that. I have never heard anything like it.

I would say the sound is incredibly liquid with fluid defined highs, extremely dynamic without constraint, with a full resounding upper bass especially apparant on acoustic guitar for some reason. I don't know why, but I heard guitar notes and chords in songs that I have listened to for 20 years, that I never heard before. They pop out at you from their position in space, and everything is there in space like small points of dense sound tightly focused. For the first time the bass lines in George Michael's "Cowboys and Angels' was set out clearly and uncongested, for example. The guitar on the Getz/Gilberto 'Girl for Ipanema' sat there mid left clearly like he was in a chair in front of me brushing the strings with his fingers. Astrud pops out on the left like she's standing there.

The other aspect of the sound was the density and harmonics of the piano. Ricki Lee Jones, 'For No One' for example, and more. All the Diana Krall standards, which I shall not enumerate.

Particularly, as noted, the harmonics of all the instruments resonated endlessly. I have never heard anything like this.

Power-wise, it drives relentlessly, somehow playing louder than indicated on the gain, where I dialed it down even compared to the XA25s, which are very dynamic on their own and quite transparant. The SIT-5 also drove the upper end of the Orions effortlessly to high sound levels without strain. I went no further but saw 105 db peaks 14 feet from the front of the speakers in my 10,000 ft3 room. It felt like endless power. I don't know what the relationship is between tested steady state continuous output and dynamic power, but music requires high dynamic power and these amps have that in spades.

I could go on and on, but I am not some professional reviewer, so I will spare you guys anymore of this blather. I have reached my own personal nirvana here, and I am done for a long great while except for maybe finally fiddling a bit more with cables in a year or so. I am sitting here this weekend for hours listening to all my favorites again and again, hearing what I have never heard, while I enjoy a nice 2016 Super Tuscan. I think when that happens you know you system has take a big step up. You just go wow.

Well Done, Nelson Pass. I think the SIT-5 is your Magnum Opus, and considering what you have done before that is truly a great thing. I just can't imagine this effort will be easily surpassed by anybody, although there are more powerful amps. I just don't think there are amps that sound like this, with this level of power, which is quite high, actually.

Thank you very much, Nelson.
 
I’m about to try a pair in my system tomorrow. I had a pair, but a client borrowed them and never gave them back!
 
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