At CES, Pass Laboratories will show their new X260.5 Power Amplifier, spec’d as a 260-watt mono-block amplifier aimed at improving performance by 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.  Very interesting!

In conventional amplifiers, under ideal conditions, ordinary matching techniques can achieve improvements by a factor of about 10. According to Pass, the X260.5 lowers distortion and noise by an additional order of magnitude.  The X260.5’s thick aluminum front panel includes an analog meter as well as buttons and blue LED indicators for Power On, Off and Standby (blue is the new green). 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.

As it’s not actually “officially” launched yet, it’s not on their website.  But, when it is, it will be here.