Stereophile Product of the year 2019!!

The new design uses double-shielded low noise toroidal transformers in external supply

The new design uses double-shielded low noise toroidal transformers in an external supply connected via aviation-grade circular connectors using silver over oxygen-free copper. The power supply is dual mono with two transformers with lower radiated and mechanical noise. Noise is the most prominent part of THD+N at low levels, so by lowering noise we get better resolution and dynamics.

The gain circuitry continues to use our favorite transistors from Toshiba but has a larger, higher biased, output stage like the Xs Preamp, and includes auto bias.

The larger output stage makes longer, and multiple cable runs easier to drive and gives us the advantage of simplifying our single-ended output circuitry while increasing performance.

The volume control is a single stage instead of two stages and has more range; it is quieter and more accurate. This is the same volume control as used in the XP-30.

Overall this makes for a quieter, more neutral, musical, and versatile control center for your system.

The XP-22 measures spectacularly well — but it really stands out sonically.

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.

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.