Filter
Top Products
8
XA200 Owner’s Manual
ing without excessive force is plenty. Cleaning contact surfaces with one
of the commercially available electronic contact cleaners should be part
of your annual system maintenance.
The XA200 has a single large power transformer, under actual condi-
tions in the amplier, it supplies but a fraction of its rated power. This
very conservative rating contributes to exceptional voltage regulation
gures and low noise gures at the loudspeaker.
The XA200 has a signicant number of power supply lter capacitors.
These caps are used to create the unregulated output stage rails at plus
and minus 60 volts at 9 amps. RC ltering is used to passively remove
ripple from the supply rails.
All the power transistors in the product are hyper-matched parts, with
gate voltages matched to 0.5% and all devices taken from the same
manufacturing lot codes (made on the same wafer).
So how long will this hardware last? It is our experience that, barring
abuse or the odd failure of a component, the rst things to go will
be the power supply capacitors, and from experience, they will last
15 to 30 years. Fortunately they die gracefully and are easily replaced
by a good technician. After that, the longevity will depend upon the
number of operating thermal cycles, but we can say that we have had
ampliers operating in the eld in excess of 20 years with no particu-
lar mortality, and we don’t have good information beyond that. More
to the point, you should not worry about it. This is a conservatively
built industrial design, not a frail tube circuit run on the brink of cata-
strophic failure. If it breaks, we will simply get it xed, so sleep well.
Fun Hardware Facts