NELSON PASS - interviewed by NBT (The Next Best Thing Studio)

Inside the Mind and History of a HiFi Engineer Genius

NELSON PASS gives up an hour of his lockdown time to regale Jay with some stories in answer to some obvious & some not so obvious questions.

Some of the more interesting & possibly lesser-known facts....

• Pass Labs, in its 30th year, manufactures 4,000 - 5,000 amplifiers per year.
• Nelson Pass has a continuing connection with JBL loudspeakers (including amplification for active JBLs).
• Aside from Pass Labs & First Watt, there is a 3rd company named Pass Works.
• What is his favourite vintage Japanese amplifier? Pioneer? Sony? Sansui?
• The design features of the First Watt F7 amplifier, one of the simplest amplifiers that he has designed.
• The 'phase' and spectral content of distortion affects the 'illusion' of imaging, space, expansiveness.
• Different amps with similar measured spec's, probably will sound similar, he says.
• High End audio personalities that he has met and/or knows well - eg. Dan D'Agostino, John Curl, Jeff Rowland, Michael Dayton-Wright.
• Nelson currently likes to relax to 'Brazilian Lounge Music'

Some choice snippets:

" I would venture to say that somewhere between 0.1% 2nd harmonic (distortion) and 1%... I would say that your ability to discern that is going to kick in. Below that, it becomes much more difficult. "

" There is lots of room in the High End marketplace for High End companies to co-exist. "

" All I need is something like 1% of what is a very big market. I'd do very well with numbers as low as that! "