Intro
Contents
Advance Paris, formerly Advance Acoustics, is a French hi-fi manufacturer that we’ve had the pleasure of visiting on numerous occasions. And that was rarely disappointing. In recent years, Advance Paris has become a stable player and brought a versatile portfolio to the market. Think amplifiers, CD players, and all-in-one products. Their typical design language, black cabinets with blue lighting, can be recognized from miles away, and of course that uniformity helps build a homogeneous system. Today a beast of a power amplifier is placed on the top shelf of our ‘Basso’ audio rack. The Advance Paris X-A600 stereo power amplifier. Let’s check it out!
We should have known. The Advance Paris X-A 600 is big. Very big. It looks huge next to our slim Moon amplifier. Its dimensions (431x210x464 mm) say it all. And it also weighs a ton. Well, 25 kg… and you can feel that weight! The biggest weight comes from a lump of a toroidal transformer that is supported by 60000 µF of smoothing capacity. The frequency range runs from 10 Hz to 80 kHz.
This is a serious (power) amplifier that delivers 2×200 watts to 8 Ohms and 2×300 watts to 4 Ohms in Class A/B. With that power, you’ll drive most speakers without any issues. Via a High-Bias circuit, the first 45 watts are in Class A.
Besides the size, the VU meters are also immediately noticeable. These are an intrinsic part of the amp and light up blue when the amp is active. We are a sucker for meters but you can also dim them should you wish. Overall build quality is fine and everything seems solidly bolted together.
Meters
Up front we see the power button and next to that power button two more buttons. One to choose how to connect your speakers and one to turn off the VU meters or not. But why would you do that? It is most likely even one of the reasons for purchase. When you activate the amp, the menacing red illumination changes to the familiar blue. The VU meters blink for a moment and then the amplifier is ready to go.
The A-X600 looks impressive, but the lighting and the VU meters make its appearance a little gentler.
Normally, the back of a power amplifier is not very fascinating but with the Advance Paris X-A600 this is different. So you have that switch to choose between Low and High Bias but there is more. There is a switch to adjust the brightness of the VU meters and one that lets you choose between balanced or single-ended.
You can also connect multiple speakers to this amp or opt for bi-wiring where you separate the highs and mids from the lows. Multiple speaker connections are provided for this purpose. Finally, there are also the “trigger” connections that allow multiple devices to start up simultaneously.
