Canuck Audio Mart

I like the sweet sound from a Dynaco SCA-35 (17.5 watts per channel) with the FM 3 tubes tuner and hook to a pair of A25.
Not a big set-up but damn that was pleasant to sit and listen to this "prehistoric" amp with a volume at 9 to 10 o'clock.

Exactly...it really depends on the setup that people have. You can never have enough power...don't have to use it but when you need it you have it!

I sometimes like it loud. BTW to double the sound you need 10X the wattage. For example 100 watts to double it would be 1000 watts not 200. The difference between 100 and 200 watts is not major. Sometimes just a click or two on the volume dial.

Men & their other half both believe:

" The bigger the better! "

So why not?

matching is everything.

I had totem Mani 2's and a Classe ca200 amp. This was a very good match. Tons of volume, and wattage far beyond the 120 stamped on the speaker.
I later shuffled to a MA6900 integrated, and the Mac shut down on heat in 5 mins of volume.
the 8 ohm and 4ohm taps both did.
On 2ohm taps, the music was convoluted badly.


The name of the game is a combination of grip, slope, slew rate and the old damping factor(which is useless).

Sometimes the room will dictate how much power you need. If a room is sparsly populated with furniture, curtains ect.. and has a tile floor you do not need much power. If a room has many absorbing properties including bass traps, sound traps, furniture ect, you will need more power. Also how loud one likes to listen to music (in my case around 96db)

To drives BIG SPEAKER???

weidness wrote



not quite so...some of the most efficient speakers i have seen weighed 600 pounds each, dual 15" woofers, with a 2" compression horn......100Db...could be driven with 8 watts.

Another analogy would be IMO:If you were towing a travel trailer through the mountains and your truck had a gas engine, you would likely slow down going up hills. If your truck had a diesel engine(way more torque)you would not slow down going up hills. Cheers

10 watt, 300B SET with EL-34 driver tubes are driving just about anything under the sun. OP, I'm sure you know to buy quality power over big power. If you want to listen to orchestra music at orchestra volume, you generally need big power to allow for headroom above the dynamics. Most SS amps compress as they get pushed close to their power rating, which sucks the life out of dynamics.

Cheers,
Ian

The difference between 100 watts and 200 watts amounts to only a 3 dB increase in SPL..In fact a 10 times increase in power only amounts to an increase in SPL by 10dB...Not really a whole lot is it...

For instance a loudspeaker rated for 90dB/1 watt measured at 1 meter(the standard) will produce 100 db SPL at 10 watts and 110 dB SPL with 1000 watts...For every 10 dB of SPL increase you increase power by 10 times..This is only in a anechoic environment..In a real world situation inside a concert hall or room the SPL will be a bit greater..

Basic electro-acoustics...

tubeornotube

Watts is just a measure of power used, so looking at the max wattage of a particular amplifier does not mean you will ever use it, but it does give you an indication of what the amp is capable of.
Amperage is important.


Secondly, If you don't think a hi powered amp can have finese as well as guts I urge you to listen to a Musical Fidelity KW 500, as an example.
This beast will entertain you with the most intricate details, while at the same time have the grip and control needed for bass, drums etc.
And if you measured wattage used you probably would only be pushing 20-30 watts with the thing blasting for sure on the most power hungry speakers of 85 db or lower.

I ran some Totem model 1's for a while with a KW and it was insane.
Did I need all the avail power? No, but it just worked and the sound was amazing.

This is bullocks - where do you get this from?

Some ss amps do sound compressed when pushed hard if they don't have a strong power supply and large filter caps. I have found that large amps do sound more open when pushed hard as they seem to be able to handle larger dynamics better.

Amps with a lot of negative feedback also seem to suffer from this, sounding harder or bright when pushed. I find class A amps generally do not suffer from this. My Bedini amps actually use positive feedback which results in very fast rise times and low distortion.

In my opinion, bigger is better (that's why I drive a 1978 Eldorado along with others in the fleet).

Actually, SS amps don't start to compress as much as they start to clip ... harshly ... when they pass their limits. Tube amps, on the other hand, do start to compress when they approach their limits but rather softly due to the different set of harmonics in play compared to SS amps.

One thing that everyone has seemed to miss here is the dynamic range of music; the difference between the musical peaks and the average level of the music. The other factor in play is the noise floor, both of the system and of the listening environment. Highly compressed pop music on the radio has, at best a 20 to 25db dynamic range but better recordings on CDs can have 65, 75 or even 80dbs of dynamic range. As previously explained here every 10db of dynamic range requires 10X the power for the same average listening volume, so for an extra 20db, you need 100X the power, 40dbs require 1000X the power ... you get the idea?

Now, actually average listening levels usually require only a fraction of a 1W which explains why low powered amps driving high efficiency speakers can get by so easily unless you start to push them. With normal efficiency speakers (lets say 90dbmw), if you want to hear all the dynamics of a good recording with a wide dynamic range AND get above your residual noise floor to hear all of the musical details, you need a heck of a lot more than a 7WPC amp. 200, 300, 500 WPC is more like it if you want to avoid clipping or compressing any of the small details.

Now, some people actually like the sound of low powered tube amps when they run out of headroom to reproduce musical peaks and most people really hate the harshness of SS amps when they do the same thing, but you will rarely hear a high powered tube or SS amp run out of steam unless you really, really push them into difficult to drive, low efficiency speakers.