arron
a tube amp can certainly drive m3 sapphires but it needs to be a relatively powerful tube amp imo and one that has 4 ohm taps -- if you have a medium to large room
one must not generalize about what it takes drive spatials... those who do don’t know the line...
- m5 sapphire is 8 ohm load, one 15 in woofer on each side 92 db/w/m eff
- m3 sapphires is 4 ohm load, two 15 in woofers on each side 92 db/w/m eff
- x5 is 8 ohm load, two 12 in woofers but with self powered built in sub for the lower woofer, 97 db eff 8 ohm load as seen by your outboard amp
- x3 same as x5 except with larger 15 in internally driven woofer instead of the 12 in unit
so the m3 is the most challenging of the lot... m5 you lose 2 woofers and their output, but sure, it is easier to drive by a tube amp as impedance much more friendly at 8 ohms
x3/5 different can of worms totally - your amp only sees the tweeter and one 12 in woofer... so, easy-breezy to drive above the low pass filter cut off by a connected tube amp, the internal solid state amp doing all the heavy lifting in the low frequencies where the current draw and damping factor is most needed - flea watt amps thus CAN apply for the job successfully here
clayton has indeed used the 13 wpc lta zotl tube amp to drive m3 sapphires at audio shows, but it should be noted that
a) the lta’s are NOT everyday transformer based tube amps... the lta’s use a trick power supply and no output transformers and are a special case and can grip the m3’s woofers especially well
b) note that this set up is being played in a small room, two speakers stradding a single wide equipment rack, side and rear walls nearby... listening was semi nearfield
https://www.lineartubeaudio.com/products/spatial-m3-lampizator-amber3-lta-z10-integrated-caf-system
Jiss49. Do you think tube integrateds don’t have enough juice for M3 Sapphire? Clayton at Spatial claims that low powered tube works nicely though.
a tube amp can certainly drive m3 sapphires but it needs to be a relatively powerful tube amp imo and one that has 4 ohm taps -- if you have a medium to large room
one must not generalize about what it takes drive spatials... those who do don’t know the line...
- m5 sapphire is 8 ohm load, one 15 in woofer on each side 92 db/w/m eff
- m3 sapphires is 4 ohm load, two 15 in woofers on each side 92 db/w/m eff
- x5 is 8 ohm load, two 12 in woofers but with self powered built in sub for the lower woofer, 97 db eff 8 ohm load as seen by your outboard amp
- x3 same as x5 except with larger 15 in internally driven woofer instead of the 12 in unit
so the m3 is the most challenging of the lot... m5 you lose 2 woofers and their output, but sure, it is easier to drive by a tube amp as impedance much more friendly at 8 ohms
x3/5 different can of worms totally - your amp only sees the tweeter and one 12 in woofer... so, easy-breezy to drive above the low pass filter cut off by a connected tube amp, the internal solid state amp doing all the heavy lifting in the low frequencies where the current draw and damping factor is most needed - flea watt amps thus CAN apply for the job successfully here
clayton has indeed used the 13 wpc lta zotl tube amp to drive m3 sapphires at audio shows, but it should be noted that
a) the lta’s are NOT everyday transformer based tube amps... the lta’s use a trick power supply and no output transformers and are a special case and can grip the m3’s woofers especially well
b) note that this set up is being played in a small room, two speakers stradding a single wide equipment rack, side and rear walls nearby... listening was semi nearfield
https://www.lineartubeaudio.com/products/spatial-m3-lampizator-amber3-lta-z10-integrated-caf-system