Does anyone care to ask an amplifier designer a technical question? My door is open.


I closed the cable and fuse thread because the trolls were making a mess of things. I hope they dont find me here.

I design Tube and Solid State power amps and preamps for Music Reference. I have a degree in Electrical Engineering, have trained my ears keenly to hear frequency response differences, distortion and pretty good at guessing SPL. Ive spent 40 years doing that as a tech, store owner, and designer.
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Perhaps someone would like to ask a question about how one designs a successfull amplifier? What determines damping factor and what damping factor does besides damping the woofer. There is an entirely different, I feel better way to look at damping and call it Regulation , which is 1/damping.

I like to tell true stories of my experience with others in this industry.

I have started a school which you can visit at http://berkeleyhifischool.com/ There you can see some of my presentations.

On YouTube go to the Music Reference channel to see how to design and build your own tube linestage. The series has over 200,000 views. You have to hit the video tab to see all.

I am not here to advertise for MR. Soon I will be making and posting more videos on YouTube. I don’t make any money off the videos, I just want to share knowledge and I hope others will share knowledge. Asking a good question is actually a display of your knowledge because you know enough to formulate a decent question.

Starting in January I plan to make these videos and post them on the HiFi school site and hosted on a new YouTube channel belonging to the school.


128x128ramtubes
@pwhinson The Thiel is a low impedance speaker, below 4Ω for most of the range with two steep peaks in the bass. https://www.stereophile.com/content/thiel-cs24-loudspeaker-measurements

An amp to drive these speakers should be happy with a 2Ω load.

And what speaker wire do you use?
NO amp is happy with a 2 ohm load, or at least it’s far happier seeing a higher impedance. When did all these very-low impedance loudspeakers start appearing, and why? The original Magneplanar Tympani T-I was a nominal 8 ohm load, which soon was changed to 4 ohms. 4 ohms coupled with a ss amp makes for more power getting to the speaker, but why go lower? Speakers with wildly-varying impedances (many ESL’s) are a real problem, especially with the typically-high output impedance tube amps. The Music Reference RM-200 being the rare exception, of course ;-) .
The answer is that the industry cares more about power than nuance. As well many speaker designers don't realize the relationship between amp and speakers so they don't realize that by making the speaker lower impedance, the amp will make more distortion. In high end audio, its more about nuance than power, and higher impedance loads do that with greater ease.
Or there might be a third explanation.
Attainment of the tipping point of your cortex?
Or there might be a third explanation.
Attainment of the tipping point of your cortex?
Simpler than that.


This is a public forum. Anyone who wishes can post anywhere on the forum, including this thread as long as they are a member.


I've been here since its inception.


I'm also an engineer, an amplifier designer and I answer questions.


But here's the kicker: This thread was put up as a promotional device. You can tell because the manufacturer is talking about his products, often more than once in many of his posts. This is against the Audiogon rules, but because I and others are posting here as well, the entire thread doesn't have to be taken down.

I notice on this account that Georgehifi isn't being taken to task; although while he is a manufacturer, he's not an amp designer. But this thread has drifted to the topic of preamps on occasion and on that account he's been posting too.