Ohm Walsh Micro Talls: who's actually heard 'em?

Rebbi,

A lot depends on your preferred listening level, the room size, the specific amp in question, full range vs subs, etc, etc, etc.

FWIW - PrimaLuna 7 monos with KT66 output tubes make about 60ish wpc. With subs, this is more than adequate to produce pretty loud music in my largish room. Full range, I'd want more. I use SS amps producing 200wpc and, although they are louder, the speakers sound more dynamic with tubes (I think. I haven't switched back to the ss amps to verify this observation. It may also be partly/mostly break- in.)

Bottom line, more power allows more flexibility, but the speakers are definitely amp sensitive, so take any generalization with a healthy dose of salt. For full range operation I'd try to stay north of 100 wpc tubed and double that for ss. Just a very rough rule of thumb.

Marty

Rebbi,

If the S3 in your question is sat3, the 60ish tubed watts should work. If you're talking series 3 full range, see the above.

Marty

My Musical Fidelity A3CR is about 120w/ch into 8 ohm and almost double into 4 and does fine with the 100 S3s in my rooms that fall within the max room size recommendation for 100s.

I can also say that all the 100 s3 and larger drivers love lots of power and current, the more the merrier.

I had them on a Carver 360w/ch amp prior and neither 100s or larger 5 drivers ever winced being driven to very high SPLs.

I've also ran the 100s to great effect and without issue using an 80W/ch Tandberg 2080. This was not enough for the larger 5's though IMO in that the dynamics suffered, though they were still perhaps undergoing break-in at the time.

Switching to the Audio Research sp16 tube pre-amp recently also resulted in a major improvement in overall dynamics, both large scale and micro. The improvement in microdynamics and transients in particular was much greater than any I noticed with various amps.

Others report and I tend to believe that in general the more power and current you throw at the Ohms, the better the dynamics overall become.

Marty and Mapman,
Thanks a lot for the feedback. I am tempted by John's offer of an upgrade to the 100's at full trade-in value on the Micros. I would certainly never drive them as loud as they can go... My listening room is only about 12' by 16' with an 8 foot ceiling. But the deeper bass is tempting!

But what about my amp?? The Unico puts out 80 w/channel into 8 ohms. And that is solid state in the power section. But how so you know If that's enough "juice?". :-)