2. amps-preamps
  3. 1038620469

Riddle me this...

Why is it that you cannot seem to purchase a lower-powered solid state amp any more? None of the “names” in solid state amps seem to make any reasonably priced or powered products at all, and most haven’t since about the early 90s. (A few come to mind right off, Levinson no. 29, Rowland Model 1, Krell KSA-80, the family of Pass Alephs). These days, the most modest offering from any of these companies (not to mention everyone else) is many times more expensive, in no small part due to the fact that they are all many times more powerful.

Question is, why? Why should I need 250wpc+ to drive any reasonably designed speaker? What is it about the industry that seems to be in a conspiracy (or, at least, conscious parallelism, for you antitrust geeks) to foist more and more power on the consuming public while, at the same time, doubling or tripling prices for their most modest gear? Why is it that, if I want a really nice amp at less than 100wpc, I have to either go with tubes or with gear that was made at least a decade ago? Why is it that most speakers made these days are either “tube friendly” or “require” an amp with enough power to light a small village to actually go?

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve got inefficient speakers and a 250wpc amp which I like the sound of just fine. It just strikes me as preposterous that I (and we, if I may speak for the market) seem to have been conditioned to believe that this is necessary. Why on Earth wouldn’t someone get a reasonably designed, efficient pair of speakers and, say, a Pass Aleph amp for a negligible fraction of ANYTHING built by Pass these days and never look back? I understand there are plenty of legit reasons why more power can be desirable (“never can have too much” yea, yea, I know), but am a bit miffed that, legit reasons or no, the market no longer seems to offer choices. We a bunch of suckers, or what? (Yea, a bit of a rant, but this has been bugging me -- am I the only one? Did I miss something? Can I get a witness?)
mezmo
fyneplace
40 posts
 
Well, I'll stand as a witness for Mezmo. Glad someone else sees hype the way I do. I read all the threads before this and agree with all. All the matters is the music.

Jeff
zaikesman
3,017 posts
 
Good observation (I guess you can tell that I haven't exactly been thinking of shopping for one of these!), at least as far as the 'big boys' go. Of course, there are still lower-powered SS amps available, but they mostly come from Britain and Europe. That leads me to believe that Sean is probably correct (and when is he not?), that the Levinsons, Krells, Passes, Classes, etc. of this world have identified their typical customers as not being in the market for sub-100-watters, but now that even seems to be true of the McCormacks and the less expensive 'world' brands like NAD, Adcom, Rotel, etc. However, two additional thoughts I've had just now, are that A) the resurgence of the integrated amp as a popular market niche has usurped the lower-powered separates approach in most of these lines, leaving high(er)-power as the raison d'etre for component amps, and B) lower-powered two-channel amps don't cater to the requirements of home theater, which has migrated to three- or five-channel designs.
maxgain
526 posts
 
I am with Bigtee on the smaller amps often having a magic that the big amps don't. I used to love the old ARC D51 as an example. I love my current 45 watt ARC amp and have no desire to go bigger. With the right speaker or some careful system planning there would never be a need for a big 200 watt monster. On the other side of the coin there are things out there like MG 20's and big stats that I have always loved, that want more juice than my VT50 can feed em.
ben_campbell
1,169 posts
 
I use a Sugden A21a-a mere 25 watts,solid state class A amp.
It's very musical and can blast it out if you want to turn the dial up.
It is British made.
I always thought BIG everything was an American thing.
:-)
twl
3,251 posts
 
Marketing. People believe that they are getting more for their money when they get big power. They don't know anything about signal paths or idle-current noise, or amp classes. All they know is that they got 250 watts. When their business associate comes over to be impressed by the new audio system, he is supposed to say,"Wow!". If he says,"You paid all that money for only 25 watts!?", then you have failed to impress, and must go out and buy a much higher power amp, that will pass the "impressiveness" test. Much better to buy the "impressive" amp first, so as to not embarrass yourself in front of your associates.

It's the same thing with exotic cars. The vast majority of exotic car owners couldn't drive their way out of a paper bag. They wouldn't even know the first thing about it. But that doesn't stop them from buying a Porsche, and telling their associates that it has 330 hp and cost $120k. If Porsche depended only on buyers who actually understood, and could properly use, their cars' potential, they would be out of business overnight.

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