Watts and power

@audiozenology.....thanks for the feedback.  I don't comment on here much.....too much back and forth banter.  So I just read and form my own opinion.  I've become a lot more 'tech savvy' than I used to be.  There's a guy  on CL selling this Proton 'beast'.  What's your impression of the review?  He wants $750 for it. I know they are rare. Not trying to hijack this thread....haha  Judging from your answer, you like the Proton specs I'm guessing.  http://www.hifi-classic.net/review/proton-d1200-165.html

sejodiren
There’s a guy on CL selling this Proton ’beast’. What’s your impression of the review? He wants $750 for it.

This if in good working order >25 years old now (any bad caps have been renewed) it should be a good BJT (bi-polar) amp, at least if the specs are right (typo 175w should be 275w), and increases it’s wattage substantially for each halving of impedance all the way to 2ohms. BTW nice twin R-Core transformer also.

"The D1200’s output clipped at rms
155 watts into 8 ohms
275 watts into 4 ohms
350 watts into 2 ohms

With peaks of
593 watts - 8ohms
1,187watts - 4ohms
1,800 watts - 2ohms,

Here is a great video test clip this guy did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL8R-vJRo54&feature=youtu.be


Cheers George

@georgehifi ....thx!  Yea, I've seen that video and specs when I was researching some Proton amps.  Mind boggling!  A tech with 40+ years exp had told me about them when I was looking for info on the Dahlquists.  Said he'd owned several sets and had powered them with Bryston, Carver, PL and the Ampzilla.  Said the Proton sounded better than any of them.  I figured since we're talking low power, high current....I'd ask.  Appreciate the info

I've never heard one of these, I like that they used Bi-Polars (BJT's) to achieve this performance into low impedance's as complimentary mosfets would have trouble doing these sort of figures.
  
While a neat idea, I question the lower voltage rail, then high voltage rail used when even wattage is required for transients or louder passages, as the "sound" characteristics of those output transistors will be different for those two voltages used, I don't know if this is easily detectable while listening or not.

Cheers George

Most tube amps don't have "guts" in the bass due to low damping factor. You may prefer that or you may not and that will be room / speaker dependent.

Bandwidth also plays a role, as well as the match between the amp and speaker. You can have an amplifier with very low damping factor that plays bass great, with plenty of guts. If that's a tube amp, just put it on a 16 ohm load rather than 4 and see how gutzy it gets!

Current is just as important if not more than watts

This statement is a common myth and is false. Current cannot exist without watts; they have a simple mathematical relationship. 1 Watt = 1 Volt times 1 Amp; its that simple.

So if an amplifier has the 'current' it will also have the watts- they go hand in hand.

Where we consumer only have wattage then we can not know much of each component the amp gives for example get 100 watts.

Is it 2 amp and 50 volts ?
OR
Is it 4 amp and 25 volts ?
OR
Something completely else?

The issue is speakers being matched to amps and this is a historical problem. Most speakers these days are meant to be played on an amplifier that acts as a 'voltage source' which is to say for a given output voltage, that voltage is invariant with regards to load impedance. No amp can actually do that but many can do perfectly well on most speakers but not all. But to further complicate matters not all loudspeakers are meant for voltage sources and these speakers will not sound right unless they get an amplifier that matches them. Some examples of loudspeakers of this type are ESLs, many horn loudspeakers, many full range single-driver loudspeakers, some box speakers both acoustic suspension and bass reflex. So you have to know the intention of the designer! For more on this see
http://www.atma-sphere.com/Resources/Paradigms_in_Amplifier_Design.php

With regards to low impedance, in the world of high end audio one of the main goals is to get things to sound real. To this end amplifier distortion is a huge deal because it is distortion that are the differences we hear in amplifiers. Higher ordered harmonics are interpreted by the ear as harshness and brightness even in very small amounts (as our ear has to be keenly sensitive to those harmonics as it uses them to determine sound pressure). Lower orders (2nd-4th) contribute to 'warmth' and 'body'. The ear converts all forms of distortion (THD, IMD, aliasing) into tonality.


With most amplifier topologies it is not possible to add enough feedback in a way that prevents the feedback itself from contributing to higher ordered harmonic distortion. This is at the root of the tubes/transistors debate; the way the industry has gotten around this problem (insufficient gain bandwidth product) is to use an old technique known as 'lying'. They simply don't measure the amps at frequencies where we can see what happens in the range where the ear is most sensitive (Fletcher Munson) so we never get to see the real score. This is why there are amps with no feedback at all and consequently much higher output impedances. The idea with such amps is that tonality caused by distortion can be more important to the ear than actual frequency response errors.
Good luck finding all this out on a simple spec sheet.