I owned both PP & SET tube amps over the last almost 40 years w/ several different speakers in different rooms. There’s no hard & fast rules about any of them but the midrange detail & realism of a good SET amp is tough to beat at lower to maybe moderate volumes even w/ high sensitivity speakers. They do run out of gas quickly though when pushed at all & the distortion increases rapidly beyond their power rating or even sometimes that their rated power. They have no real “headroom “ . I have landed on PO amps for that reason as I enjoy loud volumes at times & have a big room.
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Good DH/SET...
Been using OK/inexpensive DH/SET 2A3 mono blocks for 20+ years (tubes used sell for way more than the amps) and used an Audion DH/SET 300B prior to the 2A3 amps.
I use vintage wide band drivers/speakers without added tweeters/subs and that's enough for me.
DeKay
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Do you mean Class AB when you say PP or do you mean Class-A Push-Pull? There is a BIG difference between Class-AB PP and Class-A PP. If you meant Class-A PP, then a great Class-A PP would be a no-brainer, I think.
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Thx for the link -- very helpful .. Much more reading to do, and music listening, of course..
From the Gospel according to Aiken: (this was my very question - how can a push-pull be Class A ?
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For audio amplification, a class A amplifier can be either single-ended or push-pull. Now, you might be thinking, how can a push-pull amplifier be class A? Doesn’t one side amplify half the waveform and the other side amplify the other half? Isn’t this why we use a phase splitter? These are common misconceptions. You can, indeed have a true class A amplifier that operates in push-pull mode. Amplifier class has absolutely nothing to do with output stage topology. If the output tubes on either side of a push-pull pair are biased in class A (halfway between cutoff and saturation), then the current in each side will still flow for the full 360 degrees of the input cycle, just in opposing directions. As one tube’s current increases from the midpoint, or idle, bias current, the other tube’s current is decreasing by an equal amount. The output transformer sums these oppositely-phased currents to produce the output waveform in the secondary winding. As one side reaches saturation, the other side reaches cutoff, just as they would in a single-ended class A amplifier. Neither side cuts off at the full, unclipped output power of the amplifier. The output power of a push-pull class A amplifier is exactly twice the output power of a single-ended class A amplifier operating under the same conditions of plate voltage, bias, and effective load impedance.
DeKay (from AudioKarma)
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I switch between a push-pull class A Pass XA-25 and a Dennis Had SEP (pentode) tube amp. Both sound beautiful and I really don't know why I swap them out except for feeling bad for the one that's not being used. Nobody wants a sad, unused amp.
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