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
gregm
3,408 posts
 
Trelja paints the picture of our reality I think. For the rest Twl & Sean have explained a good deal, in a complementary way. From a historical perspective, the "golden age" of audio sprang from the growth of the recorded medium dominating the music market after WW2. In classical this was very much the case for Europe: orchestras were disparaged during the war, people could not flood the concert halls and the proliferation of recorded music brought the symphony orchestra, based many miles away, to the home. BUT this necessitated equipment in order to listen, better equip to listen better, etc. Remember, entertainment in the old times was radio & the local concert venue -- and the little TV offered little to the music public. PLUS stereo flourished, and made reproduction even more difficult than it had been.

Nowadays, who cares apart from us....
shubertmaniac
350 posts
 
I think we all pursue this hobby or passion in our own way.
I at least think we do. I am ridiculed by my friends for spending 1000s of dollars for something that might bring that elusive something to my listening pleasure, being an amplifier,etc. I have a wife to contend with, who luckily (for the most part)is supportive of my passion for music.
I think there are very responsive audio companies out there
who are into making good music come alive. Some of those manufacturers are small, some quite large. The range of
choices is larger now than it has ever been. I am not against any company that brings out HT equipment if that helps keep a company alive while in the backroom it still makes its high end audio components.

There are many 50-100 watt SS amps out there that are great sounding. BEL 1001 is still making great sounds. Spectral
makes a killer 100 watter. The Parasound Halo 125 watter for $850 is a tremendous buy. Not to mention McCormick, Marsh, NAD, Classe, Simaudio. And I am sure there some underground models that I have never heard of that are out there.

For Tubed amplifiers in the 1980s, there was really only
ARC and conrad-johnson. Now there are so many choices it is
very hard to believe. Rogue, Cary, VTL, Manley, VAC, Quicksilver, Jolida, etc. Please tell me what is to complain about????

Yes, the Speaker designers are somewhat to blame, but if you want blame it on anybody just blame it on your selves.
You wanted speakers that sounded that much better, well
you got them. Maggies, Apogees, Martin-Logans, Acoustats.
All power hungry beasts!!! Sealed tombs like Avalon, Artemis, and their brethren. Power!!!

Yet even with those power hungry beasts, why a gigawatt of power??? I can drive my power hungry Acoustats with a
Spectral DMA50, 80 watter all day at normal listening volumes. OK, if I want rock concert earsplitting volume
I can drive two of them into oblivion. So the question is
are you all going deaf???
bigtee
803 posts
 
I don't believe ARC is moving toward solid state sound, whatever that may be, but to implementing tubes in a more accurate fashion. The latest ARC tube amps sound awfully good. Wish I could afford a pair of the VT 100's. I don't believe tubes for the most part offer a accurate portrayal of the source. One term I really never hear with a tube product is accurate.
I use a Audible Illusions preamp which I feel adds romance to the sound of my Theta Dreadnaught. I like the combo. The Theta tests like a tube amp with its zero feedback and its tube like distortion products. It also has balanced circuitry which does not allow the use a common output ground.
We all have sound we like and if we didn't, we wouldn't need all the equipment on the market. I have always asked the question, "What is accurate?" I have never heard accurate to know! And if I had, I probably would have missed it.
There is a place for everything just like the many different car choices. Someone posed a question on this forum about what is the best sounding speaker and received about 40 different nominations. So, who made the right choice?
There are as many reasons to use a high powered amp as there are to use a low powered one. It a decision the individual must ultimately make and I guess manufactures will surely help you out(of the money in your pocket!)
elektron
21 posts
 
The answer is a toughie. I think it comes down to marketing. Despite what a person hears the wattage rating is kind of like horsepower. Lots of speakers are in the 87 to 94 dB 1W/1M class which means they are wasting power as heat rather than transducing it into "sound";ie pressure waves. If that is the case it is easier to "kick" the speaker with watts and produce what many buyers perceive as acceptable loudness. However, the notion of horsepower under the hood also comes into play. Actually to reproduce the transients in musical signals without waveform distortion, compression, etc. would require something on the order of 10,000 Watts. Buyers feel more comfortable with an amp that delivers a couple of hundred watts rather than 50. Enter the concept of marketing. A buyer feels just plain better with more "horsepower" in his amp. And, watts are cheap, but more watts don't necessarily sound better. The original Classe amp produced 20 solid state watts of pure class A performance, sounded very good for a solid state amp, and ran so hot you could have used the heat sinks for waffle irons.

It would be better to have loudspeakers in the range of 98 to 105 dB 1W/1M to take advantage of the simpler circuits in solid state design, vacuum tube amplifiers with only two output tubes in push-pull, or better yet a Single Ended Triode amp that does not require phase splitting of the signal anywhere in the signal path. I think Nelson Pass is doing single ended solid state amps, but haven't kept up with the state of the solid state art. Nelson is, in my opinion, an innovative original thinker. Plus he is a heck of a nice guy. There are lots of tube SET amps that accomplish lovely music reproduction and infuse a kind of life into your recorded music, often quite literally taking your breath away.
sean
6,231 posts
 
I agree that higher efficiency speakers open up a lot of doors in terms of amplifier selection. To attain high efficiency though, one must sacrifice low frequency extension in a sealed design or poorer transient response / less control by going to a vented design. Horn designs would have to be HUGE to get deep bass out of them. Going that route would once again produce a sacrifice though, this one being bass definition and tonality. As such, you have now traded in one sacrifice for another.

Besides all of the above, i have run into more than a few high efficiency speakers that really did NOT like being fed any type of power. Get them up to the point that things are beginning to crank and distortion and compression set in quite rapidly. I'm not saying that all high efficiency designs do this, but that most designs work best within a limited SPL range. Sean
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