Tannoy Westminster amp matching question.

Dover,
I think we do agree on most points especially the advantage of trying different amplifiers if this is possible.Based on the replies in this thread it seems clear a variety of amps would work sucessfully with Borg`s speakers.

Dover you mentioned the Bakoon amp driving the Coincident qiite easily, this does`nt surprise me. My room is 14'x26'x8' and I can completely saturate the room with full scale sound and energy with my 8 watt amp.I`d really like to hear the Bakoon and also the First Watt S.I.T.-1 amp with my speakers. Both are said to be very special.
What`s your impression of the Bakoon with appropriate speakers? Is it organic?

Regards,

The Bakoon I have listened to quite frequently was the SCA7511 with Vishay attenuator. It has a grainless, reasonably transparent sound - very very smooth and easy to listen to. As stated I personally found it underpowered with the Tannoys, but it seems to work well with the Coincindents. I preferred it to the Frankensteins. The Border Patrol 300B also works very well with the Coincidents.

I love it when we all get along. :-).

Atmas, thanks for the insights into your design aims. Its very nice of you to share them with us.

When my speakers finally arrive (its killing me) I'll experiment and tell you what I liked and why I thought that way. I'll try and see if I can add an demo SET to my auditioned components.....

So in the meanwhile, have a happy Holiday everyone, stay safe and I hope to chat with you early in the new year.

(I'll have to wait for the speakers to burn in first. Daammmmitttt ).

I had chance to listen TW SE in friends house with Manley 25o old reference monoblocks yestarday.I have TW Royal versions at home with awesome SS amp Sroll Lyric(extremely clean sounding),I was very happy with it.But then i heard tube monoblocks Challenge 833 with 80w Aclass in triode and it was amazing.Since then I am thinking about tubes,many people were telling me,with Tannoys you need tubes and I did not listen.:( Yesterday I heard 20 yers old Manley as metioned above and I never heard such lows in my system,not even with 833's.I wonder,since these Manley"s are very rare to come by in used market,how would manley neo250 or 500 compare with these old beasts 240 ref?Any thoughts?Yesterday's listening experience gave me a big lesson,you don't need precise clean sterile amp to achive the highest goal and that is :MUSIC SHOULD PASS THROUGH THE EMOTIONAL INFORMATION(John Atkinson said that few years ago on this subject)!So I decided to try McIntosh monoblocks 2301.I will bring them for audition on saturday.Manley sound is staying with me till then.Greetings from Czech rep

The underlying assumption you imply is that high powered solid state has a sound - well that's not true, its going to be speaker dependent.

I find the main 'sound' of most transistor amps the is the slight presence of odd-ordered harmonics, which manifests to the human ear as 'brightness'. The human ear is more sensitive to odd ordered harmonics than just about anything else due to the fact that it uses them to determine how loud a sound is. However I do agree that not all speakers work with all amps and there is indeed a speaker dependency! For more on that see http://www.atma-sphere.com/Resources/Paradigms_in_Amplifier_Design.php

My point was that you need an amp that is driving the speakers properly and with over 20 years experience with Tannoy 15" drivers in various cabinets, I do believe that many folk incorrectly assume that you only need a few watts because of the high efficiency.

Agreed. I regard the Tannoy has being moderate efficiency rather than high efficiency. You need some wattage.

I believe that controlling the 15" driver, which has been specifically designed to be phase coherent through the crossover point at 1k, is paramount to maintaining that design intent.

For this you don't need high power- you need good bass extension out of the amp. In fact the driver in the Tannoy seems to be happier if the amp has a lower damping factor rather than higher, typical of a lot of speakers with efficiencies in the upper 90s or higher. My speakers are 98 db with dual 15" drivers, yet they are easily 'controlled' by a 5-watt amp, even if that 5 watts is really not enough power to satisfy.