We've been led to believe for years that home audio systems need a lot of power to allow enough sonic headroom to sound their best, and certainly low efficiency speakers often need ultimately more juice to get moving. Or your 15,000 square foot mansion has a really large listening room where crowds wanna dance. The alternative of less efficient OTL, single ended tube, or other pure class A somewhat lower powered amps used with reasonably efficient speakers simply offers choices that differ with the high power school of design, and often result in more music for the buck. I've gone all the way from 250 watt per side power amps and various well designed high current class A biased SS or push pull tube designs, to a small 12 watt per side single ended power amp. The latter design seems to sound a LOT better to me, and I can't imagine going back to the former.
Are medium power push pull tube amplifiers more articulate than high powered units?
I have read numerous times that, allowing for similar quality or the same manufacturer, medium powered (60-80 watts) push pull tube amplifiers are more articulate/laccurate/less distortion than higher powered tube amplifiers (100-300 Wpc). I know everything depends on design, amplification class, parts quality, etc of the push pull tube amplifier, but do most agree with this generalization. If generally true, is it related to the numerous pairs of push pull output tubes which need to be summed at the output of higher powered designs? Some feel that if you want 100 Wpc or more, solid state should be strongly considered. Thanks for all your opinions in advance. Norm
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- 4 posts total
- 4 posts total