@bdp24 thanks!
Generally speaking, the amp/speaker interface is a very important part of the game. OTLs in general like to see higher impedances (although the speaker impedance curve doesn’t have to be flat), and the same is often true of SETs.
First Watt solid state amps are also best used with speakers of more than 4 ohms. They don’t make a lot of power either, so you do best with them if you have an easier speaker to drive- 95 db or more.
I don’t agree that all ’well-designed’ amplifiers sound the same- far from it. A lot depends on the goal of the designer! For example, our amps are very wide bandwidth and low distortion, but they don’t use feedback, and that is with intention. This was to avoid the distortion caused by the feedback system itself, and the result of that was that we have to be quite selective about what speakers to use with the amps. But the upside is as far as we can tell, this allows us to get a lot closer to the music itself.
I’m pretty sure that if you talk to an SET designer, you will find that they say something quite similar, and if you read Nelson Pass’s articles about the First Watt amps, you will see the same thing espoused. I’m not saying that there is only one way and its our way, what I **am** saying is that making an amp that is a perfect voltage source is not the only way and that there are advantages to avoiding that approach.
This means that you can’t just buy a speaker and expect that any amp will work with it. In fact, the idea of the amp being a voltage source for flat bandwidth (which I call the Voltage Paradigm) really only works with box speakers where the impedance curve is also a map of the speaker’s efficiency. There are a number of speaker technologies that don’t fit that model and as a result, don’t work with that kind of amplification.
You can read more about this topic at this link:
http://www.atma-sphere.com/Resources/Paradigms_in_Amplifier_Design.php
Generally speaking, the amp/speaker interface is a very important part of the game. OTLs in general like to see higher impedances (although the speaker impedance curve doesn’t have to be flat), and the same is often true of SETs.
First Watt solid state amps are also best used with speakers of more than 4 ohms. They don’t make a lot of power either, so you do best with them if you have an easier speaker to drive- 95 db or more.
I don’t agree that all ’well-designed’ amplifiers sound the same- far from it. A lot depends on the goal of the designer! For example, our amps are very wide bandwidth and low distortion, but they don’t use feedback, and that is with intention. This was to avoid the distortion caused by the feedback system itself, and the result of that was that we have to be quite selective about what speakers to use with the amps. But the upside is as far as we can tell, this allows us to get a lot closer to the music itself.
I’m pretty sure that if you talk to an SET designer, you will find that they say something quite similar, and if you read Nelson Pass’s articles about the First Watt amps, you will see the same thing espoused. I’m not saying that there is only one way and its our way, what I **am** saying is that making an amp that is a perfect voltage source is not the only way and that there are advantages to avoiding that approach.
This means that you can’t just buy a speaker and expect that any amp will work with it. In fact, the idea of the amp being a voltage source for flat bandwidth (which I call the Voltage Paradigm) really only works with box speakers where the impedance curve is also a map of the speaker’s efficiency. There are a number of speaker technologies that don’t fit that model and as a result, don’t work with that kind of amplification.
You can read more about this topic at this link:
http://www.atma-sphere.com/Resources/Paradigms_in_Amplifier_Design.php