The David Berning stuff is wonderful. I am not sure if these designs are as adverse to lower impedance speakers as other OTL designs seem.
Tube Amp lower power vs higher power and cruising volume
After having Solid State my entire life thus far, I bought a PrimaLuna EVO 300 integrated and absolutely love it. I am currently driving 20 year old B&W CDM9NT's and it does a wonderful job, I never heard my B&W's have that much bass before, even at lower listening volumes. The EVO 300 is rated at 42W. Since I recently purchased it I have the option for a brief time without losing money to possibly move up to the EVO 400 integrated which adds 4 more output tubes and gives you 70W. I believe the 300 and 400 both use the same transformer because they both weigh the same 68 lbs. So my only reason for possibly doing this would be for future speaker upgradability having a little more power. I know my B&W's are not the most efficient and the 300 seems to be driving them very well, volume rarely goes past 9:30/10. So my question, if I get a higher power model, since I listen most of the time at comfortable listening levels, with a higher power tube amp will you have to turn it up higher to hit that cruising speed where it starts to open up? The 300 seems to hit that early and I listen at comfortable levels and good extended bass without having to crank it which is nice when I am listening at night and my wife and daughter are sleeping. Overall I am very happy with the 300 but while I have the option I am trying to decide if the extra for a 400 is worth it. Thanks
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ralph is correct to point out to us not to confuse the two technologies, despite the similar naming berning zotl is fundamentally a different design than ’standard’ otl amps zotl’s use a ’normal complement of tubes’ - i.e. 4 pcs el34’s 2 per channel like many tube amps - and use a carrier frequency (like radio broadcasting) thru the output tubes bearing the music signal, and then ’strips away’ the carrier frequency before outputting to the speaker load (and in doing so, allows for elimination of standard heavy metal output transformers to perform the impedance matching from output tubes to speakers)... good write up here ---> https://www.lineartubeaudio.com/the-technology regular otl’s manage the impedance matching by using many paralleled sets of identical output tubes (i recall my fourier amp had 16 pcs 6as7 output tubes to handle the impedance matching ---> http://www.one-electron.com/Projects/Fourier/FC_Tr_ad_1.jpg and http://www.one-electron.com/Projects/Fourier/FC_Tr_ad_2.png |
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