Watt Gives?


Why does 75 Belles Watts smoke 250 watts from Anthem, PS Audio and W4S?

Not only do the Belles 75 watts play equally as loud, but it has the best bass texture, grip and slam, openess and top end...

Is this a case of 160hp on a 400lb motorcycle surpassing a 600 horsepower 4500lb in terms of acceleration?

I’d like to go up the ladder but I guess up isn’t always directly related to specs?

Really starting to question analogue / high efficiency, low powered beastly tubes...


128x128b_limo
Partially it's clipping and partially it is the poor damping factor of the tube amp screwing up the frequency response emphasizing some frequencies to give the impression of louder. 
  An amp's ability to deliver current, especially into 4 ohms and lower, is a better indicator of its performance with different speakers than its voltage rating!

Agree. I have always enjoyed using amps with big power supplies that can deal with very low impedance speakers (one of my favourites puts out only 40 watts into 8 ohms, but when bridged will put out 500 W into 1 ohm).

As it happens, I still own one of Belles rather rare amps, the 'Belles A' - I believe that he made less than 200 of them.  70 W output, but when asked about how low impedance it would drive into, supposedly commented along the lines that t would drive a clip wire (between the output  terminals). What I do know is that the turn on pulse welded a couple of switches together so I just used a commercial power bar to turn it on (and replaced the bar when it eventually failed).

Tube amps can't do that - but when they do clip, they do it more gracefully.
The reason is that new solid state amplifiers are low current devices based on cost cutting when you listen to a good vintage class ab solid state that is 250 watts with a lot of current behind it the 75 tube watts will sound not nearly as dynamic but you need to listen to a solid state amp made before 2000 to get what i am talking about.
Not true at All ,it depends on the designer .I Have Coda  electronics .
they are old school massive power supply , potted transformers much quieter then open ,Coda 3KVA transformer,and over 80k Uf capacitance ,that’s just their mid grade  most amps not even close .
The OP has not listened to the Anthem P2 power amp, let him bring his 75 watt Belles amp over and I will put it into my system and then he can listen to my Anthem P2 amp and we will see which one sounds better at any level, the P2 will play down 1 ohm and even to short without missing a beat.If you are near the Chicago land area b_limo then drop me a line and we will compare.