SET the best?

Atmo is daddy Mac.

I think the OP answered his own question

What's you favorite color?

AREN‘t you tooting your horn just a little too much? OTLs are great but only address a very small portion of speakers with high efficiency and high impedance. That may or may not be everybody‘s fare and your implied claim of superiority seems therefor to run precisely into the Western gun issues you profer.

I've been careful to not speaker about our amps specifically. But for the record, although over the years it seems as if a lower powered OTL is somehow the holy grail for many, IME such a thing is really difficult to do and impractical. Its quite true that OTLs don't like low impedances but you don't always need a high efficiency speaker to work with them because many OTLs made over the last 60 years made over 100 watts. Back in the early 1960s a set of Quads and Futterman amps were the match made in heaven and SETs simply didn't make enough power for that speaker.


When I first started out 46 years ago I had a lot of audiophile ideas about how things worked- what made a difference in the sound of a circuit and so forth. Over time a lot of those ideas (many of which came from audiophile friends of mine) died an ugly death. It turns out that if you have a command of the appropriate math you can predict how an amplifier will sound and that won't be a matter of taste since all humans use the same hearing/perceptual rules. Whether people want to hear about it is a different matter of course but you 'canna change the laws of physics!' as Scotty once put it.

Not really NO!

”But for the record, although over the years it seems as if a lower powered OTL is somehow the holy grail for many”

SET the best? Is SET amplification where we should all end up? I keep reading posts where people tell of their journeys from plenty power to micro power, and how amazing SET amplification is 45 set 211 set 845 set otl, and usually, ....with the right speaker. I have yet to read of anyone who has gone the other direction from SET, to High watt beast class A amps or others. If your speakers can be driven by minimal wattage, is this the most realistic, natural sound we can achieve? versus say, 86db sensitive speakers and a 1000w amp? Is the end result solely based on speaker pairing? circuit? tubes? I am in the process of changing my direction in my search for realistic sound, just because, and wondering if this really is the best direction to be going. From what I have been reading I think it may be. What do we get with SET? What do we give up? What’s you favorite color? hanaleimike ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Answer: Yes,

 

Let me share My tech builds a UX250 tube SET amp, I borrowed it due to my Jadis Defy needing tubes, and that will be some months. I borrowed it some months back and was not so impressed,,, He reloaned it again, and this time one channel stoped playing ’He saw the 2 issues, 1 which was a cap was not soldered at one end. Now running full mode,. WOWWW Factor high. NOw I finally **get** what is all this SET Magic.

. However, the speaker makes the difference. as we all know, speakers are everything I have the DLVX8 about to make a dual FR addinga DLVX6. So like all light jazz, classical chamber the music floats across the room, the speakers completely disappear. Its just unreal, so effortless. SET + High end FR is what jazz fans draems are made of. I have not tried out full orch swing blues , like Gatemouth Mouth Brown/Gateswings.

 

With light jazz, chamber classical , the musical image is just pure magic. SET + FR = Musical Magical wonderland. Jazz fans take note.

 

Your xover speakers,, ain’t cutting it. You have no idea what you are missing out with your PP/xover setup.