SET Shootout China VS The USA
2A3 SET from china arrives any day now.
The tech who loaned me his UX250 (aka 50 Tube) amp, with a 12AU7 in front + a 6BH7 (??) , has incredible pure Cobalt out trans. ($1k+ each back in 2000, now no longer in production). . he will help me set up the 2A3.
Has a AX+AU my 2 fav front tubes anda quad of 2A3's.
My speakers are pure neutrality, no coloration, no distortion,.
So whatever amp/ source you plug in, will register the nuances inherent in the circuit.
Will be very interesting.
USA has pure cobalt out trans which gives the edge in power, but the china 2A3 has a 2 tubes per channel.
Gonna be interesting and will post a YT upload with comments,
AFTER TESTING IS COMPLETEED.
Hand on to your horses at the OK Corral.
Grab a beer at the saloon,
sundown shootout at the edge of town.
and here ya go WOW factor off the chart. These designs are blast off rocket ships to a magical musical universe. Your music will never be the same. Will never have sounded this good. You will RE discover your favorite music. As in,,**WOW I never knew this singer/ band had such talents..** http://www.triodelab.com/45-triode
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The 45 tube is a fantastic tube to many DHT enthusiasts it's their favorite. However because of the exceedingly low power it's not for everyone and proper speaker matching is essential. I prefer it and the 2a3 both to the 300B tube as a general rule but obviously that's amp dependent there are tons of good 300B amps out there. |
Yes my tech speakers often of this **45** tube. Looking at a pic, tube looks super. have a feeling its the one Im after, Yes very low watt as mentioned in Triode's web site and mentioned *speaker choice is critical..** Mentioned something like 100 db sens speakers.. Mine are dual FR + dual T's. tweets 91db and FR 95 and 93. with the ohm load, might have to stay with DHT PP circuit, for a booost in power/dynamices Actually listening to a single tube SET UX50, , now this PP2A3, I prefer a PP DHT design. I love the dyanmics of this dual tube circuit. Not sure when the Defy will IF ever get tubes,,,,, man, the wrong roads we travel down....costly....never taken much interest in DHT's due to alotttt of , half baked , misleading nfo I read here on audiogon decades ago concerning SET amplifaction. Another reason i never took a interest in DHT's is lack of exp with a FR speaker. All this is completely new to me. Seems I am saving the very best amplifier for,,,last. Like a good old rare Bordeux. |
I've been exploring SETs for nearly 30 years. I started with 300bs, then it was the 2A3, finally the type 45. Then I decided to see how a PP 45-based amp would sound and it ran circles around the SET version- smoother, more delicate, greater resolution, more grunt, better bass- no downside whatsoever. Of course I was measuring these things too. What I found was the distortion signature defines any amplifier. Its what we call the 'sonic signature' since distortion is very audible as tonality. Since SETs express a certain type of distortion (quadratic nonlinearity) and a fully differential amp expresses a different type (cubic nonlinearity) and since PP amps with single-ended circuits express both, I set out to see if I could build a PP amp using small power pentodes that could outperform SETs of the same power. This little amp makes 5 watts and is class A. It uses EL95s which are a little brother to the 6AQ5. The tube is meant to be very easy to drive. I set up the output section in ultralinear, using cathode bias so it would have a substantial differential effect on the output section, giving it greater linearity. I then built a 12AT7 differential amplifier to be both the input voltage amplifier and driver. So the amp is fully differential and thus has a cubic nonlinearity. A cubic nonlinearity expresses the odd ordered harmonics since the even orders are cancelled. A quadratic nonlinearity expressed both even and odd. The ear treats the 2nd and 3rd harmonics the same- they are relatively innocuous. But they are also useful as they serve to mask the presence of the higher orders. That is why an SET sounds so smooth, despite making more of the higher orders than any other kind of amplifier! Because the 2nd is suppressed, this little amp makes a fraction of the distortion that an SET of the same power makes- its about 0.5% at full power and vastly lower at any other power level, and because the 3rd harmonic is able to mask the higher orders, its very smooth. Its actually smoother than any SET I've heard, while also being more detailed and transparent. It also has wider bandwidth, being full power to 100KHz and good down to 5Hz. Having heard it, there is no going back to an SET. I wanted an amp small enough that it would be good in a desktop or bedroom system, also good for headphones or a main system if you have speakers of sufficient efficiency. Put another way, this isn't about KT vs 2A3; IME its about design. You can make a bad sounding PP amp and you can make a good sounding SET. But you can also make great PP amps that go places no SET can at any price: smoother, more detailed, more musically involving, IF you know what you are doing with the design.
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