Tube amp heat questions...

Wow, fantastic information, thanks everyone. I had a suspicion that I was probably oversimplifying, so I'm glad I asked. There's good info in every answer, thanks to all.

Newbee, your point about buying only the power needed is very pertinent. I'm driving a set of B&W PM1, with 84dB sensitivity and they dip to 5.1 ohms. I went to the dealer to look at a Rogue Sphinx, certain that I needed every bit of their 100wpc (if not more) to push the B&W (my Marantz integrated with 70wpc did not match well at all and ran out of gas). The dealer showed me the Sphinx, then the Cronus Magnum with 90wpc, but insisted I also take a listen to the pre-owned VSi55 he had just taken in, with brand new tubes. I almost made the mistake of dismissing the ARC thinking that 50wpc would be a backwards step and waste of time and money, but I'm glad I listened to him. I'm too inexperienced to understand the technicals of why 50 watts of tube power opens up the B&W and pushes them to insane volume levels while the music remains perfectly clear and listenable, while 70wpc of solid state power turns to aural chaos at anything above 1 o'clock on the dial - I'm sure the Marantz is a superb integrated, and it was just a bad match-up. But the lesson I learned is that there's more to the story than just absolute WPC.

I like the thermometer gun idea, Viridian.

Jjrenman, your point about Class-D is duly noted - when summer heat rolls around, having one for back-up duty may save me electric bill $$ and make my den bearable if the ARC just gets too hot.

Al, thanks for the layman-friendly explanation - I needed it!

Eric

Bcgator, air conditioning is a brute-force method of dealing with heat. In the old days people simply had vents in the ceiling. A simple solution, inexpensive and one that works really well. Even in the 21st century, heat still rises :)

You will find that there is a loose correlation to the sound of the amplifier and the class of operation. I say loose as there are other variables that can have a big effect on the sound. Generally speaking though, amps that are class A (make the most heat) tend to sound better than amps that make the least heat (class D being an example).

It is not the filaments of the tube that make the heat in a tube amplifier. It is the class of operation and how efficient the amp is running (the two are not always the same). You can make the amp run more efficiently by using a loudspeaker that is higher impedance and higher efficiency. Almost any tube amp will run with less heat into 16 ohms for example, because the output transformer will operate more efficiently- more power makes it to the speaker and less is dissipated as heat.

Conversely, any amplifier (tube or transistor) will make more heat if asked to drive a four ohm load (assuming that loudspeaker efficiency is otherwise the same)- and it will make more distortion which results in less detail and harsher sound.

So your speaker can play a big role in this. If its easy to drive, generally speaking you will get less heat from the amp and better performance too. Something to think about...

I can't add to the excellent technical information you've received but just as a point of interest I recall using an infrared thermometer like the one Viridian suggested to check the temperature on one of my tube amps.

In an auto-bias AES/Cary AE-25 amp running at idle in triode with a stated power of 15 watts from KT-88 tubes the temperature of the output tubes was somewhere close to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.

Like Sfar, I can't add to the technical side of this discussion but I will tell you that, IME, in my system, there are 2 extremes in tube amp heat production. Coolest running is the Berning ZH-270. Hottest are Joule OTLs using 8, 10, 12, 16 of those big ole beautiful Russian 6CC3Bs. With some trepidation to be contradicting Atmasphere, in that case, the output transformers, being absent, have nothing to do w it. Those tubes are just little furnaces; even the Almarro 318s that use only a pair can heat a room!

I suspect that those examples are outliers with good technical reasons for being so. The difference is night and day (or winter and summer). In general, I'd stick w the advice you've gotten above. But, I will say that if I lived in the south, I'd probably never have sold my ZH-270. Out of production, so hard to find, expensive ($4-5K), and not compatible w all speakers, but probably the best tube amp I can think of for your situation. A less expensive but also hard to find option might be a high eff speaker w Berning's Microzotl, which uses a pair of 6SN7s as output tubes!! In a small room at my house at the beach, that little amp sounded pretty darn impressive driving a pair of 96 dB back-loaded horns. Now my taste runs to singer-songwriter/fold/acoustic type music at moderate SPLs, but in the right circumstances, it might be option. They show up here from time to time at just under $1K; since they were primarily marketed as a headphone amp, you might have better luck looking for one on head-fi.org. Good luck, have fun, and stay away from those nasty transistors ;-)

Good luck, have fun, and stay away from those nasty transistors ;-)
Swampwalker

Hey, hey, hey - be nice, swampwalker!! :-D LOL!
those little silicon gems are nice if you know where to buy the right kind... ;-)