A 9 watts SET for the Maggies, Heavenly marriage


For the heading, I need to start a new thread; this is because the last thread does not do the Audio Note the justice.
The comparison among all those EAR, Pass labs, YBA and the little, David, Audio Note kit one, does illustrate that if we can relate our live musical experience, the SET certainly rules.
For whatever reasons, I like to have advice on higher powered SET amplifiers for the Maggies
Please advice
Robert
robertwolfee
I currently have a Dared 845 SET running my MG20's

At reasonable volume its fine. As long as you don't plat tecno, or turn it up way too loud it doesn't clip.

I've also run them on a set of Decware SV83 monoblocks.

Some have told me you can't run Maggies on tube, but that may be some sort of impedance mismatch on their end
Its not that a low power SET wont drive a maggie or most any speaker, hook a SET up to any loudspeaker and it will work. Its just a sub optimal way of putting together a system. When you use a SET on a 3.6 it will sound good just you are not hearing all the 3.6 can do or all the SET can do for youve ham strung both. If you love maggies and you love SET go for it. But to get the best out of a SET you need hi-eff designs. To get the best out of 3.6 you need power. Once one properly builds a SET based system with proper loudspeakers you will understand why so many folks who have been arround the audio block have settled in with SETs. If you just throw a SET at any loudspeaker you will not get the best out of it or the connected loudspeaker. And hi-eff ribbon hybrid systems do exist if you love the sound of ribbons,hi-eff ribbon equiped loudspeakers are available that work great with SET. Many SETs have very high distortion when pushed to near full power the SET magic is with the 1st watt or so not the last watt. And a 3.6 will just eat this up anda SET amp will be running into distortion with most any peak in level. But maybe happy 3.6 SET owners are grovin to this distortion.
I have tried my little $39 T-amp with my Maggies. They sound "good". But not what happens when I use my 600 watt amps.

One of my sons hooked up an old KLH 5 (low efficiency 4 ohm speaker) to his clock radio, good for perhaps, 200 milliwatts. Was I ever surprised! It sounded "good" compared with the clock radio's own speaker.
Right now I'm driving Apogee Duettos, planars with a burnin' 2 ohm load, with a Sun Audio 2W SET - its heaven!! Bass that almost blows the walls off my 100' by 100' custom theater-sized room!

Sorry, I just couldn't resist...

:0)