Tube amp recommendation

Ralph,

Some irony in your "If an amp is good..." quotation.I once owned an S-30 (very early production) that was terrific with Merlin VSMs...so long as there was no deep bass content. With my Verity P/E, the amp sounded very good ONLY on a limited variety of program material.

While your point is taken, the fundamentally different power requirements between -for example- acapella voical music and the synthesized deep bass in some dance music may make an amp (speaker combo) that's great with the former unsuitable for the latter. IME, there are many amp/speaker combos that have proven much better suited to small scale music.

In this sense, at least, I'd say your comment is an overstatement.

Marty

I think we are diverging from the original question.

For the money and quality...and what I think will fit your listening needs, get yourself a McIntosh 2102 amp.

100 watts/channel, runs problem-free and is somewhat sensitive to tube rolling (ditch the stock tubes that come with it...) and you will be very happy.

I own two of them and am running them bridged so there is one for each speaker.

Look at Rogue, Cayin or Jolida

Hi Jax2, my point has to do with equipment matching. An SET driving a 92 db speaker is going to get clipped a lot if you listen to demanding musical passages. On a speaker like that, you would need a lot more power- 60 to 100 watts, in order to get to appropriate levels. There are not a lot of SETs that can do that, and IMO those that do don't sound very good. Lower power SETs really require a speaker 10 db more efficient than the ones you have/had; then you can play hip hop on them all day, but don't expect a lot of bass with a speaker that is that efficient! That's why those speakers we had at T.H.E. Show are such a nice deal, though they are anything but cheap :)

IOW if an amplifier is good, its good for any kind of music, perhaps a qualifier is needed- as long as it is being used with a speaker that matches that amplifier (whatever it is) properly. So I am saying that such an amp will play classical as well as any rock. The amp does not care what someone's taste is- its all electronic signals to an amp :)

To Raquel's comment about output transformers- I agree that better, more expensive transformers will do a better job with the bass on 4 ohms, but such an amplifier will still sound better on a speaker that is 8 ohms or more all other thing being equal. That comment I made about impedance relates to all amplifiers, even transistors, so long as sound quality is the goal. IMO, as soon as 4 ohms comes up, sound quality is no longer the goal. At that point its all about the amp being somehow more brutal or something. My experience with high end audio is that it is all about sound quality and to get that you need higher impedance speakers, regardless of the amplifier technology.

I want to second Ralph's comments about higher impedence speakers lending themselves to better sound quality, if only because they can be driven by low or no feedback amplifiers. Absolutes are a dangerous thing in audio, but my experience is that negative feedback, which is present in virtually all high-powered solid-state amps (and too many tube amps - hello Audio Research), is the single most deleterious design feature in high-end amplification. So why do amp designers use it? Because most speaker designers emphasize linear frequency response, which means they have to dampen down the efficiency of driver cones so that a given cone puts out even volume throughout the driver's bandwidth. This means a lot of 86 db. efficient speakers (and a "laid-back", as opposed to "live-band" sound), which require an amp that can put out some serious watts. As soon as you start to get north of 125-150 watts/channel, you need negative feedback in order to have a stable amplification circuit. The result is the lifeless, uninvolving sound that you get with big solid-state amps and 86 db. efficient speakers. Compared to that, Ralph's OTL zero-feedback triode amps paired with good horns or with a very high-end, easy-to-drive speaker like the Escalante Fremont provides extremely dynamic, open and vibrant sound that is much closer to live.