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Power output of tube amps compared to solid states

I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how tube amp power output relates to solid state power output. I've been looking at the classifieds for tube amps and I see lots of tube amps with 50w or 60w output, but nothing close to the 250w output typical of solid state amps.

So I have no idea what type of tube amp is required for my set up, right now I'm using totem forests with a required power rating of 150w-200w at 8ohms. The bass is so powerful on these that I have the sub crossover set to 40hz.

My question is, are tube amps so efficient that 50w from a tube sounds like 150w from a solid state? Or will 50w output from a tube severely limit how loud I can play my speakers? If so, are tubes usually meant to be driving super-high efficiency speakers?

I had previously tried a tube pre-amp with a solid state power amp (both musical fidelity) and didn't like the results because the imaging suffered greatly, even though the music sounded nicer from a distance. Now I want to try a solid state pre-amp (bryston) with a tube power amp (no idea which brand to look at), but I don't know how much power output I need or if it will even be possible with my speakers. Does anyone know what I would require?
acrossley
emorrisiv
313 posts
 
I have heard them with tubes and they make magic.SS is surely the norm, but I have used a 60 watt Arcam SS amp and they were not bad,not as good as with the 120 watt Hafler but not bad. This made me wonder about the 60 watt tube OTL with zeros.
What I have found with these speakers is;the better you feed them (quality that is not quantity)the better they sound.

cheers

e
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,803 posts
 
Emorrisiv, I've heard the Acoustats sound great with a set of M-60s and a set of ZEROs. The guy that had them also had an ARC Classic 60, and he had to use the ZEROs with that amp also. They seemed to otherwise present a challenging load for a tube amp, but my guess is that they were doing what a lot of ESL manufacturers do, which is to set the impedance low to try to get transistors to work with them.

At any rate Acoustats and tubes are a great combo if you can overcome the impedance issue, and ZEROs do that quite well.
unsound
7,329 posts
 
Of course Acoustat made ss amps to go with their speakers.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,803 posts
 
Yes, just as they also made a dedicated tube OTL-powered speaker.
unsound
7,329 posts
 
Yes, there were older Acoustats with dedicated OTL's, but the newer ones were recommended to be used with Acoustats own Transnova ss amps. Those old ss amps were pretty darn good for their day, especially for the then asking price.
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