Winoguy17, no worries! Not all tube amps are equal :)
Amplifier for Klipsch Cornwalls
I will be bying some Klipsch Cornwalls soon and will need an amplifier to drive them. Hoping to find something under $500. I have a Thor tube pre-amp and a Forte solid state pre-amp.
These will be in a second system primarily for home theater. But I will use them for music as well. I do like it loud sometimes.
These will be in a second system primarily for home theater. But I will use them for music as well. I do like it loud sometimes.
Showing 3 responses by atmasphere
Most high efficiency loudspeakers get their efficiency from tight gaps and precise construction. As a result they are highly reactive and are over-damped with anything more than a very moderate output impedance from the amp. IOW, a tube amplifier will sound better; will play deeper bass and be smoother and more detailed overall than most transistor amplifiers. This is because a tube amp, especially one with no loop feedback, will not react poorly to the back EMF from the speaker, and will not present such a low impedance to the speaker that it is over-damped (if the speaker is over-damped you can loose as much as 8db of bass in the bottom octave). I recommend some sort of lower-powered Push-Pull triode amplifier, maybe something with no more than 50 watts. You'll find the speakers doing things you had no idea they could! |
Those 15 inch woofers can sound slow and mushy with tubes. The size of the woofers has nothing to do with the speed of the amp; this is a common amplifier myth. It turns out that if the woofers are over-damped, that that can slow them down, IOW if you have excessive damping factor the woofers can be slowed down, and the result is decreased output as I mentioned above. Here is a reference article about this issue: "Critical Damping: Missing Link in Speaker Operation Parts 1 & 2 http://www.pearl-hifi.com/06_Lit_Archive/07_Misc_Downloads/Misc_Downloads.html |