Anything Like a Joule Electra?

Having progressed over the years from NAD to the Plinius SA100 to Levinson #333, #335, #33H and now to the Joule Electra Rites of Passage...
there's nothing quite like the Joule Electra OTL's!

Buy the Marquis or the ROP's and it'll be your last amp purchase! Go ahead and be done... then you can really enjoy the music!!!

Welcome to the wonderful, seductive world of OTL's!

I'm a dealer for a different brand of OTL amp, but have a lot of respect for the Joules.

On paper at least, the Atma-Sphere OTL amps I sell appear to be a better match for your 4-ohm Dynaudios. The ten grand ballpark MA-1 puts out 140 watts into 8 ohms and 135 watts into 4 ohms . This compares quite favorably with the 100 watts into 8 ohms and 80 watts into 4 ohms of the the Joule Marquis, as well as with the 160 watts and 100 watts respectively for the Grand Marquis. Atma-Sphere also offers a power supply upgrade that is beneficial with low-impedance speakers, such as the Dynaudios.

One additional piece of the puzzle you might want to consider is an autoformer like Paul Speltz's "Zero". Your Dynaudios dip down to 3.1 ohms in the bass region, and that's definitely on the low side for an OTL amp. By stepping up the impedance of the load your OTL amp sees, you'll get a bit better control in the bass region and a bit better dynamics.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

(By stepping up the impedance of the load your OTL amp sees, you'll get a bit better control in the bass region and a bit better dynamics.)

But then it is no longer an OTL.

I suppose I ought to respond to that one.

The ZERO is an autoformer- the simplest type of transformer available. It has only one winding and does not block DC. Additionally, its turns ratio is exceptionally low, as the translation in impedance is typically from 4 ohms to 16 ohms.

The combination of these factors allows the device to have wider bandwidth then most transistor amplifiers- something in the neighboorhood of 2Hz to 2MHz.

A transformer like this is not normally possible with a conventional tube amplifier. Most output transformers (i.e. most tube amps) have trouble with four ohms and less anyway- the reduction in performance is easily measured and heard. The ZERO offers a bona-fide method of overcoming the four ohm problem, and has found application with many transformer coupled tube amplifiers as well as OTLs...

Actually, they would still be OTLs, because the Zeros are not output transformers but auto transformers, seen as part of the speaker, instead of the amp.

Someone more technical than I can explain it better: http://www.zeroimpedance.com/faq.html#12 Questions #12,13.

beautiful amps... if you can't do the Grand Marquis and stay married (I sure couldn't), how attached are you to the dyns? So many great speakers out there - if you have an amp you love (and several choices of speakers) perhaps you should adjust the other. Just a thought.

Jacob