Dartzeel 108 amp driving Wilson Watt/Puppy 8

i agree with Cincy bob that the darTZeel will be happy on the WP8. i have heard a number of different speakers with the darTZeel and the dart has always had that 'live-ness' and 'musicality'. what the dart excells at will come thru; which is to sound like music and not have it's own character. it won't sound solid state and won't have any roundness of tubes.

i've owned WP 3/2's, 5.1's and 6.0's and am familiar with WP7's and WP8's. they are speakers which can play to an amp's strengths (the WP8 even more so). there will be amps which can play louder with more 'weight' and control the bass better to some degree; but there will be trade-offs compared to the dart in other areas of clarity and sweetness in the highs, wonderfull textural nuance, microdynamics and bass texture.

i do expect that the dart can deliver low, powerfull bass on the WP8, but some amps can deliver 'more' of it with greater ease. a case of degrees. yes; if you are a 'demo-bass' guy who likes to hear how loud an amp can play on a demo disc you can find the limits of the dart's performance envelope. but at music listening levels this is not an issue. to have a 'head-banging' amp you (generally) must drag all that circutry around and always listen to your music thru it. one must choose.

this is no different than using an SET on X-2's. can 18 SET watts on a pair of X-2's do everything that 500 watts can do? no; but do you care?

I heard Avalon Indra's drived with REF 110 in 13x16 room and they were underpowered. As much as we would like to think that "small" powered amplifiers with good sound can provide enough power for 3 or 4 driver speakers we are wrong!
I heard Indra's at CES in VTL room drived by their bigger amps the sound was much more dynamic and coherent top to bottom.
WP8 need lot of current to control their woofers and to maintain dynamic peaks and swells.

If you want to use DatZeel wait for the monoblocks which will be out soon.

Hi,
I have a Wilson puppy 7 and test the Plinius Hiato and Sa-103 power amplifier , both have a great sound (more later i write about sound differences). The Plinius Hiato has 300watts AB Class and work perfect the lower frequency, very fast, tight and explosive playing Oberture 1812 of Telarc. When test the same music with Plinius SA-103 125 Watts Class A the bass area was not really controlled and feel less tight and more shorted bass transient.

Do you think the 125 Watts Class A of Sa-103 is not enought for Wilson Puppy 7 , may be need more power like Plinius SA-Reference 300Watts Class A or need more current in the electric circuit of the wall and better power cable.

Some has experience with this ?

Arwp, the answer to your question is yes. The darTZeel amp had no problem in driving the mid and low bass frequencies. The bass was tight, fast, and punchy.

Hi guys, really appreciate all your replies.
Hi Cincy_bob, I like Dartzeel for its tube-like presence in the midrange, with focus and precision of a great SS amp. From your experience, was Dartzeel able to drive W/Ps' mid and low bass with full conviction?

Looking at my post I see that I said Wilson amp when I meant Wilson speaker and forgot the passage that most directly answers your question. "One might have predicted that the tough low frequency loading might have stressed an all valve amplifier , but we found the bass quite upbeat within sensible loudness limits. It is nicely percussive, if in a mildly valve-like softened manner, with notably clean tune playing for acoustic bass instruments-classy bass by any standard." His tests on the speaker showed low levels of distortion at ordinary listening levels and beyond, 102 db at 40 Hz produced only 1.5% of second harmonic and just .2% of third.

The Watt Puppies 8 were reviewed in HIFICritic. Colloms found the Reference 110 " worked remarkably well" . The speakers are more efficient than might be thought, 160 watts giving 109 db in a typical room. It would seem that 110 watts would be sufficient. In a later test of the 110 Colloms found that " the System 8's particular quality of natural spaciousness and precise depth plane perspective was perfectly illuminated by the 110." And "the near holographic vocal focus, natural presence and clear articulation of the Wilson amp seems to find a matching partner in this amp." His opinion carries some weight as he has used various versions of the speaker as a reference since it has been introduced. So I think there would be no concern it you chose to use it.

I drove a pair of WATT Puppy 7s with my darTZeel amp for about five month last year while I was waiting in queue for the arrival of my Evolution Acoustics MMTwos. The darTZeel amp had PLENTY of power to drive the W/P 7s to very high SPLs in my situation. My listening room at that time was medium-sized with large doorway openings into a fairly open floor plan, so it takes a lot of SPL output to fill the space. There was absolutely no problem with woofer control.

Don't let the 100wpc specification on the darTZeel amplifier fool you. If I recall correctly, Atkinson measured the amp at 230wpc into 4 ohms.

You have to try it. I have tried DarT with my Wilson Sophia II speakers and it was OK (but not great in the bass department). System 8 has a bit higher efficiency but also bit more demeanding impedance/phase curves.

One thing for shure - it will sound VERY different than your 700cx (which I have also tried).

100 w/c may be just enough - in any case you can already see a fair bit of distortion and compression at 95 db spl output on these charts - so you don't want to overdrive them.

More importantly you need a power amp that can deliver high current into low impedance - as the impedance drops fairly low.