I'm going to buy my first tube amp. I need honest blunt opinions


 

 

Recommendations please. I am thinking of dipping my toes in the tube amp water.  For the longest time I have been tempted to buy a modest tube amp to run my Monitor Gold 300’s at 90db.

I’ve been toying around, researching the different characteristics of SET, class A, class AB, B Ultralinear tube amps for months. It’s a bit much. As far as the reviewers go, they are too vague. They are afraid to be upfront honest.

Sources are a Parasound JC 3+, a Innous ZENith Mk3, and a Oppo going to a Benchmark DAC, then all go to a Benchmark LA 4 preamp that will feed the new amp.

My room is 16 x16. The speakers have a 12-foot spread. I sit 14 feet back, so it’s not that big of a room.

I have narrowed it down to four candidates.

A used Canary Audio M90 300B Tube Amp at 24RMS,300B push-pull stereo triode Class A $4,000

A used Jadis Orchestra Black, 40 RMS, Class B $4,000

A 16-year-old, Used Cary Audio Six Pac Monoblock’s, 50 triode watts A/AB $2,000

A new Dynaco by WILL VINCENT 35RMS Ultralinear $2,300

 

marshinski15

Showing 1 response by lynn_olson

Depends how power-hungry your speakers are, and if they have high-order (18 dB/oct and 24dB/oct) crossovers. If the true Theile/Small efficiency is less than 87 dB/watt/meter, and if the crossover is high-order or employs notch filters, sorry, tube amps are not ideal. Class AB or Class D transistor with 100 to 200 watts is what the speaker wants.

On the other hand, if the speaker has a true Theile/Small efficiency of 90 dB/meter/watt, and the crossover is low-order (6 dB/oct or 12 dB/oct), then tube amps of 35 watts/channel look good. A pair of PP EL34, 6V6, KT66, or KT88 will do the job just fine ... that’s the vast majority of vintage and modern tube amps.

SETs with 8 watts or less ... well, you really do need efficient speakers, and 6.5" to 8" woofers matched with 1" dome tweeters do not qualify. The true Theile/Small efficiency of nearly all 6.5 to 8-inch midwoofers is in the 86 to 88 dB/meter range ... and the woofer, not the tweeter, sets the efficiency of the loudspeaker. There are no magic cabinets that raise the efficiency of the woofer ... the T/S parameters set the efficiency of the woofer, and the entire speaker.

P.S. More complex crossovers are sensitive to source impedance, otherwise called Damping Factor. A very low source impedance, or high Damping Factor, is the hallmark of big-watt transistor amps.