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Matching Power and Speakers -- Much Ado about Not-that-Much? (Tube amps and speakers)

Interesting conversation at the Part Time Audiophile's The Occasional Podcast.
There, tube amp maker Justin Weber of Amps And Sound makes these comments:

At about 24:03 in, they have an interesting conversation about power in tube amps and speakers' needs.

Justin makes an interesting comment about power and speaker efficiency. He's careful to caveat that room size might be an important differentiating factor, but for many (most?) audiophiles (with small-medium size rooms), there is just not that much to worry about regarding amplifier power and speaker matching. He is not touching on "synergy" in some larger sense -- he's just addressing the "power needed to drive speakers" question.

If I'm understanding the upshot of what he's saying, it's that lower-power tube amps made with quality transformers (and well made generally) have a very good shot at doing an excellent job for a much wider range of speakers than is typically assumed in conversations audiophiles have.

The whole interview is interesting, but here's the interesting bit -- I did my best to transcribe it, but go listen for yourself!

"Almost always, you need vastly less power than you realize....I've seen 1 watt power whole rooms and big rooms with moderately efficient speakers....What's a practical standard? 30 watts should do 99% of everything for everyone, and 15 watts should do 95% of everything for 99.9% of everyone....

Most audiophiles have small listening rooms.... [A more powerful tube amp may sound better, but] I think that’s a matter of it having a better output transformer and [that] output's transformer's core actually having a flatter frequency response and going lower.

So [in those cases where a more powerful amplifier is used] I don't know that it's a question of producing more power -- that you need more power -- as much as the transformer [in] the more powerful amplifier is [instead just] a better transformer."

Not sure what folks here think about these claims. Perhaps they seem so obvious as to almost not need repeating. But there are so many conversations about speaker sensitivity and watts that do not mention the quality of the transformers or which seem to overstate the importance of how powerful an amp is.

If Justin is right, then many, many pieces of advice related to "how many watts do you need" are basically wrong.

 

SOURCE: 
5 Things To Consider When Buying A Tube Amplifier
March 13, 2023 Brian Hunter Occasional Podcast 1
URL: https://parttimeaudiophile.com/2023/03/13/5-things-to-consider-when-buying-a-tube-amplifier/

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Showing 2 responses by fsonicsmith1

fsonicsmith1
101 posts
 

I have his Nautilus. It drives both my Devore O/93's and Spendor D7.2's very well. I do have a small listening room. And after about six months of using it to drive the loudspeakers it has been relegated to headphone use.

The Nautilus is a beast of an amp build-wise. It weighs about as much as my 10x higher wattage ARC Ref 80S. I think what Justin is saying is that speaker driving power is much more complicated than watts. 

Does the Nautilus sound the same or similar to my more powerful tube amps (also have an ARC Ref 150 SE)? No. And the differences go beyond mere sonic signature. I will concede the low-end grunt of even moderately low bass goes up as I go from the Nautilus to the Ref 80S to the Ref 150 SE. The Nautilus on the other hand has a sonic purity thing going on that is not there with the higher wattage amps. 

fsonicsmith1
101 posts
 

@8th-note 

I am sorry but you are beyond harsh, you are just extreme. Extremism is to be avoided 99% of the time. 

Frankly, Mr. Karsten borders on the same end of the spectrum but at this point I believe he is just too hell-bent on the scientific approach. It amazes me that he ever built tube amps. 

The art of medicine needs strict adherence to the scientific approach because there is no room for subjectivism. Art itself, visual, musical, or in letter form is not subject to the scientific approach. The art of music reproduction in the home lies somewhere in between. I have to wonder if you or Ralph love music because if you really do, you would know that the reproduction of music is not subject to pure measurement. If it make you feel any better, I think the same of John Atkinson and Kal Rubinson. 

Do you know the only thing worse than old men with fixed sets of belief and value systems? The answer is old ENGINEERS with fixed belief-systems. 

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