Minimum Power Needed to Drive Klipsch Cornwall IVs? - Considering Erhard_Audio Ray

In my 460 sq ft room with 8 ft ceilings, 3 watts of high quality SET is not enough, but 8 watts is more than enough and glorious.

@katokaelin Seriously, 2 Watts isn't going to work in your larger space although I'm sure the Decware will sound fine at lower volume levels.

My speakers are 98dB and 16 Ohms; very easy to drive. My space is considerably smaller than yours and I have 50Watts/channel which I've found to be a good amount. Less than that causes the system to be less relaxed- I get a very good 1st Watt from my amps.

Again, the mark of a good setup is it never sounds 'loud'. It should always be relaxed even when playing at 105dB at the listening chair. If it does not, it indicates you have a distortion problem somewhere.

My speakers are only 3dB behind yours and might be easier to drive due to the 16 Ohm impedance. So I could probably work with 25 Watts if I had your speakers (keeping mind I would never push the amps that hard since I want the system to sound musical and effortless), but now consider that your space is considerably larger than mine- and you're trying to make that work with 2 or 4 Watts?? I get the appeal, but an SET is only good for about 20-25% of full power (notwithstanding the remonstrations this comment is likely to get from any SET manufacturer, but if they are being honest they will be forced to agree, since every single one of them have gotten feedback from their customers about how 'dynamic' their amps are considering how little power they have) if you really want to hear what the amp is about.

(Above that power level distortion shows up on the transients in the music, giving it a 'dynamic' quality since the distortion is higher ordered harmonics used by the ear to figure out how loud sounds are. It is true that the smaller SETs sound better because they have more bandwidth, that is why the type 45 power tube has such an ardent following.)

So with 2 Watts total you really have only 0.5Watt of usable power! Not gonna work. Might be nice for some headphones though.

@atmasphere I don't doubt what you're saying one bit.  I am fully anticipating the amp ending up in my living room.  At which point I'll be back here asking for speaker recommendations!  But I do intend on trying the amp at my studio.  It will be fun to test everyone's hypothesis. : )

And, it's worth mentioning, I got another noise complaint today, so maybe the Ray is the throttle I need.  Hahaha.

I run my Cornwall IV’s with Orchard Audio Ultra’s or Black Ice F100’s with KT170 Tubes. Don’t believe the "high efficiency BS that people love to spew about ported Box Klipsches. That 15" Woofer needs a lot of juice to feed your room. While the Tweeter & Midrange allows to to get away with at least 10W or more (they are Horns after all).

Ralph @atmasphere is correct. A pair of his Class D's would work well too ! Just sayin'

@katokaelin   Obviously many diverse opinions here.  One qualifier to my prior comments.  The system I use the Ray in, with my significantly less efficient speakers, provided plenty of juice for all of the music I used that system for BUT when I had full scale works I used my larger system.  I would wager that for the vast majority of your music you would be quite happy.  Also, I did not mention, the amp is very quiet. No hiss or hum in my system.  Lastly, my system is CD based and, via a short pair of IC's,  I was able to bypass the need for a preamp using the optional volume pot.  Just a thought.  If you do go with a separate pre, and find you need more power for that 10% of the time you need to really rock it, you could always get a second PP amp. Variety is the spice of life right?  But SET amps are special and I was shocked how well 4wpc worked for me.