Output Impedance and Speaker Impedance

@pragmasi - Even though I'm past the warranty I would not feel comfortable rigging up an attenuator. No offence to your suggestion, I just don't trust myself. I wish the 275 had balance inputs but no such luck. However, with the 5T's connected to the 8 ohm posts, they're pretty well balanced with the Tritons. 

All the best,

Uncle BB 

@ atmasphere and George, that was kind of what I was thinking. I have a vintage pair of 601 IV's that I had since college and I played them at "11" (Spinal Tap reference) all the time. It's really the only way they sounded decent. I had the drivers re-foamed as low frequencies made them shake like a Georgia Bluetick s#*%ting peach pits. I've boxed them up and closed that chapter in my life. Maybe kenjit will buy them. I did test a with some "bassy" Al Di Meola music. Same (high) volume level #1- speakers on the 4 ohm taps,
 #2 - speakers on the 8 ohm taps. There was no noticeable (visual) difference in the extension of the driver. The 5T's are ported so maybe there's a little gain there ? With the autoformer balancing the wattage and my ultra-scientific test  I'm no longer overly concerned. Appreciate your edification and thank you for responding to my post.

Salute,

Uncle BB      

ubbcbus OP
do you think there is a chance to damage the drivers by overdamping them ?

Not if overdamped by an amp, you can if they are very underdamped, as it’s travel is increased uncontrollably and the speaker cone "could" hit it’s end stops both inwards and outwards, especially with vinyl at warp frequency. Too much of this can damage the speaker.
Ever seen an underdamped bass driver? it wobbles around like jelly when doing bass
Cheers George

You can really take this as far as you want to...
1) You say you know what you like (which is great) so if you like the sound you're getting stick with that... everyone seems to agree you're not going to damage anything.
2) You can make up a lead to attenuate the Tritons, the simplest way to do this would be to go back to your starting configuration:

Mac MA 7900 (200 watts) that I use to power Aerial Acoustics 5T's and a MC275 (75 watts) powering Triton 2+'s .

And adapt (I couldn't find an off the shelf solution) a pair of interconnects to connect between the MA 7900 and the MC275. To do this you'd need a handful of components, some basic tools and rudimentary soldering skills. The advantage of this is that you can experiment with different levels of attenuation. If you're interested in going that route I can elaborate.
3) This is probably heresy here but you could use DSP... that would let you completely control the output of the two sets of speakers by controlling both the signal level and the frequency ranges sent to each speaker. So you could roll off the top end of the Tritons and the bottom end of the Aerials. It's easy to sniff at DSP but Siegfried Linkwitz (he's got quite a good CV) used it in the designs for his reference speakers.

If you're happy with the sound you've got then definitely go for option 1.

@atmasphere - do you think there is a chance to damage the drivers by overdamping them ? They're paper (papyrus if you're so inclined :) The bass when connected to the 4 ohm posts is less pronounced.... maybe another question for Aerial

No. You can't damage the speaker just by changing taps on the amp!

That the bass is less pronounced on the 4 ohm taps makes sense as the amp would make slightly less power into that speaker when using the 4 ohm taps. The speaker would be more accurately rated at 8 ohms than 4.

Roger Modjeski is an outside-the-box designer, his RM-200 an example of his originality. He bristles a little at the amp being called a hybrid, but yes, it does not have a tube input stage (the driver and output stages are pure tube, however). But it isn’t a normal solid state input stage, either. It’s comprised of a pair of transistors and some resistors, in a zero-gain circuit. In the RM-200 he manages to get a hundred watts out of a pair of KT-88’s (or 6550's) by employing low screen voltages and higher-than-normal plate voltages on the tubes. A clever fella who knows as much about tubes and tube amp design as anyone living.

@bdp24 Thanks for the info. SS and tube power is a perplexing, abstract concept. I'm still trying to wrap my head around impedance, volts and wattage. But what I do understand, traditional tube amps do better with higher ohm rated, more efficient speakers. I took a look at the RM-200 hybrid online. Again, in my simple mind, bending the laws of physics. When it comes to tubes it makes me wonder if true tube sound is adulterated by autoformers, hybridization of the power supply and other technologies that have been developed to improve variables in tube amps.... Probably start a small war posting this question on the forum. Sound is like bourbon and artwork, price doesn't necessarily make it better. You like what you like. 

Regards, 

Uncle BB   

Thanks again George. As I get more in to this hobby, seems I'll need to do some reading on classes of amplifiers and speaker pairing. There's a lot to learn. I have a Unit Atom and when the firmware went awry with my 7900, I hooked up the Aerials to the Atom (40 watt amp) so I could listen to music. It sounded a lot better than expected. And conversely, when I hooked them up to the 275 they sounded very thin and anemic. Your point is well taken. 

Best regards,

Uncle BB     

Thank you ALL for your responses. I'm relatively new to AG and lurk daily, but do not have much to add to the knowledge base so I don't post frequently. Really appreciate the knowledgeable veterans replying to my inquiry. Regarding the responses:

@millercarbon - not a home theater, only for music. I started out with the 7900 and the Aerials, but was pining for more bass (48Hz wasn't cutting it). Listened to a few sub-woofers but was not impressed with what I heard. I listened to the Triton's and was impressed with the bass response (especially considering the price). I know these get poo-pooed on the forum and that's OK, I know what I like. After reading up on AG about tube sound and sound staging, I decided to invest in the 275 knowing that it could be piggybacked on the 7900 to power the Tritons. Granted, it's an odd approach but it's synergistic in a sense. SS + tubes, good midrange and highs (especially voice) from the Aerials and good lower frequencies and sound stage from the Tritons... I've never been too conventional.


George- overdamped room for sure. Been considering taking up the carpeting and putting down cork floors.


 @bdp24 - M.R. amps may have different wattages for different impedance ? The 7900 & the 275 claim same wattage for all impedances as @pragmasi pointed out. I'm going to check in with Aerial to see what they have to say. 


@ pragmasi - regarding the resistors, the Aerials have 4 connection posts. +'s and -'s upper and lower. The upper and lower posts have  bridge connections  i.e. + to + / - to -. Right below the upper posts is labeled "midrange and treble" . Could these potentially be resistors or a bridge that functions in the manner you speak of ?   


@onhwy61 - Yes, both sets of speakers at the same time. I have a decent sized listening room 18x30. Its has 45 degree pitched walls, two dormers and a funky diamonded shaped cut out for the pitch of the adjacent, perpendicular roof. With 4 speakers, it's an acoustic circus but pretty enveloping sound. At medium to higher volume, if you close your eyes you cannot tell where the speakers are placed. 


@atmasphere  - do you think there is a chance to damage the drivers by overdamping them ? They're paper (papyrus if you're so inclined :) The bass when connected to the 4 ohm posts is less pronounced....  maybe another question for Aerial

Thanks again to ALL of you,

Uncle BB 

Before you read the rest ubbcbus , the Aerial Acoustics 5T is not an overdamped design, it’s normal.

A loudspeaker can’t be overdamped electrically, this is why some of the best amps for bass are from class-D, that have output impedances in the milli-ohms, damping factors of 10,000 or more and why they are great for subwoofers.

However you can have too much damping if the electrical damping is combined with too much mechanical damping in "over damped" enclosure design.

A typical example was the Linn Isobaric speaker which had very lean almost no bass with big Krells of the era, who would have thought a Krell with no bass!!!!
I actually heard a Naim amp with very mediocre damping factor sound better than the Krell into the bass of the Linn Isobarics.

BTW: this overdamped speaker with underdamped amp, was a great marketing strategy thought up by Linn/Naim at the time, you had to get both their amps and speakers, one did sound right without the other in A/B’s at shops.

Cheers George

the cone excursion is not halted, but over travels slightly on the out and the inward movement, in other-words it’s not as tightly control as Aerial would like it to be.

This is only partially true. A loudspeaker cone can be overdamped; looking at the impedance curve (https://www.stereophile.com/content/aerial-acoustics-5t-loudspeaker-measurements) we see that the impedance never dips to 4 ohms and spends most of the bandwidth at much greater impedances. This is why the 8 ohm tap sounds better.

Normally running an 4 ohm load on the 8 ohm tap will cause the power tubes to make more distortion and run hotter (ultimately failing sooner) since the load impedance is transformed by the transformer to a load impedance that would be half of that for which the circuit is designed.


But in this case this isn't happening so no worries!

Looking at the spec for the MA7900 I'd guess you're probably okay. I don't know the mechanism they use to achieve 200W into all different impedances.
The difference between the speakers' sensitivity is 4dB which means the less sensitive speakers will need 1.6x the voltage to achieve the same SPL.
For the amplifier to output 200W into 4Ω then the RMS voltage needs to be 28.3V drawing about 7A. For 8Ω the figures will be 40V drawing 5A current. So assuming the amplifier controls the output voltage to match the output levels then we might expect that the 8Ω output puts out 40/28.3 or 1.4 times the voltage of the 4Ω output. 1.4 x the voltage equates to around 3dB. So this would explain the better level matching.
But now when you run at full volume you're putting 40V into 4Ω which will draw a current of 10A. In a lot of cases that would be a problem and you could end up with overheating but in this case the amplifier is capable of running with a 2Ω load so the chances are you are okay. If you put a 2Ω load into the 8Ω output you'd draw 20A which would likely put the amplifier into protection mode but is not worth the risk of trying.
Another way of achieving the same (or better) result would be to put a simple voltage divider (two resistors) across the inputs of the higher sensitivity speaker to reduce it's sensitivity by 4dB. You may be able to buy a 4dB attenuator to do the job for you.

Hope that makes sense.

Are you playing both set of loudspeakers at the same time in the same room?

I connected the 5T’s back to the 7900, but connected them to the 8 ohm outputs. It really opened up the lower frequencies and I didn’t notice any loss in the mid or high frequencies.

What’s happening using the 8ohm tap is that in the bass there is little "damping factor" from the amp to control the speakers movement, so the cone excursion is not halted, but over travels slightly on the out and the inward movement, in other-words it’s not as tightly control as Aerial would like it to be.

Stereophile Aerial 5T 6 ohms in just two regions—between 29 and 54Hz and between 110 and 310Hz—and a minimum value of 4.28 ohms at 160Hz. The electrical phase angle (fig.1, dotted trace) is occasionally extreme, and the combination of 6 ohms and –38° at 108 ohms means a good 4 ohm–rated amplifier would be the best match for this speaker.

But hey! you "could" have an "over damped" room for bass, or a "lean" source in the bass, so an under-damped speakers bass could be ok for you, not ideal for detail retrieval but fine for tonality..

Cheers George

No danger. Seems to be a general thing as a lot of guys have the same experience when trying this with all kinds of different amps and speakers.

But wait a minute- you are running two pairs of speakers at the same time??? What is this?? Home Theater?

Use whatever you'd like. You won't damage the amp.

The idea behind multiple impedance taps is to attempt to keep the power output constant. Without them, lower impedance speakers would suffer a reduction in power. 

Best,
Erik