The Osprey will sound awesome with those speakers, but probably not at a very satisfying level. You have fallen into the trap of buying unsuitable speakers. I know what you mean. I once hear Eggleston Works speakers sound so good I was smitten. Very expensive, but thought totally worth it. Until found they were 87dB or something like that. Nope. No way. Cross them off the list. Smart move. One of many. I would go for the Osprey. Not because it will have the power to drive your speakers. But because it will motivate you to find better ones.
Raven Osprey vs Octave 110 with low sensitivity speakers
I’m wondering if anyone out there has experience running the Raven Osprey into low sensitivity speakers. I have a pair of Boenicke W5’s that are some of the most amazingly life-like speakers I auditioned in the hunt, and with breathtaking soundstage—in an amazingly small solid wood cabinet. The price you pay is that these 4 ohm speakers are extremely hard to drive: 83-86 dB sensitivity—and I have them in quite a large, open room. Right now they are driven by a Parasound Halo integrated which does a fantastic job in powering them, but I’m in search of even more resolution and detail, and also did want to give tubes a try. My choices are used Octave V 110 SE vs Raven Osprey. The Octave definitely has the power, but I’m told might not be quite as resolving in the upper registers. The Raven Osprey is a lower power unit, but does have the subwoofer bypass that allows me to take some of the load off of the amp (a digression on Boenicke customer service: Sven Boenicke was kind enough to personally go through my room characteristics and set-up to advise on speaker placement and sub integration—although he seemed a bit sad that I’d risk corrupting his sublime bass characteristics with an outboard!). The Octave is a known, the Raven would be unknown since I can’t audition and would have to deal with the hassle of returning/restock: is it just asking too much of the Osprey to power these little beasts? Is the Octave a no-brainer?
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Feliks, no reason not to try either amp. Personally I use a tube amp on speakers not meant for tube amps, and I'm in heaven every time I listen. You can do it if you're willing to accept tradeoffs. In your case you'll get "tubiness" and liquidity and the imaging that you're probably lusting for. What you'll not get is earth-shattering bass (which isn't in the cards for that Boenicke anyway) and you won't have incisive punchy transients at higher volumes. |
feliks -- how loud do you listen in terms of dB level? (Forget the subjective terms of "loud" and "moderate" as those mean different things to different people.) Get yourself a sound level meter if you don't already have one. Power and loudness are in a logarithmic relationship. This means that once you get to a certain volume you can run out of power very quickly since each 3 dB increase in volume requires double the power. I use a Schiit Aegir which has 20 watts a channel (8 ohms) and very easily drive my 88 dB sensitivity speakers to my desired max average volume (80 to 85 dB, C scale) with plenty of headroom. When I first got the amp I used to VTVM to monitor the amp's output to see if I was running short of power and discovered the combo was just fine for me. That's the key -- find what works for you. I realize there are a lot of members of the "more watts is always better" club but that's not the only way to do things. |
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These comments are incredibly helpful: I’ll pull out the sound meter to check the minimum maximum with the current setup that I would want to commit to, and back calculate from there. I recognize the ambiguity of “83 to 86” but that’s the best I can get from the website on the W5s. Interestingly, in hunting around, the W8 seems to come even lower at around 81.5 even though the spec sheet says higher, and one reviewer claimed that there was some email exchange with the company reportedly suggesting “1,000 W into 4 ohms” was appropriate power for the W8s. That, my friends, is for MC’s reading pleasure... |
Thanks. And for your reading pleasure, meters are a lot more directional than ears. What you measure depends as much on what you play, and what meter settings you use (weighting, peak or average, etc) and may bear little to no resemblance to what you hear. There is no meter ever made with a scale that measures listener satisfaction. We've all heard for example systems that really only "come alive" at certain levels. Metering never caught a one of these. There's a reason mine has been gathering dust now not for years but decades. In my book the only "meter" that counts is your ears. On that score you already said your Parasound does a "fantastic" job in powering them. Rather than factor what you measure with a meter at one meter I factor what you hear with solid state and tube watts. All the tube amps I ever heard give the impression of SS amps that measure two to three times the watts. So really, you should be fine. All the more so if you use the sub switch. In that case, using the 80Hz bypass (ideally with a DBA) you are just about guaranteed to be fine. Better than fine. Louie.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vY-4zWKsJM |
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