Bob: Yes, that was where i heard the Blowtorch. Personally, i didn't think that the room there was phenomenally large or that an amp that was rated at 200 / 400 would be too small to fill the room with sound. Obviously, one would need reasonably efficient speakers to achieve this but i don't think that high spl's in a room that size is out of the question.
Given that the spl level was far from being "loud" at any point in time, and i was sitting very close to the speakers, i have to wonder how much output was actually coming out of the preamp. Given that i am QUITE familiar with the specific make / model of the amp in question, i know that the lack of gain or output didn't have anything to do with it. To be quite honest though, the CD player being used was somewhat on the low side of output. With a gain rating on the Blowtorch of 8 dB's, even a 1 volt signal from the CD player should have resulted in 6+ volts of output capability. Given that the amp has an input sensitivity rating of 1.3 volts through the RCA's and 0.65 volts in balanced mode, we could not understand why the gain control on the Blowtorch had to be "cranked" way up.
As a side note, i can't remember if the Blowtorch was being run in balanced or single-ended mode. The amp in question has an input impedance of 15K per leg as measured to ground in balanced mode compared to a factory rating of 24K with RCA's. I do know that other preamps that i've used with the same make / model of amplifier were able to drive the amp into saturation quite easily, but at the same time, they too required slightly higher volume settings than with some other amps. Sean
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Given that the spl level was far from being "loud" at any point in time, and i was sitting very close to the speakers, i have to wonder how much output was actually coming out of the preamp. Given that i am QUITE familiar with the specific make / model of the amp in question, i know that the lack of gain or output didn't have anything to do with it. To be quite honest though, the CD player being used was somewhat on the low side of output. With a gain rating on the Blowtorch of 8 dB's, even a 1 volt signal from the CD player should have resulted in 6+ volts of output capability. Given that the amp has an input sensitivity rating of 1.3 volts through the RCA's and 0.65 volts in balanced mode, we could not understand why the gain control on the Blowtorch had to be "cranked" way up.
As a side note, i can't remember if the Blowtorch was being run in balanced or single-ended mode. The amp in question has an input impedance of 15K per leg as measured to ground in balanced mode compared to a factory rating of 24K with RCA's. I do know that other preamps that i've used with the same make / model of amplifier were able to drive the amp into saturation quite easily, but at the same time, they too required slightly higher volume settings than with some other amps. Sean
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