Tube vs. Solid State Amplifiers

certainly would like to own an Atmasphere valve amp. Understanding the options better would help in deciding which one.

In the smaller amps there are three options- copper foil Teflon V-Caps for coupling capacitors in the amps, additional filter capacitance in the output section (useful for keeping IMD down at higher power levels) and the Caddock resistor option. In all cases these options are available so you don't have to open up the amp to 'tweak' it. We've seen audiophiles do this sort of thing for decades and most of the time (not all) they actually do more harm than good. So we offer the most effective tweaks in advance. The larger amps like the MA-1 have some of the options as standard; the MA-2 and MA-3 have all of them as standard.

So for an OTL amp, you’re in need of a 16-ohm pair of speakers which I would think is rather limiting.

@goofyfoot  Just so you know, this statement is false. Smaller OTLs are nice on 16 ohms but FWIW the most popular speakers for many years with our M-60 monoblocks was the Merlin VSM which is about 6-8 ohms. Merlin showed with Joule Electra at shows so its not just about us. Our bigger amps like the MA-1 and MA-2 can do very nicely on 4 ohm loads.

I've heard some (who are much more knowledgeable than me) say that a tube amp and solid state amp which are rated at the same output power in practice will not drive a speaker to the same level, that in selecting amplifier power levels, you would get similar results from lower powered tube amps.

This is a well-known myth and has a simple explanation.


This is all about distortion and not sound pressure- if you use a sound level pressure meter you'll find this is the case. Tube amps can overload far more gracefully than solid state (when solid state overloads its very obvious and easy to hear), while at the same time generating a bit of the harmonics that the ear uses to sense sound pressure- so they can **sound** as if they are louder when in fact they are not.

As many have put it before: watts are watts.