Using tube amp with electrostatic speakers.
Ralph, I think that there must be some other reason that ML designs their panels with such a low impedance at 20khz. It’s such a radical design that there must be a sound quality reason for it, don’t you think? I don't think anyone would think, I'm not going to buy those speakers, they're not hard enough to drive. How do you feel about McIntosh gear with their amp-specific autoformers? |
Thanks for the replies, guys, very helpful stuff. Ralph, I’d still like to get your opinion on McIntosh amps with autoformers. Just in general, do you think they are a good sounding amp compared with other amps in their price ranges? Do they implement their autoformers well? Would they be a good choice for driving speakers with difficult impedance loads? Theoretically, of course. We all know that good sound depends on many factors in a given system. |
ivanj, I asked about McIntosh because I have read many threads where Ralph recommends Zero autoformers for hard to drive speakers and even for not hard to drive speakers. Since McIntosh makes amps with autoformers designed specifically for a particular amp, I thought they might be a good solution for speakers with very low impedances and wanted Ralph’s or anyone else’s opinion on that match. Is it a good one or are Macs just not a good match in spite of his recommendation of autoformers? I know some people just don’t like the sound of Mac amps and point to the autoformers as the reason. Why do you say that the curvilinear design is fundamentally flawed? |
McIntosh has autoformers in their solid state amps and specifies that the rated power of the amp remains the same into 8, 4 or 2 ohms. In the MC275 tube amp they call the output transformer an output transformer but in the specs they list it under Autoformer. In stereo mode they say it outputs 75 watts into 4, 8 or 16 ohms, and in mono parallel mode, 150 watts into 2, 4 or 8 ohms. |
ivanj, I think that Dick Olsher was repeating Sound Lab's marketing explanation of why their flat panel design is better. If you compare the in-room frequency response graphs of the Sound Lab to the ML Montis, the Montis looks pretty good: I'm not saying that the distortion you refer to isn't real, I just don't think it's a major factor in the speaker's sound quality. |
