Awesome info above.
I saw your details, incredible wall paneling in your listening room.
Would be cool to see an updated system.
Why do speakers improve with more powerful amps?
So, if I have a solid state amp that more than adequately powers a speaker, why do people recommend a larger more powerful amplifier to improve things?
Why do more powerful amplifiers impact speaker sound quality in a favorable way? Is it because more power is reaching the speakers? Mid and Tweeter drivers I was told receive a reduced signal versus bass drivers which receive relatively more power via crossovers. All for the purpose of balancing a signal going to the various drivers.
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This, or one could look at it from a different perspective: say you have an active speaker setup with no passive crossovers and potential steep phase angles - that's one way to effectively make the same amplifier "more powerful"/adding headroom for a given SPL or certainly making more effective use of its capacity with an easier load, all the while making it sound closer to its performing envelope - i.e.: better. Part of that is also dividing the workload between that amp and others to handle their respective and limited frequency spans; in a 3-way setup the amp handling MF/HF is freed of LF which equals lower distortion and better sound. The amp handling upper bass to lower/central mids is freed of everything else = better sound. Sub/central bass amp handles only that = better sound. You could have a blasting crescendo in the lower registers and it wouldn't matter an iota to the amps handling the other registers. With a line level crossover preceding the amps and looking directly into their driver segments with no interfering passive XO's also leaves out any influence of a dividing network seeing the full output power of the amp. All of this effectively makes a given amp more powerful and better sounding for a given context vs. the scenario of it seeing into a passive, not least complex crossover, full-range at that. Active requires more amps (unless running a full-range driver per channel), yes, but this is just to show how the same amp benefits from a given set of circumstances (incl. higher speaker sensitivity and impedance) when it's usually anything but impervious to load. |
One man’s datapoint. Your mileage will vary. VTL 500 (500 watt monoblock) powering tweeter on a Klipsch Jubilee and VTL 750 (750 watt monoblock) powering the bass on same Klipsch Jubilee. The Jubilee is designed for bi amping and comes with an active crossover. The Jubilee has a sensitivity of 105 db.. Then the Wotans arrived. Switched the VTL 750 to the tweeter and put the VTL Wotan (1250 watt monoblock) on the bass. It’s not just a bit better, it’s a quantum leap better. Just playing YouTube, man. Is it headroom or damping factor or whatsoever? Couldn’t begin to tell you. It just sounds fabulous. Don’t let beliefs stop you. Keep exploring. |
Interesting comments about the vtl Monster tube amplifiers above. vtl website has an interesting few paragraphs about tubes that may be of interest https://www.vtl.com/technology/why-tubes/
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@chowkwan wrote:
Exactly - keep exploring. And with that in mind, have you tried the Wotans on the midrange/tweeter horns and the VLT 750 on the bass horns? Yes, I know - why the hell would one use the more powerful amp on the HF-section, with the higher sensitivity even? Remember, 750 vs. 1250 watts doesn’t even account for a 3dB difference, and 750W will still get you a mighty long way with the high eff. bass horns. If the Wotans are the better choice on the HF-section, perhaps in triode mode (with the VTL 750 on the bass horns, say, in tetrode mode), then that’s what it is. If found out myself that the more powerful amp on my 111dB sensitive MF/HF horns (>600Hz) was the better choice, though there was only a 50W difference (575 vs. 625W). Common wisdom would’ve dictated the less powerful amp to drive the HF driver, but with so much capacity at hand with 100-111dB sensitivity it really comes down to shuffling the pieces and see what works the best - irrespective of presumptions and numbers. The question of course remains if a further gain in headroom, even with those wattages and very high sensitivity ratings, has a hand in this, and that may bake the noodles around here if people dare to follow that line of thought with the (little) attention typically invested in headroom. |
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