What's the lowest amount of watts you have used with our AR3/3A's?

[samberger0357]

We've been having a rather stimulating conversation on the feeding of these power hungry hogs in another thread, brought on by my enjoyment of using, among various amps, all 28 watts of a Fisher 400 receiver. Because of it, I went in search of the internet to see if others enjoyed their 3/3A's with something less then the recommended behemoth amps that are generally recommended for best results. And I did find some folks that do enjoy smaller amps, near field listening, particularly one guy who likes EL84 tube amps(ie flea watt) for his 3's, even though he openly admits that it is wrong. 

So it got me wondering about the folks on this forum. I've heard from Adriano who admits to enjoying smaller tube amps for much of his listening, although he uses larger amps as well. How about others? Anybody else use, even part of the time, tube amps with say between 20-40 watts  with their 3/3A's? If so, why? What benefits do you get? 

This is all just personal curiosity on my behalf. Not debate or argument being started. 

So, who's first?

[frankmarsi]

CSP 9-28-16 #2

I’ll take crack at it. Now I know what you mean about the carnival. Were you ever a carni-barker? 

My first real power amp I bought at EJ Korvettes in late 1967 and paid something like $89. for an assembled Dynaco ST-35

 

It had 17.5 watts of pure tube power per side. Oh, sure it sounded good with my 12” Jensen woofers and two RS exponential horns mounted in two separate enclosures about the same size as 3a’s.

I used one cap that came with the tweeter.

I bought these two boxes empty and carried them home in my 1964 MId-Nite Blue Impala 283C.I. 

I purchased these boxes on Cortlandt St aka ‘Radio-Row’ in NYC when the foundations for the new world trade were being constructed.

It wasn't until about 5 years later after I came home from the Service that I bought my pair of AR-3a's.

How did they sound I'm so sure you're wondering?

Oh, I'll you how they sounded, I'll tell how they sounded, Norton!

Even then in my AR infancy I was able to tell that they sounded starved and inadequate. There were seemingly hardly any dynamics, some peaks struggled to get out and bass was boomy, which made me gloomy.

But, oh no, don't let me tell you.............

There’ you happy?

FM

P.S. With-in a very short time I had succumb to fact that I needed bigger and better sound, period.  Enter the Dyna ST-120, and with a rip-roaring 60 watts per channel I felt as though I was the hi-fi king in the whole neighborhood. As my rotten fate would have it, the driver board blew out 3 times and both of the power transistor boards had to be replaced over 5 times.

That freaking amp gave me more problems than it could ever be worth. Let's not look to me just because I had assembled the kit version of it myself, that's besides the point! I did everything the instruction manual told me to do. So what if it had a couple of cold joints, I didn't mean anything bad by it, I was young and willing to take on practically any challenge.

 Two years later in mid '74 I was in audio heaven with the purchase of a  brand new Phase Linear 400!

Da barker may be barking up da wrong tree, I' tell ya!

[samberger0357]

Thanks for your reply FM. And yes, I'm happy. Thanks for asking. 

 

 

[Liangshan Marsh]

Hi SamBG!

I had used the tube AMP, The Fisher 500B/C, TA-600 for my AR3s/3a speakers with plentiful bass, warm sound... but totally It was less, lack of the treble details then my other various SS amp/receiver  ( AR receiver/AU-integrated amp, Marantz 2270, Pioneer SX-950/sx-1080, Kenwood KR-9400, Yamaha CR - 1040,Tandberg 2075 mark iv, Crown 1002 XLS that I once owned and trading some of it...

 

[Sonnar]

I have a friend that has an unsurpassed record in low-wattage amps: he use an Audio Note tube preamp and a Rogers Cadet power amp WITH ONLY 7 WATTS PER CHANNEL to drive his AR 3a. In the very first time I was thinking he was a bit crazy , then I 've had the opportunity to listen his system and I can' t believe my ears. It sounds , and sounds very fine. Obviously , at very low levels, and with some drummerless jazz recordings with two or three players, clarinet , piano . Recently he upgraded to a Leak Stereo 20 , a very fine ( and expensive ) vintage british power amp of 20 watts per channel, and I am very curious about it . Technically speaking , it 's an heresy to use anything less 100 wpc to drive an AR big speaker,  and it could be very dangerous with low power SS vintage amps , clipping destroys easily AR 3a's tweeters, but 26 years ago I used very often a 28 wpc NAD 3120 to drive my AR 3a , with satisfaction.   Cheers, Adriano 

[samberger0357]

Interesting(to me) that Liangsham(gorgeous 3's, btw!) found plenty of bass, (meaning that the Fisher receivers didn't have any issue pumping the woofer) but it was the high details that got lost. When I get my 400 back in there at some point I'll have to recheck to see if I experience similar issues. 

Adriano I agree with you regarding low power solid state amps and clipping. Believe me I'm extremely cautious when it comes to driving my 3's, especially after a bad amp took out a woofer a few months back. Do not want to go through that experience again. But I think that with tubes clipping becomes more or less a non issue(again, with careful use of the gain). 

I've been running my 200 watt Adcom now for the last few hours and have really enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to getting the Fisher back in to make some comparisons to the overall presentation. 

[samberger0357]

37 minutes ago, Sonnar said:

I have a friend that has an unsurpassed record in low-wattage amps: he use an Audio Note tube preamp and a Rogers Cadet power amp WITH ONLY 7 WATTS PER CHANNEL to drive his AR 3a. In the very first time I was thinking he was a bit crazy , then I 've had the opportunity to listen his system and I can' t believe my ears. It sounds , and sounds very fine. Obviously , at very low levels, and with some drummerless jazz recordings with two or three players, clarinet , piano . Recently he upgraded to a Leak Stereo 20 , a very fine ( and expensive ) vintage british power amp of 20 watts per channel, and I am very curious about it . Technically speaking , it 's an heresy to use anything less 100 wpc to drive an AR big speaker,  and it could be very dangerous with low power SS vintage amps , clipping destroys easily AR 3a's tweeters, but 26 years ago I used very often a 28 wpc NAD 3120 to drive my AR 3a , with satisfaction.   Cheers, Adriano 

I've read about somebody else driving their 3's with a Leak 20. Would love to hear that. 

See, I don't believe it to be a "heresy" to drive 3's with less then 100 watts. Certainly AR didn't when they designed their matching amp at 60 watts. I think again it all comes down to listener situation, and listener preference. Obviously, if one is attempting to reach concert hall levels in a very large room with a 20 watt amp, that is speaker suicide, and yes, stupid. But given the right room, and and a wise hand on the gain, and I believe(hell, I know from experience) that a lot of pleasure can be derived from using a good, lower power tube amp with the 3's. Really, it's a classic combination. 

[ar_pro]

The Dynaco ST-120 was a wretched amplifier, especially when compared to that company's previous tube designs.
My own ST-120 - driven by a Crown preamplifier - literally went up in smoke when first attached to a brand-new pair of AR-3a speakers.

That said, the Dyna Mark III mono amplifier, Stereo 35, and Stereo 70 were great designs, and were frequently mated with AR speakers in very musical-sounding systems.

As far as preference goes, I'd sooner choose a vintage tube amplifier of modest output over virtually any of the more powerful transistor designs from the '60s and '70s.
Exceptions would include most of the Crown D-Series amplifiers, and the second generation of McIntosh solid-state amps. 
I'm unable to include Phase Linear due to a lack of personal experience; this I will chalk up to having been subjected to the apparently-undeserved, but very effective word-of-mouth reputation that Phase had for allegedly blowing up and killing any speaker attached to it.
Audio people gossip like old women, and in the days before Google, it was mighty difficult to get straight answers on topics like this; a slander could take on a life of its own, and become "common knowledge" in no time.
McIntosh went through the same sort of thing when they stopped making their equipment available for extended loan to magazine reviewers. This created a gossip-vacuum that was soon filled by nonsense and conjecture. 

Audio writer Dick Olsher is credited with the remark that “The first watt is the most important watt.”, and I tend to agree with this ethos.
We've all heard certain powerful solid-state amps that fail to come alive until reaching high spl's, and it begs the question: so what's the point of all of this power if the quality goes away at more comfortable listening levels?

And for what it's worth, I've never had the experience of blowing out an AR driver with any tube amplifier (or McIntosh solid-state amplifier equipped with their power-guard circuit) of any power rating.
Every blown woofer or tweeter I've ever owned has met its fate whilst connected to silicon! 

[samberger0357]

1 minute ago, ar_pro said:

The Dynaco ST-120 was a wretched amplifier, especially when compared to that company's previous tube designs.
My own ST-120 - driven by a Crown preamplifier - literally went up in smoke when first attached to a brand-new pair of AR-3a speakers.

That said, the Dyna Mark III mono amplifier, Stereo 35, and Stereo 70 were great designs, and were frequently mated with AR speakers in very musical-sounding systems.

As far as preference goes, I'd sooner choose a vintage tube amplifier of modest output over virtually any of the more powerful transistor designs from the '60s and '70s.
Exceptions would include most of the Crown D-Series amplifiers, and the second generation of McIntosh solid-state amps. 
I'm unable to include Phase Linear due to a lack of personal experience; this I will chalk up to having been subjected to the apparently-undeserved, but very effective word-of-mouth reputation that Phase had for allegedly blowing up and killing any speaker attached to it.
Audio people gossip like old women, and in the days before Google, it was mighty difficult to get straight answers on topics like this; a slander could take on a life of its own, and become "common knowledge" in no time.
McIntosh went through the same sort of thing when they stopped making their equipment available for extended loan to magazine reviewers. This created a gossip-vacuum that was soon filled by nonsense and conjecture. 

Audio writer Dick Olsher is credited with the remark that “The first watt is the most important watt.”, and I tend to agree with this ethos.
We've all heard certain powerful solid-state amps that fail to come alive until reaching high spl's, and it begs the question: so what's the point of all of this power if the quality goes away at more comfortable listening levels?

And for what it's worth, I've never had the experience of blowing out an AR driver with any tube amplifier (or McIntosh solid-state amplifier equipped with their power-guard circuit) of any power rating.
Every blown woofer or tweeter I've ever owned has met its fate whilst connected to silicon! 

Thank you! Wonderful, common sense information. 

[frankmarsi]

Clipping generally occurs when an amp is pushed beyond where is should operate.

Pushing a small wattage amp is usually because the listener is seeking a 'bigger-sound' and that bigger sound can-not, I repeat, can-not be achieved with a small amp.

You call it reality or bragging but, I learned many years ago that big sound was easily achieved when I applied 200+ watts RMS to each channel.

When I applied over 550+ watts RMS to each of the LST's is when I really for the first time learned what a big system can sound like.

This is starting to remind of those newer twenty somethings out there who put a four inch muffler and a couple of red lower control arms in their rear suspension on a tiny import car and drive around making all kinds of noise like it was a performance car.

Hell no, it isn't!

I guess I should feel sorry for these sorry-ass kids because they haven't an inkling of what it was like back in the mid-sixties to early seventies when we really had 'muscle cars' around. Not these little shits driving around as if they've got something.

These misguided and directionless dweebs/nerds have no real idea of how to go about doing things in a certain way and most importantly correct way.

This warehousing of speakers and components for the sake of just having this stuff and walking around and doing a video of it all is saying what?

The goal should be to set up a stereo system for maximum listening accuracy, not equipment hoarding.

How much actual appreciation for music is actually achieved by these lame methods? None I tell ya!

A room should be set up with proper listening positions, affording the speakers their best position for maximum listening ability rendered.

This craziness that I've seen on the net with people apparently in awe of equipment and speakers is just plain missing the point.

Several months ago I posted some words opposing some of the 'new' members choices and I was met with a very politically correct wimpy response and I quote one: "Oh, I don't like his tone" with more shit and stuff like that. My immediate thought was; wow, this site has really gone amateur.  It only confirmed to me my suspicion as to why some of the qualified and knowledgeable posters that were once here have apparently left.

Out of all these posters, who is actually setting-up a system and really sitting back and listening to what the power of music can do to the human mind and spirit? Instead of this 'nuts and bolts' over-played hoarding of hardware.  Seeing stuff improperly piled on other stuff is very reminiscent of when I'd walk into a stereo store where everything was just piled onto shelves for the sole purpose of selling the stuff. A customer could never really hear what a given component or speaker sounded like because the equipment was not set up correctly by doing so. It was always such a pain to walk into a place like that.

Unfortunately stereo equipment stores are all gone these days, and certainly nothing like it was in the early '70s and before so I pity folks not having those opportunities that I did, but gee the above mentioned complaints I point out is not the way to go about it either.

What I'm seeing is not by any stretch used for serious listening and appreciation of music, it's more like a neurosis.

A stereo system's speakers must be properly positioned in a room for maximum sound quality and there's no two ways around that.

Well, there goes the neighborhood!

FM

 

[samberger0357]

Going off on a bit of tangent there, FM, but that's ok with me. I agree with pretty much everything you have laid out in your thesis. 

 

Curious as to how big your listening room is. Feel free to throw up a picture or 3. If you're pumping 550 watts into 2 sets of LST's(think I have that right) that's some pretty righteous, Dead like power your channeling. If I tried to do anything like that in my humblest of abodes I'd blow the roof off the place. 

Anyway, I'm lucky that at this stage of my existence, most of my listening choices are of the Bird/Diz/Sonny/Coltrane variety, and not so much Live At Leeds. So blistering power is no longer anywhere near a priority. Enjoyment of the performance is, and a quality tube amp, through a quality set of speakers, is all it really takes. 

But I digress(as usual).  

 

[frankmarsi]

No, I'm not pumping 550 watts into two sets of LST's.

I'm pumping 550+watts RMS (conservatively rated) into each of the four LST's and that equates to 2200 clean watts RMS total running full time when I listen. And that my comrade in vintage speaker-dom, is how I roll.

I did say 'big-sounding' I believe earlier and months ago I did reluctantly post a extreme wide-angle shot of my system but, no one commented or responded to it.

I had trepidations in doing so because I believe there's no better way to invite a robbery than showing all that you have in your house, it's like saying here it all is, come and get it.

Once more I will justifiably humble myself by stating that I am certainly not as well equipped in the knowledge department as some of the rarely as of late not seen here members but, I do for the most part know how to set-up a system and room for maximum listening pleasure.

My main listening room is 12X25X8 for the LST's against the front wall where they were designed to be placed.

The second room is holding captive the AR-9's is for a future project but, equipment wise is ready to go. They room is not as it's become a junk room and I'll get to it later sort of room. So, although it is not ready, it's just OK to blast the 9's with another PL700 and yes they're getting 700 watts in each channel.

 

[samberger0357]

Wow...2200 watts... Well, I only have one way to reply to that tidbit of info

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8yAR7prdeU

^{What kind of music do you tend to favor, if you don't mind me asking? And is vinyl your chosen medium?}

 

^{Here's a taste of my space}

 

[genek]

I had a Harman Kardon 45W amp in my home office/workshop that I used when I was rebuilding my 3a's that work ok with them. But my listening levels were not excessive and the room was only 10' square.

[frankmarsi]

9-28-16

sam the man burger, your file didn’t open for me.

I’m convinced that no one really reads any of my silly diatribes aka posts so, here I go again in brief.

Believe it or not, I have over 6500+ vinyl records and buying more online all the time. Believe me, or just do some far reaching inquiries of vinyl collecting. There is a fella in the far east who has well over 500 thou. records, and if I’m not mistaken there’s another fella with even more.

Now with in the realm of sanity, who could actually have that much time to listen to that much material. I think no one could if you do the numbers.

Sadly, I must stop all of this buying because I’ve yet to hear what’s all around me already. Buying is rather consuming me at this point.

I’ve already posted this information throughout many posts.

Mostly rock, not rock and roll from the ‘50s, but stuff from seventies, ’80’s and ‘90s.

The nineties is were I cut off, although I do have many disks of important value from then also.

My jazz collection is relatively recent as I was never really a jazz listener, however lately I’m buying and listening to more and more, mostly as re-issues. ‘Blue-Note’ is doing a good job with theirs.

The used record store where I’ve purchased 86% of my cache was in an area where jazz lovers must have lived at one time because I bought many classics there, but again jazz only comprises about 400+ records.

The classical music section has more in number including some earlier boxed sets of important composers, mostly the well known.

I also bought classical composers and pieces in the mid seventies as I dabbled in that area to defer my rock leanings.

I have gone back to certain periods where I was pre-occupied with other things like my career and many women and found things that I’ve heard but didn’t really paid much attention to. Now I find I like a number of things that I once over looked. I assure you, low powered amps is definitely not one of them.

Right now, I’m kinda beat from this big dust-up we’ve had here and just like you say you do, I was typing while I had a few CD’s going in the next room.

CD’s are easy because I press repeat and walk away. I don’t do that with vinyl but that’s O.K. because a good record gets my undivided attention and I sit 15 feet away from the tall LST’s and let myself be taken by it all.

You see I will plainly admit that I can be a hypocrite also, especially when it comes to record buying.

I refuse to place a used or dirty record on any of my platters. To me I’m sorta of a die-hard and I use a VPI 16.5 record cleaner. Cleaning takes time if one is going to do it correctly, adding a new sleeve for the record and a new sleeve for the record jacket after washing. 

I openly admit that I can be extreme because I feel as long as I’m going to place on record on my clean platters and use a high value cartridge, I’m not going to touch the outer jacket that no doubt has thousands of greasy finger prints on it preventing me from touching another records or my equipment. 

So, I re-sleeve both for maximum cleanliness. It’s all important when it comes to correct vinyl usage.

You should get into it.

FM

[samberger0357]

I spent many years in the "biz" as they say, and have been buying/collecting for decades. I've purged many times, and now have lost count, but probably about 4-5k records, and a few thousand cd's. I'm a big jazzbo, so that's a big part of my collection, other forms of American music are important to me to, as you can see from my sig. I came of age in the 70's, so that's an important rock era for me, as is the 60's. The 80's I was working in the biz, and there was a lot of great music made in that decade, but the stuff that was popular is stuff I'll be happy to never hear again. 

For years I did the expensive turntable/cartridge merry go round.  Finally got tired of it, and went back to my youth. Have an AR XA, Dual 1019, Garrard Lab 80, and an Elac Miracord 50H. I prefer idler tables, except for the XA. Carts are good workmanlike tools from Shure, Stanton, Pickering. I have a Nitty Gritty cleaning machine, but frankly I'm not obsessive about cleaning. I don't buy junk, so I don't worry about playing records that I haven't cleaned. If it sounds good, not much noise, etc, I'm ok with it. I know that's not for everybody, and I begrudge nobody who chooses to do as you, but life is too short and I'm not worried about life of my carts. It's one reason why I stopped paying thousands for carts and tables. I've been doing this for a long time, just like you, and I'm comfortable with my routines. 

What file can't you open? The YouTube link, or my picture? The YT link opens for me. Oh well, think Belushi in Animal House when the horse dies in the dean's office. His reaction. That's the reaction I had when learning of your power supply. 

Well, that's my story. I'll stick with it for tonight. 

[onplane]

7 hours ago, samberger0357 said:

So it got me wondering about the folks on this forum. I've heard from Adriano who admits to enjoying smaller tube amps for much of his listening, although he uses larger amps as well. How about others? Anybody else use, even part of the time, tube amps with say between 20-40 watts  with their 3/3A's? If so, why? What benefits do you get? 

This is all just personal curiosity on my behalf. Not debate or argument being started. 

So, who's first?

Not the 1st response by a long shot, but while typing I'm listening to my 3a's powered by a 30 wpc Kenwood ss amp and they sound just fine!! Well actually that's just half of the story.  The other half of the story is the small 30 watt amp drives just the mids and tweeters.  The woofers are powered by another Kenwood rated at 125 wpc.

Some will argue that there is danger of "clipping" in that small amp, but it's really very, very low!  The major cause of clipping is when an amplified signal exceeds rail voltages.  Now, that happens when amps are "over driven" or driven beyond their design (such as 4 ohm loads on an amp NOT designed to handle that current draw) resulting in "droop" in the rail voltages.  That is, the amplified signal exceeds the "drooped" rail voltage and a "clipped" signal is sent directly to the speakers.

Just for a minute I'll digress and say that "clipping" can occur in tube amps, but it is very, very difficult to achieve.  It's "difficult" because the rail voltages are so very high and when a tube "sees" a signal that large, the tubes themselves become non-linear and will tend to "stall". Even if your tube amplifier stage did attempt to send a clipped signal out, there are transformers between the tubes and the speakers and those transformers will "round out" the square wave. In summary, tube amps can be over driven and the result will be audible distortion, but NOT square waves that will just murder most home audio speaker systems. 

Back to my "small" ss amp that I claim has very little chance of ever clipping and you are probably wondering why I say that.  Well, 1st off this amp is hardly doing any work at all!  The power in music is in the lower frequencies.  Consequently, there is zero chance of any "drooping" of the rails, because the current draw is minimal. If I leave the amp on all day, it never even gets warm. (Now the other amp is totally different story. Those AR 12" woofers will consume power even at modest listening levels.)

Next, if you look at music on a scope you can see some interesting things.  The analogy I think works best is to think about waves in the ocean.  In the ocean we have big waves we call "ground swells" and they can be 20, 30 feet high, but they are big and spaced out.  That means you ride them up and you ride them down and nobody cares! Sometimes you don't even realize they are there, because superimposed on these are other waves with a short period that you do care about! These short period waves, if you are not careful, will swamp your boat if you hit them wrong.  Well, music is made up of big waves we call the bass line and superimposed upon it are the higher frequencies where the "information" exists in music (and is very, very important), but there is little to no power there.  So what I do to further reduce the chance of clipping is simply turn the bass knob way down!  The xover for the mids and tweeters will deselect these low frequencies anyhow, so why mix them together in the power amplification stage? Remember IM distortion is caused by mixing high and low frequencies together in an amplifier, so by removing the lowest frequencies we hope to send as clean a signal as we can to the mids and tweeters.

In the "headroom" thread, owlsplace said:

Quote

"The problem with SS amps was always clipping and subsequently the amount of odd harmonic power sent to the tweeters that invariably led to their early demise. The problem with tube amps was low damping factor which wasn't able to control those large woofers that well. Seems like if you were looking to max out your listening experience with these speakers you would drive the woofers with a SS amp and the upper range with tubes."

This can be done!  There are issues, however.  The first is that you'll need to bring out a 4th terminal.  You can't safely tie together a tube amp and an ss amp like I do and use just the three terminals on the 3a's.  It's just too dangerous.  I've never seen an ss amp that isn't common ground so all of this equipment is actually tied together by the shielding on the audio cables.  Nevertheless, prior to bi-amping I'd still check the speaker outputs to verify that the amps are indeed "common ground".

Now for the next issue with mixing ss power amps and tubes, and I really hate to bring it up, but the issue is ... phase. I've been burned by this before, so for the sake of argument let's just assume that when you bi-amp your 3a's you want the signal going to the woofers to be "in phase" with the signal going to the mids tweeters.  Unfortunately, the only way I know that you can verify "phase" is with a dual trace scope.  I said earlier that I hate to bring this up, because I have no idea how important this is.  I'm guessing "purists" will say it's very important.  I've had some experience with this and the results are most confusing! (The mids and tweeters in my AR TSW 610's are intentionally wired "out of phase" with the woofers.)

To recap, mixing ss and tube amps can be done.  The reason to do this isn't to gain headroom, but to get a different experience. I did it so that I could change the "voice" of my 3a's "on the fly".  That is, if I want bass heavy speakers, I've got them and they do well when playing vinyl.  If I want brighter speakers for modern digital recordings and playback, I've got them!  All I have to do is vary the power levels going to each half.

BTW, one really neat thing is to listen to your favorite music with the woofers turned totally off.  Then bring them up slowly.  It's just amazing how these speakers work together to make that sound we call .... music!  Conversely, if while listening you turn the mids and tweeters off, you won't even recognize the sound coming from the woofer.

Anyhow, hope you find this amusing....

Regards,

Jerry

 

 

 

 

[samberger0357]

Interesting. Thanks Jerry. I'm not planning on use multiple amps to drive my 3's, because, well, too complicated for me. But I'm not at all concerned with clipping with my lower powered tube amp, and when I want more power, I have 3 SS amps between 175-350 watts at my disposal. From what many say, there is no good reason why the Fisher 400 should sound at all good with the 3's. But they do. To me. Guess that's all that matters in the end run. 

[samberger0357]

6 hours ago, ar_pro said:

Audio writer Dick Olsher is credited with the remark that “The first watt is the most important watt.”, and I tend to agree with this ethos.
We've all heard certain powerful solid-state amps that fail to come alive until reaching high spl's, and it begs the question: so what's the point of all of this power if the quality goes away at more comfortable listening levels?

 

Anybody care to tackle this?

[onplane]

20 hours ago, samberger0357 said:

Anybody care to tackle this?

Quote

Audio writer Dick Olsher is credited with the remark that “The first watt is the most important watt.”, and I tend to agree with this ethos.
We've all heard certain powerful solid-state amps that fail to come alive until reaching high spl's, and it begs the question: so what's the point of all of this power if the quality goes away at more comfortable listening levels?

Well one can never be certain of another's motives, but I believe Olsher's statement is a thinly veiled defense of tube amps. The idea that the first watt is very important, nevertheless, has a great deal of merit. Many people, myself included, enjoy listening to music at power levels averaging around a watt. 

At higher power levels, it's hard for tube amps with their limited feedback to achieve the low distortion levels that ss amps achieve. Equality between the two systems thus is pretty close around a single watt.

As for the statement about ss amps failing to come alive until high spl's is a total mystery to me. I have no idea what this means. SS amps designed for home audio exhibit low distortion at low power levels and distortion only increases as power draw increases. Now, while distortion increases, the rate is slower than in comparable tube amps. This statement might make sense if it refers to some commercial amps designed for very heavy current draws, but I find it most puzzling in regards to the typical amps we use.

Regards,

Jerry

 

[samberger0357]

Thanks Jerry. I tend to agree with you. I too listen at relatively low power levels , which is partially why I seem to be having good results using a 28 watt tube amp to drive the 3's.  

The irony in all this is while common thought is that one should have an amp of significant wattage to properly get that woofer moving, these are actually very fragile speakers that one has to be very careful not to overdrive for risk of blowing out the tweeter. 

Truly amazing what some of us will put ourselves through for this hobby of ours. 

[onplane]

On 9/28/2016 at 4:25 PM, samberger0357 said:

Thanks Jerry. I tend to agree with you. I too listen at relatively low power levels , which is partially why I seem to be having good results using a 28 watt tube amp to drive the 3's.  

The irony in all this is while common thought is that one should have an amp of significant wattage to properly get that woofer moving, these are actually very fragile speakers that one has to be very careful not to overdrive for risk of blowing out the tweeter. 

Truly amazing what some of us will put ourselves through for this hobby of ours. 

Sam, you should get "good results" with a 28 watt amp regardless of the type!

As you can see from the publication attached, AR states the Minimum Recommended Amplifier Power at 25 watts per Channel.  Further, somewhere I recall seeing an AR publication that indicated amplifiers up to 100 watts per channel.

AR never said you had to have one of those commercial amps that puts out mega watts.

In my small room, 1 watt is more than enough sound.  So if I really want to crank it up, 2 watts is about all I can stand.

Regards,

Jerry

 

[ar_pro]

The observation was of certain solid-state amplifiers exhibiting this behavior - certain solid-state amplifiers, not all.

If hearing this difference/effect is an unfamiliar experience for some, well "good on ya", as my Ozzie friend, Bob would say.

Our AR-91 speakers are fed by a 200 watt/channel solid-state integrated amplifier, and both speakers in our primary system see 450 transistorized watts each; so while the attraction of lower-powered tube amplification is certainly understandable & appealing, it wasn't the answer in our case, as adequate juice was what was called for, and it's worked out well. 

 

[samberger0357]

Yes you

21 minutes ago, onplane said:

Sam, you should get "good results" with a 28 watt amp regardless of the type!

You're right, of course, but you will admit that common thinking is that no way could an amp of anything less then 100 watts sufficiently, and correctly, drive an AR3. Hell, I listen with great satisfaction to the Fisher mate with the 3's, and I still think I really should have my Adcom or Crown in there to really get these speakers going. In other words, because of everything I've read, I find myself doubting my own ears. You would think that 40+ years of serious listening would've eliminated that issue long ago, but there it is. 

Anyway, 

28 minutes ago, onplane said:

n my small room, 1 watt is more than enough sound.  So if I really want to crank it up, 2 watts is about all I can stand.

Sounds like we have similar rooms, and listening habits. 

[samberger0357]

6 minutes ago, ar_pro said:

The observation was of certain solid-state amplifiers exhibiting this behavior - certain solid-state amplifiers, not all.

If hearing this difference/effect is an unfamiliar experience for some, well "good on ya", as my Ozzie friend, Bob would say.

Our AR-91 speakers are fed by a 200 watt/channel solid-state integrated amplifier, and both speakers in our primary system see 450 transistorized watts each; so while the attraction of lower-powered tube amplification is certainly understandable & appealing, it wasn't the answer in our case, as adequate juice was what was called for, and it's worked out well. 

 

And if I may, how large is your listening area, and how loud do you normally listen to music(and what kind of music)? When I have my Adcom(200 watts) or Crown(350 watts) I can barely get the gain on the pre past 7 or 8 o'clock, and that's loud. I'd love to say that even at low levels the dynamics are at least better then what I get with 28 watts, but for me, it's not the case. So I'm just curious how many of those 200/450 watts you need to use to get the desired sonic effect.