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In Reply to: RE: Tenor OTL amps with Quad ESL posted by framerunner on December 15, 2009 at 06:16:48
I thought much of the "magic" of an OTL amp is due to the lack of transformers (or autoformers). Seems counterproductive to me (to have) to use them.
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As I understand it, the Zeros are not really transformers in that sense. They should be regarded as a speaker modification rather than an amp modification. The speaker input impedance can be increased, presenting an easier load for the amp to control..... not an expert in this, by any stretch, but seems to be intended to allow low impedance speakers to better line up with a tube amp's sweet spot.
However, I don't know if they would help with protecting the Tenor amps.
I used them with home-made OTL amps modeled after the Atma-Sphere MA-1s, and they allowed the amps to drive the midrange-treble sections of Magnepan MG-20s very nicely. I used them in a 4:1 impedance arrangement, so the 4-ohm Maggies looked like 16-ohm loads to the amps.
Some amps cannot tolerate low DC resistance, so the ZEROs are not suitable for them. Check with Tenor about this if you have not already.
I understand the purpose of an autoformer, but my point is that an OTL amplifier is designed to be directly coupled to a speaker (OTL == Output Transformerless). This implies that some care should be placed on selecting an appropriate speaker to connect to them.
The Speltz product has received a lot of press here and do serve a purpose. However, I don't think amps such as OTLs (like yours) or amps designed to drive low-impedance speakers (like Bryston, Pass, etc.) or tube amps (that have impedance matching transformers) benefit from them. Just my 2¢ and YMMV.
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