|
Planar Speaker Asylum Welcome! Need support, you got it. Or share your ideas and experiences. |
|
|
|
Planar Speaker Asylum Welcome! Need support, you got it. Or share your ideas and experiences. |
|
In Reply to: Quad 405/606/909 vs Arcam Alpha series vs NAD vs other for Quad ESL 57 posted by Mr Blue Sky on September 3, 2014 at 17:05:07:
I had a Quad 606 before and it's a powerful amp but not warm sounding. Has a lot of gain. It's maybe a bit coarse sounding. The 909 and 405 are supposed to be similar.The Quad amps you are looking at are the wrong kind of power amps for the esl57. They are way, way too powerful, you will arc the 57 panels causing damage to the diaphragms.. Google it for more info it's a well known issue. The 606 was designed for the very different esl63.
You need to be looking at much less powerful amps. 25 wpc or less is sensible. Certainly under 50 watts. Quad 303, Quad II valve mono blocks (16 watts a channel). The low powered Croft OTL valve amps are supposed to work well too as they like a high impedance speaker. Some Audio Innovations valve amps have 16 ohm taps and should also work well with the 57s.For cheap transistor amps I suppose the low powered Arcam Alphas would be ok. Original, alpha 7 or 8, or 8p for example. The Alpha 9 or 10 also sound good but are a bit too powerful. In some of the Alpha integrateds you can flick am internal switch to use it as a power amp. All the Alphas are 2 output transistor a channel MOSFET amps and sound musical and warm for transistor amps. If you are looking at solid state amps go for ones that use MOSFET output transistors, not bipolar transistors. MOSFETS usually sound more refined and warmer, but are softer in the bass than bipolar. The Quad 606 and 909 use bipolar transistors and have a colder sound. Like I say they are not suitable anyway, - far too much power.
The newer Croft amp series 7 power amp mentioned above is a hybrid design using MOSFET output transistors. Quite low powered (40 watts) and would probably also work well.
Leak stereo 20 valve amp would sound nice. Very warm, lush and musical sounding valve amp. Quite a commonly used combo I think, along with the Quad II monoblocks.
One thing to note is that the esl57 is a difficult load with widely ranging impedance. Totally different from something like a Maggie which is like a constant resistive load. The 57 has High impedance at low frequency but drops drastically to 2 ohms in the treble. Apparently even a lot of solid state amps don't cope with this well, and single ended valve amps don't like that either.
Edits: 09/06/14 09/06/14 09/06/14 09/06/14 09/06/14 09/06/14 09/06/14 09/06/14 09/06/14 09/06/14 09/06/14 09/06/14 09/06/14 09/06/14 09/06/14 09/06/14
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Follow Ups
- RE: Quad 405/606/909 vs Arcam Alpha series vs NAD vs other for Quad ESL 57 - Davy 13:14:21 09/06/14 (0)
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
