SET Asylum

Single Ended Triodes (SETs), the ultimate tube lovers dream.

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Re: What are the trade offs with higher powered SETs?

Posted by Thorsten on October 11, 2005 at 06:34:40:
Hi,
> Low power SETs are pretty easy to get sounding wonderful.
> Espescially in the mids. However, the extremes are usually
> compromised. Especially the bass.
Not true in my experience. Of course a speaker that goes to below 30Hz and with sensible efficiency is much larger than most people are prepared to put up with. Large 15" Tannoy Corner Reflex systems (Corner York) show just how good the bass from low power SET's is.
> Low power SETs work well with horns and monitors. If you are
> trying to achieve full-range sound, you need to bi or tri amp
> using subs so your speaker system can get somewhat complicated
> very quickly.
I have not found this true at all. Fullrange sound with a simple 2-Way speaker driven by a 45 Amplifier is no problem, see my above comments on Tannoys... ;-)
> If you want to use an SET amp with less than efficient dynamic
> driver speakers, like it sounds, you need a big tube with big
> iron and big volts. It get's really hard, really big, and really
> expensive, really fast.
True, what is worse however is that a decent quality SE Amp (or indeed any other other high quality amplifier) is wasted on most low efficiency speakers anyway. Few have the low level resolution to show much and they almost invariably compress heavily.
Ciao T