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In Reply to: Altecs, tube or SS amps, overload characteristics, etc. posted by edta on October 07, 2002 at 16:59:03:
If you think you are going to be overloading your amp I recommend going with something higher powered. With your speakers being 97db you'll need at least 30 watts unless you never turn it up. When solid state amps clip they produce a square wave. The speaker sees a dc voltage which overheats the voice coil. An SET amp usually just compresses the signal. Unless grossly overloaded. You are better off with a high powered amp then an under-powered one.Ray
Follow Ups:
That's what I fear. Some stupid mistake on my part could wipe the speakers. I guess, I could use a fuse.... Might degrade sound....Tubes have some sort of natural limiting, right? Not sure on that one, as I've seen pics of tube amps reproducing 1k and 10k square waves. Maybe they dont PRODUCE square waves?
Edta,I wouldn't worry too much about blowing the speakers out. It's very unlikely that if you drop the tone arm or something that speaker damage will occur. In my experience speaker damage occurs when playing at very high volume levels for some time. And in every instance it was the tweeter that was damaged.
You see what happens is the voice coil over heats and burns up. This isn't something that happens in 1 second if you drop the tone arm. Unless you have 200 watts going into a 2 watt driver. I'm sure a 30 watt amp will do just fine with your speakers.
By any chance do you have a hi-end dealer near you? Usually they will let you borrow a piece of equipment for a day or two. They will require some type of deposit. Most of the time they just swipe your credit card then credit it back when returned. This will give you a chance to try out several different amps and see how they sound.
Any chance you are in the Chicago area?
Ray
No but I'm being forced to visit my wife's relatives there. Any dealers you could recommend?
> > you'll need at least 30 watts unless you never turn it up. < <I'm unsure how you arrive at that conclusion. It depends on a lot of things. I'm quite happy with 8 watts on 89db speakers. My current amp only outputs 1 watt and while it isn't enough for those same speakers, it's still highly enjoyable on many recordings.
Jeff,I understand what your saying. Most of the time a watt is enough. I'm my situation I sometimes listen to rock or dance music at higher volume levels. Recently my problem was solved...I got a horn loaded system. This has all the dynamics and killer midrange I was looking for. Direct radiators didn't do it for me. Now 10 watts is enough power. My 88db speakers with a 300B amp sounded great. But it wasn't dynamic.
CheersRay
I've had horns (large ones) but I wasn't into SET amps at the time. Given one or the other, I'd easily take the SET amps over the horns. If I had room for the horns, however...
Jeff,Yes SET over horns. I buy that. That's how I started. Now it's Horns and SET. Just like everything there are bad horns and bad SET's. Just have to find the right combo. One thing for sure this hobby of Audio seems to be a never ending project.
Ray
The HF driver doesnt see a DC voltage, it just sees a lot more HF content, now at close to the full output of the amplifier.
Hornlover,
Do not tell Leo Fender that you cannot overdrive a tube amp more gradually to clipping without immediate and catastrophic consequences. He made distortion a thing of beauty. He'll have to take back 50 years of effort.
A clipped wave, when totally flat-topped, allows the amplifier to pass the peak output, rather than the normal average of the peaks. The clipped wave, like DC, also results in an immediate transfer of heat to the structure of the driver rather than output. A compression driver/tweeter of high efficiency has far less mass to dissipate heat,
does not work well as a light bulb, and fails.A transistor amp has no other option but to flat top the wave. Its operation goes from full output to gross distortion with very little middle ground, once the output capabilities of the power supply and voltage rails are exceeded.
Tim
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