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In Reply to: Re: List of speakers suitable for OTL amps. posted by Lew on September 25, 2006 at 13:14:49:
Hi Lew-yes, there is some varience in the Sound Labs!! Depending on the vintage, ZEROs can help a lot. I recently heard a *new* set of A-1s running with MA-1s and the tonality was utterly neutral with a presentation stunning in its overall musical nature- I totally get why the speaker has such a following!
Paul Bolin based some of his comments on the MA-1 in his review several years ago while using Appogee Duetta Signatures, which are 4 ohms and arguably the best of the Appogees. Other Appogees, like the old Full Range, need either ZEROs or the Atma-Sphere Z Music device to work with almost any tube amp.
The people at Magnaplanar maintain that the best they ever heard the MG-20s was with MA-2s. MA-1s make a good showing on them too. To do well with M-60s the ZEROs are required.
Follow Ups:
Ralph,does using the Speltz Zero box make an OTL amp an effective non-OTL amp? (one has inserted a transformer/autoformer between the amp & speaker effectively making it an transformed amp). One could/does lose the true benefits of an OTL amp as the "purity" of the technique - OTL directly driving a loudspeaker - is lost?
Thanks!
The effectiveness of the ZERO is the fact that the amp driving it already is comfortable with a 16 ohm load. Most tube output sections are driving between 1000 and 5000 ohms. So the result is something that has not been done before- in effect the gestalt amplifier is not an OTL but it is not working inside the conventional transformer-coupled constraints either. This would not be possible if you did not start with an OTL to begin with.On speakers where the amp is uncomfortable (for example, M-60s driving Magnaplanars) this allows the amp to work quite well where it would not have done poorly before- in such a case there are no trade-offs. In the case of 8 ohm speakers there are trade-offs, but then you don't have to use the ZERO unless you want to- with a regular tube amp you have no option. So its something different- something that works. We generally recommend the ZERO if the amp is working with less than 8 ohms, and do not if the amp has 6 ohms or more to deal with.
With our larger amps 4 ohms is not a concern, although the ZERO is sometimes helpful with the MA-1 and speakers less than 4 ohms. If you look at the ZERO as a problem solver then you get a better idea of what its about.
nt.
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