Giving up on Power Race, and going SET?

I've been messing around with low power for a couple years. I'm not evangelical about it. There are lots of ways to go and almost every design choice is a compromise of some sort. Many of the SET systems (amp/speakers) I find are really wonderful for small jazz, blues, "acoustic" stuff and I listen to a lot of that. Many are not so convincing for symphonies and heavy electric blues, R&R. Some are of course.

I like horns for some things. You almost have to get yourself to listen differently though. Lots of folks do not like horns. Twl is one I believe. Really personal taste.

One of the nicest things about low power sets is that they are simple. No more than a handful of compoments in a stage. You do not have to be very smart to get into DIY at a very rewarding level.

I think this is one of the things driving their popularity. If you are a manufacturer you can sell an amp for big $$$$$$ that can be really very simple and inexpensive to make. If you are into DIY it is easy enough to do without being an EE or something. Of course, they sound really good too. But if they were really difficult to implement I do not think they would be enjoying the resurgence.

If you do just a little reading you can afford to make several systems and tweak them to taste. Like home cooking.
Most of the circuits used in SETS were worked out 70 years ago. There is very little that is new. Again, there are exceptions like Tom's Berning 45 Otl.

If you want a cheaper pair of horns in the Avantgarde style try the Oris horns at the Welborne site. I used a friend's pair for several months and they are very good. If you have any thoughts about DIY SET I have some info about online diy info that you might find helpful. Drop me an email. It's not rocket science.

I remain

I read the above rather quickly so I apologize in advance if I missed something.

1) There are several basic papers on the topic one of which I know to be online which should be cited so folks can read the basic work for themselves and the LIMITED claims made. Eduardo de Lima Why Single Ended Tube Amplifiers?

2) Said above by Z "Simply the fact that apparently only the SET crowd feels the need to come up with something like this rhetoric points the finger of doubt, to me." This is rather cheap ain't it Z? Why a personal attack on the folk who bring it up. Attacking the person is always a cheap argument. Why not keep to the issues? Why not cite the article and give your technical point on the issue? What's the problem??? Can't do the math??? It's the easiest thing in the world to go in this direction and return itin your face .."oh yea, another SS guy who chooses to ignore the obvious because he has invested in SS."

What does that do except destroy the discussion altogether???? Which is about the way things go around here as a rule.

3) s above: "and more than a little ingenuous in its seemingly willful selectivity."

You do not have to agree with de Lima but his credentials are impressive, his work extensive, and he is extremely humble and good natured fellow. If he has made a mistake, so be it, cite to his work. But he is not going to ruin his professional reputation by the "willful" publishing of unsupported rationalizations. Again.... cheap.

"a fondness for playing devil's advocate" is a good thing, if you ask me, but not if it results in an intellectually lazy assault on someone's character.

4) The oddest thing is that compared to many of the completely unsupported technical arguments that are floated around this forum as gospel this one is rather mundane. The cancellation of distortion is common and well understood. (differential amps - P-P topology, balanced lines....)

Sorry, if I seem a bit touchy but I have pretty much stopped posting here except for an occasional joke because the arguments here are so often laced with this stuff in lieu of the issue.

Z...You are smart enough not to have to go there.

I remain,

Said above by Z: "In the real world, everything is a design trade-off"

Hey, that's almost a direct quote from my first post.

Anyway, thanks for taking it in stride and as intended.
I read my post a couple hours after i posted it and thought, ohboy...one line (at least) too many. It's just that a few of you regulars really set the standard for engagement around here.

Cheers
Craig

I remain,

above >>To ignore specs because they have yet to give a defintive expression of the final sound is akin to throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Amen. If the measurements do not "add up" to good sound it means we, or at least someone, has to think about them more, not less.

Hey, as an added feature here is little video on very rare vinyl.

OOOPS!

hehehehehe.

Sincerely
I remain,

Nicely said JCT:

I hope you were not talking about my statement above when you argue against the idea that "good specs equate to good sound." No one can seriously believe that and certainly not someone (like me) who listens to SETS at least part of the time.

I do believe, as I said above, that "If the measurements do not "add up" to good sound (and they do not) it means we, or at least someone, has to think about them more, not less." (this does not mean I think that all of life, let alone music or electronics, can be reduced to numbers so please no philosophical attacks)

So I agree with Unsound that walking away from engineering, a rather rigorous discipline (of which I am not a member) is walking away from what has made it possible for us to have audio and all of electronics for that matter. Ohm, Faraday, Maxwell, the folks who did the basic works in acoustics (J. Strutt , aka Lord Rayleigh), speakers (Theil/Small etc), Bell Labs and transistors. On and on… all measuremnt/number geeks.

I also agree with Brulee that you can be as into it as anybody without giving numbers/measurements a second thought. Get a good system and plug it in. I guess I disagree with him when he says that he doesn’t understand why anybody is interested.

All the audio-design folk I respect combine real technical knowledge with good ears. It is never an either-or and always the combination of the two. To demand one or the other is in logic the fallacy of the false dichotomy.

You can buy a good system with your ears but you will never design one or even incompetently dabble in it, as I do, with your ears alone. The only way you can dismiss numbers/measurements is if you equate them with marketing specs. This is a very simple headed way to look at them.

A little technical knowledge is also the first defense to the endless marketing hype that infests audio. The hype (at least to my mind) is at least a great a danger as a blind adherence to numbers.

Fittingly, the whole thing reminds me a little of music. Most of the musicians I admire have a strong background in what is essentially a kind of number theory. A part of music can only be fully understood in that way. You can enjoy a fugue if you have never heard of an interval, but you are never going to write one or fully understand it. It is almost impossible to approach some forms of music without coming to terms with this.
( John Coltrane comes to mind) . Of course, music rises above this and yet, in a fundamental way, seems to depend upon it in some way. On the other hand, to equate music with numbers is surely to miss the point. (Least I come across as a musical snob some of my favorite musicians didn’t know a hoot about it. Lightening Hopkins and John Hurt on guitar, for example. The strange thing is that these guys followed very distinct patterns in their playing (using 4ths and 5ths ) without ever understanding it at all. There was a recent article in “Science” magazine that says we are hard wired in this fashion. Who knows?

Cheers
I remain

Hey Z: Discretion is the better part of valor!

Frankly, I hope you come up with something earthshaking. I'll be able to say...."I knew him when he was posting at Agon."

Sincerely,
I remain