SET the best?

AREN‘t you tooting your horn just a little too much? OTLs are great but only address a very small portion of speakers with high efficiency and high impedance. That may or may not be everybody‘s fare and your implied claim of superiority seems therefor to run precisely into the Western gun issues you profer.

I've been careful to not speaker about our amps specifically. But for the record, although over the years it seems as if a lower powered OTL is somehow the holy grail for many, IME such a thing is really difficult to do and impractical. Its quite true that OTLs don't like low impedances but you don't always need a high efficiency speaker to work with them because many OTLs made over the last 60 years made over 100 watts. Back in the early 1960s a set of Quads and Futterman amps were the match made in heaven and SETs simply didn't make enough power for that speaker.


When I first started out 46 years ago I had a lot of audiophile ideas about how things worked- what made a difference in the sound of a circuit and so forth. Over time a lot of those ideas (many of which came from audiophile friends of mine) died an ugly death. It turns out that if you have a command of the appropriate math you can predict how an amplifier will sound and that won't be a matter of taste since all humans use the same hearing/perceptual rules. Whether people want to hear about it is a different matter of course but you 'canna change the laws of physics!' as Scotty once put it.

Not really NO!

”But for the record, although over the years it seems as if a lower powered OTL is somehow the holy grail for many”

SET the best? Is SET amplification where we should all end up? I keep reading posts where people tell of their journeys from plenty power to micro power, and how amazing SET amplification is 45 set 211 set 845 set otl, and usually, ....with the right speaker. I have yet to read of anyone who has gone the other direction from SET, to High watt beast class A amps or others. If your speakers can be driven by minimal wattage, is this the most realistic, natural sound we can achieve? versus say, 86db sensitive speakers and a 1000w amp? Is the end result solely based on speaker pairing? circuit? tubes? I am in the process of changing my direction in my search for realistic sound, just because, and wondering if this really is the best direction to be going. From what I have been reading I think it may be. What do we get with SET? What do we give up? What’s you favorite color? hanaleimike ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Answer: Yes,

 

Let me share My tech builds a UX250 tube SET amp, I borrowed it due to my Jadis Defy needing tubes, and that will be some months. I borrowed it some months back and was not so impressed,,, He reloaned it again, and this time one channel stoped playing ’He saw the 2 issues, 1 which was a cap was not soldered at one end. Now running full mode,. WOWWW Factor high. NOw I finally **get** what is all this SET Magic.

. However, the speaker makes the difference. as we all know, speakers are everything I have the DLVX8 about to make a dual FR addinga DLVX6. So like all light jazz, classical chamber the music floats across the room, the speakers completely disappear. Its just unreal, so effortless. SET + High end FR is what jazz fans draems are made of. I have not tried out full orch swing blues , like Gatemouth Mouth Brown/Gateswings.

 

With light jazz, chamber classical , the musical image is just pure magic. SET + FR = Musical Magical wonderland. Jazz fans take note.

 

Your xover speakers,, ain’t cutting it. You have no idea what you are missing out with your PP/xover setup.

philjolet’s avatar philjolet2,302 posts 11-01-2009 7:49am I like SET but you will never resolve this with a post here on Agon because too many disagree. You can not get people to agree on SS or tube as the best let alone SET tubes which can have limited bass control (compared to SS especially) and only drive a handful of speakers.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Yes the ancient discussion of SS vs Tube has not been settled. SET takes the tube experience to a whole new level,,.I should say, and forgot,, my tech built his UX250 with pure colbalt out trans, and that also may have added to the magic of SET. Colbalt trans are like $1000+ each and are not in current production.

 

And yes with SET you can not use xover type speakers.

Speakers are  critical,

Linear + Linear = SET magic.

So your choices are horns or FR.

 

My 300B amp measures flat well below 30hz. 30hz is the lowest range of piano ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ hummm My tech mentions the 300B was made for tele industry and the low hz and top hz's are cut off. Its made for human voice. Also note, most high end FR do not go below 40hz, but the good news is, there is only 1% OR LESS of the music below 40hz. Cellos lowest notes are 65hz. If you want more sparkle on the highs with a FR just add a high end high sens tweeter. SET + FR + Tweeter = Music made in heaven. I have not heard any other SET other than my techs UX250. My hopes are to add a 845 amp late next year. I do not hear limpy wimpy bass in the SET, again it has pure colbalt out trans, so that may give more slam vs Z6 and Z11 steel tran