SET the best?

As I’ve said before, all types of tube amps can sound great, or less than great, depending on specific implementation and personal taste.  My favorite amp is a custom-built 35-watt OTL, my second favorite is a pushpull 252 tube amp, and the third favorite is a parallel SET design.  All of these can handle reasonably efficient speakers that are easy loads; there is no reason to exclude multi-way speakers from consideration.  Of my own amps (two pushpull, one SET), my pushpull 349-tube amp is my favorite—it is around a 5.5 watt amp, and it powers a three-way horn-based system.

alexberger472 posts 05-26-2020 1:30pm IMHO, SET are most transparent, best in texture and tone, most organic and musical. They need sensitive speakers. But in any case, the sensitive speakers are MUST for any good, musical system. SET sound quality depends a lot from parts quality: tubes, transformers, capacitors, resistors,... So a good SET can’t be cheap to built. SET are best for acoustic music: classical, jazz, vocals. If you listen electronic music, POP, rock - there are better options than SET amps. I will never go back to transistor amplifiers and low/mid sensitivity speakers. Regards, Alex.

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Very well written post here I will say its only been in the past 10 yrs that FR speakers has come into new high fidelity development. Fostex seems to be still struggling getting rid of its characteristic **The Shout*,. Maybe they have in a few recent models,,I don’t know. AER, Voxatix, Cube and my DavidLouis are Fr to consider pairing up with a SET. The magic of a SET is only limited by ,,well obviously as Alex mentions, quality parts of the amp’s build,,,but also limited by the quality of the speaker, whether horn or FR. The finer voice of the speaker = more magic opens up with the SET. Once you heard the magic of a SET via a high end FR , PP amps lose some of their emminence.

Caveat in order here, light jazz/classical chamber SETs shine. For big orch swing jazz/heavy blues, big orchestra, then PP is the amplifier for the task. And yes a PP amplifer(under 100 watts)  will work just fine with a FR speaker,, provided the db sens is not higher than 95db.

THe DLVX8 is 95db. DLVX6 @ 93. Best sens for a FR is 93-95db.

QUOTE from Mozartfan:::~~Poor Mr Jadis.... so sad,......ARC in Minnesota as well....End quote

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Well not true. Jadis amps, PP amps (under 100 watts please) will work just fine with a FR speaker, provided the speaker is not over 95db sens. Here’s the thing SET’s offer a super linear *speaker disappears* musical image pair witha high end FR. But on heavier jazz/blues, big symphonic orchestra, PP amps offer the ideal power for these complex loads. Good thing about a FR is a big PP amp is not required though is usable. With a FR speaker any/all PP will work just fine.

18Hz - 20Khz transmisson lines. Somehow I don’t miss this. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I just unhooked the dual Seas Excel W18’s from the system, running a single FR W8 + tweeter, I don’t miss the dual W18’s. A high end FR does not need bass assist, as far as voicing light jazz, chamber classical. Even heavy big orch jazz, symphonic/kettle drum, you might want to add a single 10 ibch woofer, but again, there is not much below 40 hz, so why add more ohm over laod to the SET?? If you want more bass w/o adding the ohms of a W26, , maybe try Cube Neuphar’s 10 inch speaker.

SET. However, if you feel that you need the entire frequency spectrum at decent or full weight, then you may end up disappointed ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Somehow I failed to mention,, the highs witha SET may also be a bit rolled off along with hz’s under 40.

But really in classical chamber there is not much in terms of highs,, and for your ligher weight jazz ensembles, you might want a higher sens tweeter, say 94db+,, Now I know why bache Audio uses the Fostex super horn tweeter in his FR designs. So you see there are options to achieve sparkles in the highs with SET. We love SET’s for lifelike magical midrange, how you achieve the below 30hz and above 15khz is something you will need to figure out.

Myself, a dome tweeter at 91db and a single 8 inch FR offers all the band width I need.