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1-1/2 Watts?

A friend came over yesterday and brought a beautiful boutique 45 tube amp with only 1-1/2 watts, which was really built for 100+DB speakers. We hooked it up to my Audio Note AN-Ks, which are rated at 90 DB, just to see what would happen. I have a 1 Bedroom and sit about 8’ from the speakers, which are on the long wall and not in corners. I have to say, the amp drove the speakers much better than we both expected, even on tracks with a lot of bass like Eryika Badu. Not very loud, of course, but adequate for apartment listening. I wouldn’t say it was a perfect match, but the results surprised us both.  It was an interesting experience. 

chayro
jasonbourne71's avatar
jasonbourne71
1,866 posts
 

I have a SET 45 built by Will Vincent of Audio West. Yes, it is flea-power (1.75:watts) and best used with a high-sensitivity speaker with a flat impedance curve. Since it has an output impedance of over an ohm it will track the non-flat impedance of most speakers and act like a tone control. I have the Snell E's - from which the AN E's were copied. 

knotscott's avatar
knotscott
1,400 posts
 

I’m of the mindset that not all watts are not created equal.  I’ve gone from as much as 255wpc (Hafler) down to about 17 wpc (Dynaco/VTA in triode) with my current tube amps using speakers of average efficiency (~89dB) in a large heavily carpeted room.  It’s as loud as I need it.  Many cheap amps are "test bench" watts using a sign wave into a resistor.    1-1/2 watts isn’t a lot, but is enough for my normal lower volume listening if it’s a good amp and can deliver it’s power with music as a source into an actual reactive speaker load.  The need for extra power usually comes from huge dynamic peaks when playing music loudly.  As always, there are lots of variables in play.

pafdenver
5 posts
 

I'm only a solid-state guy, so take my opinion with a grain of salt... smiley 

I recently upgraded to very powerful mono-blocks with a VU gauge in them and I was amazed how little power it says I am running.  My speakers weren't chosen for efficiency, and are spec'd at just 88dB, but I tend to listen around 1-2W most time, and very often what seems to be tenths of a watt or so - it's tough to read the gauges at that point.

What I have noticed is that content of the music matters greatly. Listening to bass-heavy music (Billie Eilish) at the same volume as more acoustic fare (Craig Finn) really demonstrated this to me.  Just adding a little bass thump will push the power up to a whopping 5W or so - and that's with a powered subwoofer handling the really low frequencies.

I wonder how the small amps are spec'd for continuous vs instantaneous power.  If they're separately spec'd, is the instantaneous power significantly higher that the 1.5W? 

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