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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
pafdenver
5 posts
 

@devinplombier Thanks!  Interesting that they mention that it is similar to a tube in design and sound.

glenmschneider
99 posts
 

Using a triode lab 45 Pset amp at 4.5 wpc driving Joseph Crowe Horns -beautiful room filling sound at 65% volume. No more watts needed. Better across the board than my Sunfire 200wpc amp - until you average 95+ decibels (which I just don’t do)

atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
12,418 posts
 

I run an amplifier that makes 5 Watts/channel, is class A and push-pull (so it has about 4.5x more usable power than SETs of the same power) in my bedroom system. 

I run a set of Fritz Carbon 6’s with it. I have a sub, but the main speakers and amp are running full range. The speakers are rated 87dB. I’ve yet to run the amp out of gas.

charles007100
250 posts
 

First Watt Sit-4 with Volti Audio Lucera speakers, pure heaven!!! I have a tube buried in the back yard from a terrible tube amp experience…

johnnysnavely
1 posts
 

Being fairly new to tube amps and getting back into audio after 40 years, I was just about to post on this topic.  I picked up a Jolida Fusion 3502S (50 WPC) to go along with the Polk RTi12 (90 dB sensitivity) speakers I had for a few months.
Anyway, I was pleased at the warm tube sound until I came across a few songs with sudden peaks. And it falls flat on it's face for a few milliseconds.
So what do I do now? Get a new tube amp, go back to solid state, or switch to more sensitive speakers?

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