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

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)

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.

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…

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?

Feed all my info into ChatGPT

86db Sensitivity Harbeth Speakers. 
7’ Apart

Seated 9’ from speakers

Speakers 6 ohm

Listen at peak levels of 72db

Accuphase amp can deliver 225w at 6 ohms

AI calculates I need 0.16w to hit the peak. So I have enormous headroom.

Meters show similar power output of .1 to .2w