My guess is that once you hear the Atma amps w a suitable speaker, your only argument will be w yourself, for not doing it sooner. IMO, the Salk speakers are beautiful, real craftmanship, but clearly designed for high power SS amps. A high(er)/flat impedance, high(er) efficiency speaker designed for tube amps is the way to go w the Atma amps. My own experience is that you do have to be somewhat concerned about hum and noise when you go to very high eff speakers; the higher eff the more careful you have to be; there's a reason why many low power amps (likely to be mated w high eff speakers) have hum pots! Swampwalker, I am guessing you've not heard our amps in a while! At the Munich show we did not use the jumper plugs as described on our website, yet to hear any artifact from the electronics at all, you had to have your head inside the horn of the loudspeaker, which was 107 db. Even then it was a gentle hiss. |
My apologies to all, but esp. to Atma. My last post was poorly worded. The reference to being more concerned w hum and noise was based on two things. One, just an electrical/acoustical fact of life. A higher eff speaker will reproduce the inherent hum and noise in a system at a higher SPL than a lower one. At least I think that's a fact of life. Second, my recent experience w both push pull and and PSET amps (but not w the Atma OTLs). When switching between two speakers of differing efficiencies, I always heard more tube rush or hum or noise from the higher eff speaker. I was not in any way trying to say that Atma amps were noisy when mated w high eff speakers. My bad. |
Since I generally can't stand horn speaker distortions, listening with my head deep inside the horn is often the only way I can tolerate them. Swampwalker's advice and Ralph's clarification are spot on!
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Swampwalker's advice and Ralph's clarification are spot on! +1, in both cases. With the slight qualification that the hum and noise which will be reproduced at a higher SPL by a speaker having higher efficiency is hum and noise that is generated or introduced at points in the signal path that are "after"/"downstream of" the volume control. Best regards, -- Al |
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