What speakers to use with vacuum tube amplifier?

[jim goulding]

I'm happy to follow Mr. Pea but you better stick with dynamic designs, you know, box speakers- not planers, cause you'll get higher SPL's with your 50 watt amp. A couple of things that should be in your criteria . .

uno)- your speakers shouldn't go below 4 ohms
dos)- they should be 87 plus db efficiency (sometimes mfg's are not
always honest about either of these (see if you can find a review that
includes measurements)
trese)- Sam Tellig likes tubes and likes efficient speakers with them and frequently reviews them in his column in Stereophile (he
owns Triangles) check their archives
quattro)- small box speakers tend to less efficient that large ones
cinco)- Audiogon is a good place to buy used speakers (most of the cats
on this site take care of their stuff) but some may have been purchased
used already so ask questions

This stuff is fun, huh. That Cayin has had some good press.

[RGA]

The brutal truth is that very few speakers sound their best with tube amps.Find the right combination of tubes and speakers though and the result can be hard to beat.
I can understand RGAs enthusiasm for this type of system and frustration at people not grasping the subtleties of tube amp matching.

People who say they do not like tube amps have probably never heard them with the right speakers.
A great starter speaker for anybody entering into the tube amp world is the old Klipsch KG4.These are cheap second hand but can sound superb with tube amps.I used to run mine with Leak Stereo 20 and Lux KMQ7 but with a modern SET they would be superb.
They MUST be stand mounted though by removing the timber skirts on the speaker base.On the floor they sound pretty crap.

It's funny you mention the KG4 -- back in the day when I was firts buying loudspeakers this was the runner up to what I did purchase - the Wharfedale Vanguard which was the speaker that replaced the classic E-70. The Wharfedale is 95db sensitive using a ringdac horn and runs mostly in the 10 ohm range. At that time before ever hearing a tube amp my favorite amp was the Sugden A21a. This amp I would later find out is a SET - Single Ended Topology pure class A.

The Wharfedales have plenty of problems so does the Klipsch but what they offer in speed dynamics and visceral scale is almost absent from the vast majority of new loudspeakers that may very well image better but in live music nobody pays attention to imaging or soundstaging but tonality and timbral accuracy and I dare say the music itself.

But since virtually everything in stores today do not have a single set-up that is even LIKE what an AN system offers up (SET/HE) then it is impossible to have a conversation on the subject - you can't even find speakers like the Wharfedale and Klipshes anymore not even from them unless you count the heritage line but so few places carry those.

Most Higher end dealers carry 2-4 speaker lines and mostly it goes something along the following:

They carry a budget line like a Wharfedale, Boston Acoustics, Paradigm. Then they will carry some sort of upscale brand like Sonus Faber. Then they will carry the complete line from say a B&W which is what dealers like best because you can start from $400.00 to $15,000.00. This they usually hard sell because it offers clear upscale paths and it's easier to take back on trades.

Conversely dealers dislike SET because they are a pain in the ass usually do not come with remotes and usually have a high price of entry. Audio Note for example starts at around $2500.00 for an amp and that is simply not going to be something a dealer in say Winnipeg is going to want to carry. I know a guy who thinks it's the best stuff around but it would bankrupt him to carry a line especially when the company wants you to carry a complete line of gear (turntables, DACs, transports, speakers, cables, stands etc).

It is far easier to carry mainstream feature friendly SS stuff from an import country and then get people to believe it's so much better than a Japanese receiver. It is often only marginally better but...

But hey I offer the suggestion they can toss it if they wish -- no big deal AN can't keep up with the orders anyway.

[RGA]

RGA, If AN is a great sounding high sensitivity speaker, it would be the only one I'd be aware of in an affordable range. There are a host of excellent speakers to choose from that are below 88dB. That has always been a barrier for me to even consider SET. It doesn't make sense to buy a great sounding low power amp to only have limited speaker choice at best.

Actually living in Korea has opened my eyes - The high end dealers here carry massive high efficiency speakers and big tubes - despite the fact that these Koreans have tiny homes - even the rich ones. And I have found a number of very good speakers - the Tannoy Kensington is easy to drive and is ver nice sounding as is most of their heritage line.

Yes the GOOD HE speakers tend to be expensive but generally that is true of most things in life.

If there is any single poster on an internet forum who WAS in a similar boat as you are now with your post to me and who owns a similar SS system it is Kevin F on AA. His entry with Audio Note came with a DAC and he kept saying the same things you are until he got a system to TRY. Does not hurt to try right? The AN Dacs measure about as bad as it gets int he CD arena and yet...
http://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.pl?...45133&review=1

[E-Stat]

My Stat experience has only been Maggie and Martin Logan. Even one of the large pairs of Maggies driven by Levinson didn't come close to the excellence of ML. What is your opinion of ML, E-stat? Maggies aren't my cup of tea but they would not be bad for acoustic and Classical for the money with the amp to drive them.

My first experience with Martin-Logan goes back to the late seventies when a friend of mine replaced his Dayton-Wrights (which got me interested w/stats in the first place) with a pair of CLSes. They were very open sounding with better top end than the D-Ws, but somewhat lacking in low bass. No beaming like the Acoustats I had at the time. Great speaker. Over the years, however, M-L has moved away from full range designs and now focus on hybrids using cone woofers for the bottom. For me, that defeats their most important attribute - unmatched top to bottom coherence. No matter how well you do it, matching dissimilar drivers is always a challenge. Especially when one tries to match an electrostat whose mass that is less than the air it moves with that of a dynamic woofer that is comparatively massive. There is a special way that full range stats reproduce something like a piano - or voice that continues to endear them to me, where most speakers must use multiple drivers with necessarily different radiation patterns to achieve the same goal. BTW, Maggies are not stats. While they are planar in design and radiate as dipolars, they are driven by a series of bar magnets spaced across the diaphragm. Like cone speakers where the force is centered on the voice coil (but to a lesser degree), they rely on the diaphragm stiffness to distribute the driving force. The electrostatic force, however, is driven uniformly across the entire diaphragm and results in a singular purity. Dr. West said at a Chicago Audio Society meeting that he has devoted his life to making music from sandwich wrap.

The other characteristic I favor with large planars, electrostat or otherwise, is they are line sources. Vertical dispersion of electrostats is virtually nil, but rendered unnecessary when the array is seven or more feet tall. The image does not change at all when one stands up. The size of the apparent sound field can be most realistic. I have yet to hear any speaker using a one inch tweeter effectively create the illusion of an entire sound stage. A whole bunch of them in a vertical array like the Pipedreams designs, yes - but not a single driver.

rw

[Mr Peabody]

Maggies use a ribbon tweeter so wouldn't they have effectively the same driver matching problem as ML with there woofers? The matching of ML's dynamic drivers to the panel has been a criticism but newer models have improved in that area. They now have the models with the built in amp for the woofer. These aren't cheap but could be a good match for a lower powered tube amp.

[E-Stat]

Maggies use a ribbon tweeter so wouldn't they have effectively the same driver matching problem as ML with there woofers?

There is a substantial difference between transitioning the ultra fast electrostatic panels directly to a cone woofer at 270 hz than from a ribbon tweeter to a quasi ribbon midrange planar driver in the 3k range.

The matching of ML's dynamic drivers to the panel has been a criticism but newer models have improved in that area.

While I am most certainly an electrostatic fan, more specifically I value broadband coherence. Naturally, I believe full range stats are the ultimate expression of that idea. I would most likely prefer, however, a Magneplanar approach to that of a M-L because of the transition issues. The Maggie sound is more consistent from top to bottom than a hybrid stat IMHO. It is for that reason my second choice in speakers would have been the MG-20.1. They are superb loudspeakers with no need for dynamic woofers.

rw

[RGA]

Maggies use a ribbon tweeter so wouldn't they have effectively the same driver matching problem as ML with there woofers? The matching of ML's dynamic drivers to the panel has been a criticism but newer models have improved in that area. They now have the models with the built in amp for the woofer. These aren't cheap but could be a good match for a lower powered tube amp.

The ML design offers some advantages over what I have heard from Maggie and Quad etc. One is bass depth and the ability to play more music in a visceral way - and of course for home theater. ML has realized that a dynamic woofer is the only real way to get visceral powerful bass depth and be able to play it at loud enough levels to make most music have presence, for "practical size." Most people do not live in mansions so while some massive panels can provide bass most of the average sized ones simply do not.

Advantage 2 is that the ML is friendlier to multiple listeners and while the vertical image may be good the horizontal is terrible which is why Maggie and Quad et al are head in the vice speakers - move your head over to the left or right an inch or two and the noticeable sound shift is very great (and I heard the set-up set-up by Maggie engineers themselves so none of this -- they were poorly set-up with weak amp assumptions business). I assume the curved panel is to allow for a larger listening window but it may also be screwing up the frequency response in the upper midrange.

I prefer the 989, and the line they carry in Korea that are not hybrids over the ML's and Maggies. I recommend the 1.6 for audition -- I certainly understand the appeal -- it is the same price as say the B&W604S3. Both of which several of us got to hear at the same location with plenty of power to both. The Maggie offers up a less coloured, less boxy, sound with terrific imaging and soundstaging. Nevertheless if rock,pop, is on the agenda with some desire to rock the house then the 604 blows the maggie out of the water. That's the problem for me. One can talk all day about acoustic music but that is not the only thing on the agenda - if it is great but if not they are incredibly music dependent speakers.

The owner of Soundhounds even said that when he lets customers listen to Maggie he makes sure as to WHAT gets played because they are so stupifyingly lousy with a lot of music that he has to keep the titles handpicked. Since I was not in the market he illustrated the point. But at the same time when he put the live opera piece on and you sit directly in the middle and don't move your head you can hear the singer walking across the stage from right to left extremely realistically and instruments everywhere else were very real indeed. If this is your thing it was truly exceptional. Even the Quad 989 which I have found to be the best musically sounding panel of all of the ones I have heard largely because I find the ribbons to not sound as good in the treble (with great set-ups and top rated amps) -- but even then it's not great in the bottom end nor does it extend particularly well in the treble. I find my boxes to be more open, visceral, better in the bass, and able to create the realistic pressurization of instruments than the Quad at 3 times the price. But the boxes do resonate and bass strong speakers will have a different kind of colouration than panels.

What are the trade-offs you can live with is the key question to ask yourself and ultimately what I have to give up in panels I can't live with BUT this feeling is reversed obviously for those who love panels.

[Mr Peabody]

Well, I lean the other direction, any difference in matching with the ML's weren't noticeable to me and I prefer their sound much more than Maggie.

RGA, I am actually using all tube gear now, My AN DAC runs into a CJ pv14-ls pre and that into a pair of mono mv60's. Mono the mv60 is at about 100 watts and uses el34's.

[RGA]

Well, I lean the other direction, any difference in matching with the ML's weren't noticeable to me and I prefer their sound much more than Maggie.

RGA, I am actually using all tube gear now, My AN DAC runs into a CJ pv14-ls pre and that into a pair of mono mv60's. Mono the mv60 is at about 100 watts and uses el34's.

Well you are part of the way there Mr. Peabody hahahaha -- just a bit further and Kevin F's happiness could be yours

Seriously though if you do not notice the driver integration issue with ML (and the new ones may well be better) then it's a consideration.

I like that my dealer carries Quad, Magnepan and ML, Audio Note, B&W DIamonds, Paradigms etc. For me I want to hear speakers against a good sampling of what is considered the best. One can quibble over one panel being better than another or instead of the Diamonds they should carry Sonus Faber etc but few dealers carry a large amount of gear. I like Korea for this where there are about 25 high end shops on one floor. You can listen to one set-up and then walk 10 feet to what the other guy is touting.

My salesguy owned the 20.1 for four years so I get further insight with them pro/con. It's interesting that this hobby is so hugely polarizing. You have entire panel forums - you have HE speaker and horn forums etc World's apart in approach and sound, both with their technical experts and views that their way is the right way. Really does boil down to trying it all for yourself and trying to put the external factors out of the equation

Rochlin may be right -- in the end just enjoythemusic.

[bobsticks]

(noting that yet again the conversation moves toward untenable propositions)

Stereo fanatic, if you're still out there give the AN's or the VSA's a try. If you can find a pair the Cain & Cain Abbeys do great with low-to-medium wattage tube amps.

[jrhymeammo]

Coincident Speakers have series of efficient speaekers with easy load. I've read that they are not as effcient as stated 97dBs, but I dont think you'll ever have trouble driving them with amps higher than 8 watts.

Also, dont get too caught up in speakers' sensitivity, but focus more on impendence load and its stability. They'll all have swings, but tubes would prefer to drive a steady 4ohm load instead of some 16 ohm speakers with huge dips.


JRA