Anyone use solid state for the bass and valve for mid and treble

[paulf-2007]

"....

That's what some horn systems do, when they have active subs. For instance my Avantgarde Duos have passive compression drivers in separate treble and midrange horns with an active unit containing 2 x 12 inch drivers driven by solid state amps with a crossover designed and built into the system. Hence my 6W TRON Voyager 20B SET power amp drives the treble and mid, whilst the lower freqs are driven by the SS active sub.

I know that some people perceive that the active subs are a weakness in the AG design, but if you want a passive bass horn, you need a massive room, as these are BIG. To be honest if AGs are set up properly, the integration isn't bad at all and not really noticeable in normal use IMO.

the later ones are better Charlie, I went to someone's house to hear his duos and try some alternative amps in his system. He ran those kronzilla amps, about 40w I believe and it didn't sound good. We tried my 2A3 monos and 300B. I can't remember which we decided was best, but both were better than his amps. I think the kronzillas were only just off almost off on the volume control due to the horns efficiency and I believe it affected the bass too.

[montesquieu]

Tried this with my Tannoys - various SS amps from quad 303 to 200 class d on the bass, 300b and 2a3 SET on the horn tweeter. Also tried kt88 and 2a3 into woofer and tweeter respectively, benchmark to beat was a decent KT88 pp amp on its own.

Tried with both passive crossovers modded with l pad removed on the tweeter (matching done with the vol control on the SET amps), and with solid state active crossovers.

It was an interesting exercise that I ran over a number of weeks but the upshot was single kt88 amps and passive crossover sounded the easiest and most musical - the most ‘right’. Next came the modded passive crossovers with kt88 and SET, but it still sounded lacking somehow.

I could never get a solid state / valve mix to sound any good at all into my Tannoys though I have heard this sound good on horn systems where the SS component is just very low frequencies. (Tannoys cross over at 1 kHz which is 2 octaves above middle C - that’s too high to run SS in a mix like this. )

Wort satisfying curiosity I would say - who knows it might work on your setup. A dead end on Tannoys when I tried it - made some interesting sounds but nothing I could live with long term.


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[forsell]

Just wondered if anyone has used valves for mid and treble and solid state for bass , and is d technology best for bass work , are there any bass amps
with attenuators to match the valves gain , can this be done by ear . are there any down sides to this . phil.

Works only properly with all amps being same manufacturer/model because only this guarantees "same sonic characteristic" of all drivers. Even if SS amps only used -but both different- or valve amps only used but different- (>in most cases they will sound different) you will hear some sonic inconsistency across the frequency range. Matching output levels is not enough. That's why you find in all active systems same amps built inside (they only differ in power output specification) for all drivers -for example ATC active LS- which is almost the same concept but with an active crossover between preamp and amp section.

Slowly, wooly sounding amp for mid/tweeter, great PRAT-sounding amp for the woofer for example -I DO hear sonic mismatch as if 2 different speakers were playing in front of me. IMO

[Pharos]

First;y, the way the brain/ear interprets bass - mid - and top is very different, as are the sensual experiences of each.
Secondly, this disparity of opinion is incredibly interesting.

What I like particularly in this forum is that differing views are usually said or stated as a humble opinion, and rarely is there acrimony or poo-pooing of others' views.

BTW the ATC power packs run differing classes of amplification for each of the amps.

[Firebottle]

What I like particularly in this forum is that differing views are usually said or stated as a humble opinion, and rarely is there acrimony or poo-pooing of others' views.

+1
Most definitely Dennis, but all systems will sound at least 'slightly' different.

[RothwellAudio]

Works only properly with all amps being same manufacturer/model because only this guarantees "same sonic characteristic" of all drivers. Even if SS amps only used -but both different- or valve amps only used but different- (>in most cases they will sound different) you will hear some sonic inconsistency across the frequency range. Matching output levels is not enough. That's why you find in all active systems same amps built inside (they only differ in power output specification) for all drivers -for example ATC active LS- which is almost the same concept but with an active crossover between preamp and amp section.

Slowly, wooly sounding amp for mid/tweeter, great PRAT-sounding amp for the woofer for example -I DO hear sonic mismatch as if 2 different speakers were playing in front of me. IMO

I disagree with this entirely. An amplifier which is powering only a bass driver will have it's sonic character obscured by the fact you're only hearing half the frequency spectrum. Same goes for an amp powering just the tweeters.
The reason why active speakers use all the same amps is because it makes a lot of sense from a manufacturing point of view to make large quantities of one amp type, not have lots of different ones to faff about with.

[jandl100]

I've tried bi-amping with different makes and types of amps on different speakers several times.

It never works for me - it always sounds "wrong" after a short while.
It might be expectation bias, but my subjective impression has been consistent.

[walpurgis]

I've tried bi-amping with different makes and types of amps on different speakers several times.

It never works for me - it always sounds "wrong" after a short while.
It might be expectation bias, but my subjective impression has been consistent.

My experience too.

Even bi-wiring seems a blind alley to me. Never heard any improvement from it.

[anthonyTD]

Tried various combinations of diffrent amps when bi-amping, always came back to one stereo amp [or mono-blocks] doing all frequencies per side.
A...

[Yomanze]

Tried various combinations of diffrent amps when bi-amping, always came back to one stereo amp [or mono-blocks] doing all frequencies per side.
A...

Yep, me too, like Jerry have always found bi-amping to not sound quite right. If I had to describe it, I think bi-amping gives a more 'disjointed' and less 'coherent' sound.