Valve amps, great with Jazz, shit with everything else.

[Marco]

Indeed, and in your room I can understand why... With valve amps, I can't stress enough how important having sufficient 'iron' is (heft, in terms of transformers), *if* you really want the best sound, and be able to reproduce any kind of music convincingly.

Therefore, if you can lift your valve amp, and not visibly grimace or grunt when doing so, then it doesn't have ENOUGH IRON! Simples

Marco.

[AJSki2fly]

At risk of us taking over Mike's thread here is an interesting article https://audioxpress.com/article/diff...hats-the-truth, al though you may already have read it, the test at the bottom is quite interesting as well.

[Lawrence001]

Ah, so it was your Quads... They're a bit different though, in terms of how they're designed and present music. I certainly wouldn't use any box speakers though that were so painfully inefficient.

The efficiency thing though has been hammered home to me recently, simply through going from 87db Ditton XRs, in the downstairs system, to 90db older Dittons.

The HUGE positive effect, in terms of the sound, and therefore my listening pleasure, that 3db has made is quite incredible. I just always prefer having speakers that are easy to drive, as for me with any sort of decent amp, there's no downside.

Marco.

I think the downside of sensitivity comes to speaker designers trying to build small speakers for modern tastes (small rooms or non hifi types who want them to be discrete) with a half decent bass response.

Sent from my HRY-LX1 using Tapatalk

[Marco]

Yeah, but that's the owner's fault for living somewhere like that in the first place, or being a hapless 'WAF pussy'!



Marco.

P.S My 90db 1960s Ditton 15s aren't exactly huge! And you could ably drive them with a 3W SET amp.

[anthonyTD]

I have a single ended design that i have been working on for a couple of years now, all directly coupled,up to 40 watts depending on the devices used, with a flat power bandwidth from a couple of hertz to over 250k, just don't seem to get the time these days to finaly finnish it!

Have you ever designed any solid state amps, Anthony? (probably a stupid question I know).

[Macca]

I think the downside of sensitivity comes to speaker designers trying to build small speakers for modern tastes (small rooms or non hifi types who want them to be discrete) with a half decent bass response.

Sent from my HRY-LX1 using Tapatalk

Yes. It's Hoffman's Iron Law:

Hoffman’s Iron Laws of Speaker Building

1) Bass Extension

2) Efficiency

3) Small Enclosure

The law is that you can only have two of these three attributes in speaker building. Ideally we would want all three, we want speakers with good bass, can play really loud, and are small. Unfortunately we cannot have all these.

[spendorman]

Yeah, but that's the user's fault for living somewhere like that in the first place, or being a hapless 'WAF pussy'!



Marco.

P.S My 90db 1960s Ditton 15s aren't exactly huge! And you could ably drive them with a 3W SET amp.

I thought, but could be wrong, that your Ditton 15's are the XR version, more like late 70's?

[Marco]

I have a single ended design that i have been working on for a couple of years now, all directly coupled,up to 40 watts depending on the devices used, with a flat power bandwidth from a couple of hertz to over 250k, just don't seem to get the time these days to finaly finnish it!

And don't forget your stunning Soulmate preamp, mate, in terms of the question Martin asked you

Marco.

[Marco]

I thought, but could be wrong, that your Ditton 15's are the XR version, more like late 70's?

Yes, that's my other pair, Alex. I've since bought a pair of 1967 originals, with Celestion HF1300 tweeters, etc, see from here onwards: https://theartofsound.net/forum/show...79#post1223379

They blow away the XRs!

I still use an XR as a centre speaker in my home-cinema system to great effect, though.

Marco.

[spendorman]

Yes, that's my other pair, Alex. I've since bought a pair of 1967 originals, with Celestion HF1300 tweeters, etc, see from here onwards: https://theartofsound.net/forum/show...79#post1223379

They blow away the XRs!

Marco.

I have three pairs of the original Ditton 15's, yes, the treble is good (lack of a supertweeter though, so limited very top end response), however, I find the midrange too coloured for my liking. I have two pairs of Ditton 10's, one very old 15 Ohm, pair and a later 8 Ohm pair, find them better in the mid then the 15, same HF1300 tweeter. It should be noted that the Ditton 10, County and Ditton 15 use a cheaper version of the HF1300, smaller magnet than in the Spendor BC1, LS3/6, Export Monitor, B&W DM1, DM2 and DM4.