Importance of the First Watt

[MylesBAstor]

Sounds catchy. Sounds like a great buzz word. Sounds like something that might be of interest in an efficient system.

But really how important is the quality of that first watt???

[mep]

The old saying is that if the first watt sounds likes shit, why do you want a 1000 more of them? Your amp will never sound better than the first watt which in a Class A/B amp will be a Class A watt.

[MylesBAstor]

The old saying is that if the first watt sounds likes shit, why do you want a 1000 more of them? Your amp will never sound better than the first watt which in a Class A/B amp will be a Class A watt.

The first people I remember talking about the quality of the first watt were single-ended tube amplifier designers and owners.

[JDZA]

I have enormous respect fot the first watt because the first watt is where I live.My speakers are enormously efficient so the driving amps never even get to deliver the full first watt. No,this is not as off topic as you think: Because I live in that nether regions everything that happens down there is huge. This is like a magnifying glass of what happens in less efficient systems:

1. Noise: My system is multi amped. I love sound of the 211/845 tube and had my beloved Cary 805s on my midbass horn and was dreaming of and scheming for a WAVAC. Amp directly to compression driver ,114db/W operating 200Hz to 900 Hz I, had noise. A persistant hum filling the room right there where quiet should be. My tech measured the noise at 0.2mV . That is 0.0025W into the 16 ohm load! He totally rebuilt the amp - 0.1mV. Hum still there.Wrote to various other manufacturers. Consensus you will not get a 211 below 0.2mV noise. Amps sold.

Why is this important to you? Because you may not hear that noise because your amp need to deliver more power but noise down there will screw up the sound ,be it in transparency ,a foggy soundstage etc

2.Pushing and pulling: Crossover distortion is all but eliminated in all amps now. Like relay runners ,they are pretty good at the handover but they still need to hand over. If you watch the whole race of power delivery you do not notice the handover but it is still there. But if you only watch the handovers where the pushing transistor/tube hands over to the pulling one it becomes tedious. SE amps, be it SS or Tube do not have handovers.Price you pay in Tube SE design is a huge output transformer is needed because the amp has to operate in class A.

3 Output transformers:When a tiny little boy with little power needs to go through a forest he'll find it hard going and probably come out the other side without a lot of things he went in with. The big powerful sportsman will just crash through the forest and exit less damaged but not as well groomed as when going in . Same with the first little watt vs the full power. Contary to what everyone is saying very high efficiency systems do not like SETs because SETs all (except for very few) have a little noise and that huge forest of an OPT does cause a little veiling and homoginizing of sound down there. Not relevant to the listener with a "normal " system. Maybe not but it is there. If you harm the little guys you are also damaging the big ones.

I can not say how many comments I have seen on the internet about how my system cannot be any good because "he uses those First Watt amplifiers and they are slow and they are of low resolution and they are cheap".But they do less harm than the big names where it really counts -in THE FIRST WATT.

[astrotoy]

My speakers (old Avantgarde Duos) are 103db efficient and I drive them with Cary 2A3 Signature mono blocks. So the first watt is just about all I need, almost all of the time. The 2A3's generate about 3.5w per channel. I got the Avantgardes to take advantage of the intoxicating SE sound, which is most glorious in the first watt. I can hear some tube hiss when I put my ear right up to the treble horn, but 1 foot away, I can't hear anything. There is also no hum at all. For that I credit Art Kelm who installed his Ground One Isolation Transformer system about 6 years ago, including a new circuit with 230V delivered to the isolation transformer and a new ground pole pounded deep into the ground near my home. He does these mostly for sound studios (he was doing Neil Young's home studio at the same time he did my home). It cut the background noise level of my system down to essentially nothing.

Larry

[Rob]

There is also no hum at all. For that I credit Art Kelm who installed his Ground One Isolation Transformer system about 6 years ago

Larry, that sounds interesting. Can you comment further on the Art's work and the xfmr he installed?

[JDZA]

The situation with my 211 amps were different in a number of ways. On Klipschorns at 105db/W they were fine at 114db/W they were not. Secondly the Avantgarde has a high level crossover that acts between amp and speaker, so hum generated by the power amp that usually occur at 50/60 or 110/120 Hz is filtered out and not seen by the drivers driven by the SET. In my situation the crossover occurs before each individual amplifier so the SETs were directly connected to the horn driver meaning the horn received the total noise spectrum generated by the SET.

Replacing that SET with a single ended FET amp(first Watt F3) showed up murkiness in the 300B amps that drove the compression mids and tweeters. Replacing those with faster simpler amplifiers showed up a lack of agility and noise in the amp driving the bass horns so that was repaced by the fast and ultra quiet but dry Mark Levinson ML 531H monos . Compression drivers are extremely fast sounding so I ended up almost over compensating for the slower bass cones with a dryer amp which is very much high power class AB push pull (thus neatly rubbishing everything I wrote before-Jeez).The high-mid amp btw is still a SET but a remarkably quiet 45 based one (the Yamamoto A 08S). The 45 is a close relative of the 2A3.

[JackD201]

It was only when I got amplifiers with digital power output readouts that I realized just how little power we use most of the time. In a large room and at level, with loudspeakers in the low 90s in sensitivity most music was eating up wattage in the 10s. This cemented in my mind being a SET lover myself (I've had and have 2a3 and 300B side projects), that in any system the small important stuff, the nuances, do indeed live in the first watt.

[MylesBAstor]

The old saying is that if the first watt sounds likes shit, why do you want a 1000 more of them? Your amp will never sound better than the first watt which in a Class A/B amp will be a Class A watt.

We have a similar saying in fitness. When you disregard a client's issue (s), all you are doing is adding fitness to dysfunction. Quantity over quality. But when you have (unless you are running super efficient speakers) both, then you are cooking with gas. And I think that is a big difference between amplifiers today and say twenty years ago when the 20 watter in a given manufacturer's line sounded better than their 100 or 200 watter.

But funny thing. I remember going to some of these SE tube amplifier expos in the '90s where 2-3 watt amplifiers were clipping horrendously into 103 dB efficient speakers. And it wasn't the loudness level.

And a great point about those Class A watts.

[MylesBAstor]

Do people have a favorite output tube for their low powered tube amplifiers? 211? 845? 2A3? 300B? Others? Know jazzdoc's buddy produces a lot of these small wattage single ended amplifiers!

[MylesBAstor]

The situation with my 211 amps were different in a number of ways. On Klipschorns at 105db/W they were fine at 114db/W they were not. Secondly the Avantgarde has a high level crossover that acts between amp and speaker, so hum generated by the power amp that usually occur at 50/60 or 110/120 Hz is filtered out and not seen by the drivers driven by the SET. In my situation the crossover occurs before each individual amplifier so the SETs were directly connected to the horn driver meaning the horn received the total noise spectrum generated by the SET.

Replacing that SET with a single ended FET amp(first Watt F3) showed up murkiness in the 300B amps that drove the compression mids and tweeters. Replacing those with faster simpler amplifiers showed up a lack of agility and noise in the amp driving the bass horns so that was repaced by the fast and ultra quiet but dry Mark Levinson ML 531H monos . Compression drivers are extremely fast sounding so I ended up almost over compensating for the slower bass cones with a dryer amp which is very much high power class AB push pull (thus neatly rubbishing everything I wrote before-Jeez).The high-mid amp btw is still a SET but a remarkably quiet 45 based one (the Yamamoto A 08S). The 45 is a close relative of the 2A3.

Interesting point that hadn't thought of when I heard the big Magico horns two and a half years ago. The big Magico horns were very sensitive or finicky to the amplifier used and noise.

[JDZA]

The big Magico has a very similar situation to what I have except that I still have that same problem in the low bass. Interesting that they too chose the First Watt amps for their demonstrating in Munich. Like me they also received a lot of criticism for using such inexpensive amplifiers.

12 Years after instillation I am still discovering new ways to improve my horn system. Magico had a few days in a horrible space but every disappointed visitor just blamed the power amplifiers! Truth is that if one uses so little power over a limited frequency range with no complex crossover between amp and driver, simpler really is better. Many small amplifiers doing simple jobs or one big amp struggling with a difficult load?

[MylesBAstor]

I have enormous respect fot the first watt because the first watt is where I live.My speakers are enormously efficient so the driving amps never even get to deliver the full first watt. No,this is not as off topic as you think: Because I live in that nether regions everything that happens down there is huge. This is like a magnifying glass of what happens in less efficient systems:

1. Noise: My system is multi amped. I love sound of the 211/845 tube and had my beloved Cary 805s on my midbass horn and was dreaming of and scheming for a WAVAC. Amp directly to compression driver ,114db/W operating 200Hz to 900 Hz I, had noise. A persistant hum filling the room right there where quiet should be. My tech measured the noise at 0.2mV . That is 0.0025W into the 16 ohm load! He totally rebuilt the amp - 0.1mV. Hum still there.Wrote to various other manufacturers. Consensus you will not get a 211 below 0.2mV noise. Amps sold.

Why is this important to you? Because you may not hear that noise because your amp need to deliver more power but noise down there will screw up the sound ,be it in transparency ,a foggy soundstage etc

2.Pushing and pulling: Crossover distortion is all but eliminated in all amps now. Like relay runners ,they are pretty good at the handover but they still need to hand over. If you watch the whole race of power delivery you do not notice the handover but it is still there. But if you only watch the handovers where the pushing transistor/tube hands over to the pulling one it becomes tedious. SE amps, be it SS or Tube do not have handovers.Price you pay in Tube SE design is a huge output transformer is needed because the amp has to operate in class A.

3 Output transformers:When a tiny little boy with little power needs to go through a forest he'll find it hard going and probably come out the other side without a lot of things he went in with. The big powerful sportsman will just crash through the forest and exit less damaged but not as well groomed as when going in . Same with the first little watt vs the full power. Contary to what everyone is saying very high efficiency systems do not like SETs because SETs all (except for very few) have a little noise and that huge forest of an OPT does cause a little veiling and homoginizing of sound down there. Not relevant to the listener with a "normal " system. Maybe not but it is there. If you harm the little guys you are also damaging the big ones.

I can not say how many comments I have seen on the internet about how my system cannot be any good because "he uses those First Watt amplifiers and they are slow and they are of low resolution and they are cheap".But they do less harm than the big names where it really counts -in THE FIRST WATT.

I haven't heard the latest Cary 805s but the mid '90s version sounded really great, albeit a touch dark on Quad 63s. The Carys also worked very well for a SE project I did also in the mid-'90s using Watt Puppy 5.1s. And I can understand your hots for the WAVACs. Pretty special amplifier on the right speaker!

You also bring up a point that has been staring me in the face since I got the Magicos. That is, say what you want about tubes in the very lowest octave. But in the mid and upper bass region, there is nothing like a great tube amplifier. The richness, the information, the ultimate tactile feel of the instrument being played! Especially on say a tape like the Janaki String Trio on Yarlung!

[JackD201]

Do people have a favorite output tube for their low powered tube amplifiers? 211? 845? 2A3? 300B? Others? Know jazzdoc's buddy produces a lot of these small wattage single ended amplifiers!

Flea power In this order

45
2a3
300B

Fly power

6c33b
211
845

Gloliath Beetle power

833
T1610

[JackD201]

I've never had the pleasure of hearing these. How do they compare to say, globe 45s or RCA 2a3s?

[GaryB]

Jack,
Never listened to 45s, so can't help you with that comparison. And I will throw in the usual caveat that one can't listen to a tube in isolation - the circuit and operating point have as much impact on the sound as the tube. When I visited Sun Audio in Tokyo, I did compare their VT25 amp to their 2A3 which had exactly the same drivers and similar output transformers. The VT25 was much better than the 2A3. All VT25 tubes are monoplate, which might be why they sound so nice. Monoplate 2A3s are unobtanium.
I also listened to one of their 300B amps - a PSE amp which also sounded quite nice. I liked it better than the 2A3 amp and thought its sound was similar to the VT25 but with more power and at a much higher price. Since I didn't need that much power, I got the VT25.
---Gary

[JackD201]

Thanks Gary, coincidentally I did have the Sun 2a3 at one point.

[astrotoy]

Following up on Art Kelm. Art comes to your home or studio and does a complete electrical and ground analysis. He then proposes a series of tiered solutions, depending on what your goal is and what your budget is. The past three years he was been in LA redoing the famed Capitol Studios, serving as their technical VP.

Here is his website: www.ground1.com You can see his client list is mostly studios and recording artists, but he has a fair number of private residences, including our home. He uses a custom designed transformer and power distribution unit, which we have. He will work with your electrician or recommend one if you don't have one. We had new wiring installed from our panel to our music room - 240V (not 230 as I said in my post) single phase as well as a new ground pole.

Larry

[MylesBAstor]

Just to follow up on Larry's comments. An article on Art's work at Capitol and check out the side bar on the analog mastering room.

http://www.ground1.com/pdf/MIX_mag_04_15_Capitol_Records.pdf

[fcrowder]

Audio Note (UK) uses the 10Y/VT25 as the input stage on the paralleled 300B Balanced Kegons. After quite a bit of tube rolling I settled on some samples built for the US military during WWII.