SDA-2B power handling

evhudsons

I'm in the process of education myself, and I had the same question as the op but in regards to the CRS+. I received a fast answer as usual.

Now I have added a parasound amp and the change in clarity and sound is whopping. You would have to really be half deaf not to hear the clarity that comes out without having to turn it up loud.

Follow the advice here. Add a high quality amp and your SDA's will sing, and sing, and sing. It's a huge difference in sound quality.

I have no idea wtf stoner was talking about. It sounds like he knows a heck of a lot more than me, but I really missed the entire point. I wouldn't want some other newbie like me to read that post and think there isn't much difference between a small wattage amp and a high wattage high current quality amp.

It is one area of this hobby that is not subjective, it is proven fact.

gmcman

sda2mike wrote: »

i think we mighta derailed op's thread

No chance, it's all relative and good, sound info, no pun intended.

stone of tone

F1 nut...........man you are a peach :cheesygrin:

"By the way that was a very interesting conversation between you and F1nut. I am not taking either side on it but you seem to have a good bit of knowledge about the fine art of listening which I am interested in learning about" . Just one of the emails I received.....F1 nut (case).... . You chuckle head. You grasp at straws with your quote responses.......Torii MK III and Leben rule....... . Stone

F1nut

Your lack of a coherent response to my comments simply confirms what I already knew about you. Maybe one day you'll truly have a reference rig, but you've got a long way to go before you'll fit into those big boy pants.

FYI, it's considered extremely bad taste to post anything sent to someone off the forum. Hell, even if I lacked class like you, I still couldn't post what was sent to me about you.

evhudsons

Pm's are private messages, just in case you didn't know. Making them unprivate is not only unseemly, it subjects the rest of us with further unneeded nonsense.

Enough nonsense is posted without having to share dirty laundry.

I know I'm wasting my time but I feel better at least trying to be a good forum member in teaching underclassed forum members some manners. F1, you show great class with some of these donkey hats.

Jethro Tull made a great song that would fit perfectly as a theme here. Thick as a .....Set stone slab cracked due to poor flooring substrate.

stone of tone

Comments like: "Little Boy" & "big boy pants" shows extreme lack of class F1. Someday I'll have a Reference Rig? You truly are that blinded, jaded and unaware? Stone........not Thick as a Brick ev....

dudeinaroom

WOW.....I though the guy wanted to know what the power ratings were on his SDAs? I did not realize this was ad db/watt pissing thread. I see every bodies points. But why not start a new thread, and keep the pissing in pm's so it doesn't take away from the value the thread may have had.

dudeinaroom

okay Mods, why did this show up as a new thread after a week, and I use the new post button like every day?

stone of tone

evhudsons wrote: »

I'm in the process of education myself, and I had the same question as the op but in regards to the CRS+. I received a fast answer as usual.

Now I have added a parasound amp and the change in clarity and sound is whopping. You would have to really be half deaf not to hear the clarity that comes out without having to turn it up loud.

Follow the advice here. Add a high quality amp and your SDA's will sing, and sing, and sing. It's a huge difference in sound quality.

I have no idea wtf stoner was talking about. It sounds like he knows a heck of a lot more than me, but I really missed the entire point. I wouldn't want some other newbie like me to read that post and think there isn't much difference between a small wattage amp and a high wattage high current quality amp.

It is one area of this hobby that is not subjective, it is proven fact.

Sorry to dig this thread up this late. In regards to your last paragraph.....tubes soft clip and do not send the destructive distortion that low power solid state would send to the tweeters alone. I enjoy the SDA 1's and LS 90's with 2 watts/ch to them at an average 76db SPL listening level.....in the nearfield 60 inches away to ears. I have run my LS 90's with my Zen Select for 10.5 years now (see system below) and counting with no harm. I'm now using the SDA 1 without SDA. This speaker is great in just two channel stereo-besting my 90's. I never really cared for high efficiency speakers. This Decware Amp can drive a 6, 4 and 2 ohm load down to a dead short as well.

Now, conversely, SDA sound needs good quality power with current....and to attain higher levels of SPL to of course. See my 2nd system. I am looking forward to getting the XPA-2 at the end of January off of backorder (or February). I plan on upgrading my 1.2's to TL's.....starting with the tweeters in a couple months also.

I will have the best of both worlds: The intimacy/lit from within, of my Pentodes run in Troide, with no negative feedback and even order harmonics (you need to hear it) and the 2nd system.....truly enjoying SDA with the power it needs to create its musicality.
These 1.2's are incredible speakers and I have just scratched the surface with them. I now understand the passion you guys have for SDA.

-Stone of Tone

stone of tone

Further thoughts to my above post:
Now remember when reading this, in no way can the SE84B, C or my Zen Select Amp (SE84CS), power the SDA function. In no way can it power speakers (less efficient/more complex xover) above my LS 90?s or SDA 1?s even in just Stereo. I?m just stating it does what I have bolded in the 2nd paragraph below. No more or no less with mind blowing sonic intimacy at 68 to 76db SPL and without harm to the speakers. It somehow gets through the crossover and agrees with the crossover point of the tweeter to midrange I suspect as well. I am pursuing what I need?..to get my SDA SRS 1.2?s sounding good. However, my Select Amp system as listed brings me great musical pleasure. I enjoy both systems as unorthodox as you might find my Select Amp System.

Let's also indicate that when a solid state output device clips it is actually shutting off and then turning back on again creating DC on the voice coils of your speakers, and causing the speaker to stop momentarily. Severe clipping means not enough air moves over the voice coil and it over heats, the number one cause of blown speakers. This is why it is possible to blow up a 100 watt speaker with a 10 watt solid state amplifier. My 2 watt Select does not do this with tubes. However, keep in mind you can of course turn it up to eventually do harm.


From the Designer:
?In the world of Single Ended Triodes, it's all about the first watt, and the magic that lies there. This is why when used with conventional speakers most SET amps fall short of delivering a good performance. The pairing is not unlike trying to ask your car to start after pouring orange juice into the gas tank instead of gasoline. My solution to this problem was to do things backwards and design an amplifier that put out more power into low impedance than into high impedance's. This approach certainly won't solve all the obstacles of pairing single ended triode amps with speakers, but it will make it possible for most anyone to find out what single ended is all about.

After marketing the Zen Triode for 2 years, 90% of our 250 customers were able to use a Zen amp with their existing speakers. Speakers that were designed for today's solid state power houses. And while I'm sure none of them get LOUD like a big amplifier, I do know that I was successful in letting these people not only hear what single ended triodes were like, but gave them one that sounded better than similar units at ten times the price. That by the way, is what gives me the most pleasure, and why I enjoy my work so much!
When I said I wanted to "Design an amp for the masses", this was what I meant.

HOW DOES IT WORK?
The primary thing that makes the SE84B unique is that it was not designed with a calculator to effect the max power. In other words there was no greed involved when balancing power output against fidelity. A math guy will always match the output transformer's primary impedance against the plate resistance of the output tube. The closer the match, the more power the tube will emit. The bad side to this is that it also will put out more distortion. I can be fairly certain of this because we had to make our own power transformers to come up with the right impedance for our needs. Our custom hand wound air-gapped grain oriented silicon steel output transformers have a primary impedance of 9800 ohms and the EL84 / SV83 output tubes would rather see 1/2 to 1/3 of that. This combined with a single 6 ohm tap gives ideal clipping characteristics on the average speaker load. Lets face it, 8 ohm speakers are often closer to 6 ohm and with a six ohm tap the Zen can drive either 8 or 4 ohm speakers. The clipping characteristics of this design are so graceful that you can't hear when the amp is soft clipping. It takes a hard flat line clip before you can actually hear it.

It is this gracious clipping and lower distortion from the output transformer that makes it hard to give a power rating that means the same thing to everyone. If you were to measure it like a solid state amplifier at .001 % distortion, you would have below a watt. When the engineer measures the amp, it is his interpretation of the wave form on the scope and or the distortion threshold he sets that determines the RMS output. Consumers used to hearing that distortion is a bad thing from large solid state manufactures have been grossly mislead to assume that this would apply also to tube gear. I would guess that most people who listen to a good SET amp, Zen included, are pushing between 5 and 10% distortion and don't know it. Reason: Even order harmonic distortion sounds good, is natural, and preserves if not enhances the harmonics of room acoustics. Odd order harmonic distortion (the type solid state circuits generate when clipping) is the exact opposite. Nothing good or pleasing about it in fact it rather sounds like sandpaper going through a meat grinder. It creates ear fatigue by its very design because nothing God created on this earth that I can find creates odd order harmonic distortion naturally?.

-Stone of Tone

evhudsons

Thanks for the explanation although it's way over my non-amp building knowledge.
Enjoy your new found SDA stereo music.

inspiredsports

I'm so confused (post 41) . . . I thought the answer to this thread revolved around the published power handling capacity of the SDA 2B (arguably, with SDA interconnect connected).

heiney9

Yeah, post #41 has nothing to do with the OP. It's just a bunch of stuff about a low powered tube amp. Why it's there or it's relevance beyond me, we all know a low power tube amp can't really drive SDA's to optimal output. Don't need two posts and 5 paragraphs worth of nonesence to figure that one out.

H9

stone of tone

.....but you can drive the SDA 1 -or- LS90 in Stereo with the Decware Zen Select (ZS) -or- Decware Torii MK 3 for a nice alternative.......very nice quite frankly. Sorry to try and open your minds. Especially from someone that states: "Tubes add soul"! HA! You have not a clue of this other side of tubes.......... .

-Stone

stone of tone

Great review of the Torii MK 3 in Tone magazine 41 and the new Polk you may have noticed in issue 42. -Stone

stone of tone

17,000 plus posts is one years experience 30 times when you whine like you did about post #41. Entertaining. -Stone

evhudsons

Yikes

dudeinaroom

stone of tone wrote: »

17,000 plus posts is one years experience 30 times when you whine like you did about post #41. Entertaining. -Stone

?????? you must be on a different calendar system than the rest of us.

dudeinaroom

stone of tone wrote: »

It doesn't matter if your listening to ten or a hundred watts, the most dynamic range occurs in the first watt of playback. It calculates out to around 30dB of dynamic range in the first watt.

If you are listening at and average of .001 watts and peaking at 1 watt. If you start at .001 watt and go up to 1 watt (actually1.024 watts) you would have 30 db of gain, not dynamic range. You want to see some thing really cool start at .00000000001 watt and keep doubling and see what you get for gain out of the first watt. And if you want to complain about post counts I see something like ten by my quick count in this thread from you with next to no valid information on power handling for SDA2s which correct me if I am wrong is what the point of the OP starting this thread.