Whats up with Tube AMP ratings?

Just be prepared to pay a lot more money for the privilege of being able to endlessly tweak your gear by switching tubes.

While it is a privilege to be able to tube roll, it is only the hard to find, NOS or rare/highly sought after tubes that get can get quite expensive. Used tubes show up all the time at incredible discounts. Unless you have something like a Carver Silver9 tube amp with 20 KT-88's [48 tubes total for both mono-blocks], you will not be spending too gawd awful much on standard tubes.

Also be prepared to pay even MORE money for more watts.

Generally this is true but you have to keep in mind that depending on the efficiency of the speaker, 8 watts can provide more than enough power to run you out of the house because it's too loud. Think Klipsch. Another thing is that a 40 watt tube amp can provide a more powerful, clean and authoritative sound than a 300 watt amplifier. On the same system. a couple of years back, an 8 watt Radii tube amp smoked a Carver M4.0t in many aspects of the sound reproduction. The M4.0t was an SS amp rated around 300/325+- watts or so.

It all depends. The efficiency and ohm rating [nominal and realistic] of the speakers as well as the design of the tube amp itself. Many, many factors are involved. With a good match, one doesn't need hundreds or thousands of watts to achieve great sound.

Just like everything else, yes the tubes can drive the speakers, but you will not be playing them very loud else you put the tubes at risk.

Cathy, that is simply not true. I have 80 tube watts that will wake the neighbors up from the grave and make your ears ring in short order if I wanted. Good thing I choose not to do play my music like that though. Although, on occasion, I'll slip up and flat out rock the hell out of the house foundation.

If you are playing the speakers in a small room, you can probably get by with it. But the bigger the room, the more volume needed to fill said room, the more strain on the amp.

That goes true with any amplifier in most cases, efficiency dependent of course.

The same is true for SS amps, the only difference is that a SS amp will more than likely go into protect mode & shut down, where as a tube amp will probably blow a tube.

While I may not be an authority on tubes due to my limited experience with them, I have heard many a tube system play incredibly loud and massively powerful and I have yet to see a tube blow due to loudness. Just with any amplifier, when you start to hear distortion? Turn it down and you won't have any issues.

Deathjester wrote:

I'm starting to respect the elegance of tube amps, and Ive been reading a gathering information on tube amps. Looking on all the various resale sights to see ALL thats out there. But I'm confused on the ratings of these amps. I'm reading claims of people using 20, 30, watt tube amps driving these huge speakers. And tube amps that are $3000.00 and they are only 8-watts

WTH????

Can someone tell me what the difference is? Are there HIGH powered tube amps??

Let me first start off by saying that there are $3000.00 SS amps that have hardly any watts as well. That mainly has to do with the manufacturer, whether they are custom built, one of a kind, built and/or designed by a particular company/person, etc...

So, price aside, I think you are wrapping up the stereo world in watts and confusing that with amps. You can not do that if you expect to understand. They are two completely separate but interdependently related things. There are a multitude of things to consider when building a system. The best thing I can say is to get your learn on on what the difference between a watt, an amphere and an ohm rating is. This will help you to better understand what's going on. Just to be brief and to somewhat answer your question? Tube watts are not at all like SS watts.

One other bit of advice.....do not ever, I repeat, do NOT EVER rely on specifications alone unless you want it to become your worst enemy when it comes to the accurate reproduction of music.

Oh, that too. Thanks George. It must be the heat.