lower power tube amps w/ sashas
- Thread starter rhyno
- Start date
To get the most out of them you need power and more important the amp has to be able to drive 2oms, not many can.
Try to audition it in your room and decide.
Try to audition it in your room and decide.
I use the ARC REF75 (75w/channel) to drive Alexias. Many of my audiophile club buddies have been very impressed and even amazed the amp is only 75 watts. Not sure how much different the load is between Alexia and Sasha. I know with my old Cardas Golden Reference interconnects and Audioquest Gibralter speaker cables the bass was far less defined than I liked. I thought it was possibly the amp/speaker interaction. I upgraded to some Transparent Ref MM2 cables (full loom signal cables) and the bass improved substantially. And I have heard the latest Transparent Gen5 cables, which offered even more improvement (enough so I will upgrade as funds allow). So... I think that, while some tube amps may not handle the impedence dip well on paper, actual results will be system dependent—so don't rule out your tube amp options.
Agree...everything i have read so far indicates the Sashas have a pretty wicked low impedance loading. This is in contrast to, for example, the big Wilson Xs which are quite a benign load. There probably are tube amps that will drive them fine, but certainly real care is required here.
This is a contrary opinion to your desire to go with a tube amp. I tried Nagra VPA (50 watts all pure class A with 845's and 12ax7's) with my Rockports, which while efficient, have a pretty tough dip in impedance (like your wilsons). I've owned Ayre MXR's for ~6 years (replacing BAT VK150SE's) both the Ayre and the BAT are great amps in their own right. I'll tell you...what grabbed me was the Nagra Classic amp. 100w/ch into 8 ohms. Class A up to 18 watts (about ~98% of my listening the meters stay well below 20 watts). The Nagra was especially good on bass control. It's $15,700 USD. Worth checking out...I preferred it to the all Class A and all tube Nagra VPA's, the MXR's and the MXR 20's.
And yes I bought the Nagra Classic Amp. The Ayre MXR's were hard to let go...but I feel like I've improved everywhere except maybe head banging listening levels and effortlessness at those very high volumes...
I've owned WP 6's and WP 8's. And have heard your Sasha's. Very very awesome speaker...the right amp, right placement in a reasonable room...they are VERY hard to beat !
And yes I bought the Nagra Classic Amp. The Ayre MXR's were hard to let go...but I feel like I've improved everywhere except maybe head banging listening levels and effortlessness at those very high volumes...
I've owned WP 6's and WP 8's. And have heard your Sasha's. Very very awesome speaker...the right amp, right placement in a reasonable room...they are VERY hard to beat !
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I called that out in my post above "I feel like I've improved everywhere except maybe head banging listening levels and effortlessness at those very high volumes..." but I don't listen to full symphony's going all out...
Just like the Rockport speakers (at least the Avior but also the Altair remembering having seen their challenging impedance curve on one of these pages), the Sasha is a difficult load effectively.
Not just the fact the impedance is so low is a challenge for amps but the fact that the impedance changes so dramatically is as much a challenge! There is only one way to counter this: sufficient damping factor in combination with current.
And whereas tube amps may have the latter, they normally don't have the prior. Except those tube amps that try really hard to behave as if they were ss, think of CAT JL2 and JL3, VTL siegfried but we are far from SET sound, they do have a tube sound but so do certain ss-designs...
The reason why probably the Nagra Classic works well is because they must have a decent damping factor although I can't find it on the Nagra website just now. Since you don't seem to be listenening to music that needs the last word in dynamic headroom (Mahler-type symphonies, large choral work, full scale organ, etc) their limited power is not much of a problem.
If you use tube amps with lesser power and current, as there are loads in the market place, they will all be able to produce a very nice sound but coloured by the fact they have problems controlling the speaker across the whole frequency range (and this is certainly not necessarily an issue with the bass range, even the midrange can suffer heavily from it whilst the bass range doesn't!) . According to listening preferences and acoustics this might cause an effect that is desired or experienced as pleasing. Watch out, I am speaking only of (certain models of) the Rockport and the Wilson speakers.
I once tested a Voxativ mono amp, a 25-watt 845 tube amp, with the Aviors and the sound was glorious, silky, sweet, real ... If I only listened to girl or boy with a guitar, it would have been my first choice but as soon as you needed more, it was a different story.
Don't know how much the Sasha2 has remedied the impedance challenge of the first Sasha ...
Not just the fact the impedance is so low is a challenge for amps but the fact that the impedance changes so dramatically is as much a challenge! There is only one way to counter this: sufficient damping factor in combination with current.
And whereas tube amps may have the latter, they normally don't have the prior. Except those tube amps that try really hard to behave as if they were ss, think of CAT JL2 and JL3, VTL siegfried but we are far from SET sound, they do have a tube sound but so do certain ss-designs...
The reason why probably the Nagra Classic works well is because they must have a decent damping factor although I can't find it on the Nagra website just now. Since you don't seem to be listenening to music that needs the last word in dynamic headroom (Mahler-type symphonies, large choral work, full scale organ, etc) their limited power is not much of a problem.
If you use tube amps with lesser power and current, as there are loads in the market place, they will all be able to produce a very nice sound but coloured by the fact they have problems controlling the speaker across the whole frequency range (and this is certainly not necessarily an issue with the bass range, even the midrange can suffer heavily from it whilst the bass range doesn't!) . According to listening preferences and acoustics this might cause an effect that is desired or experienced as pleasing. Watch out, I am speaking only of (certain models of) the Rockport and the Wilson speakers.
I once tested a Voxativ mono amp, a 25-watt 845 tube amp, with the Aviors and the sound was glorious, silky, sweet, real ... If I only listened to girl or boy with a guitar, it would have been my first choice but as soon as you needed more, it was a different story.
Don't know how much the Sasha2 has remedied the impedance challenge of the first Sasha ...
both sasha and alexia need more power than they are made out to.
you can use tubes and get agreeable sound, but it's hard to get the control that a substantial amp will bring.
do a demo to see the difference for yourself. the difference will be self-evident.
you can use tubes and get agreeable sound, but it's hard to get the control that a substantial amp will bring.
do a demo to see the difference for yourself. the difference will be self-evident.
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