Passive speakers or studio monitors

If you have to ¨just live with it¨, ¨suck it up¨, whatever, then by all means drop the extra dough. I've lived with these 2 components since '95 and every time I use them I wished there had been available in silver. Hell yeah I'd have paid more for silver.

What styles of music do you listen to ? What's your room size ? House or apartment dweller ? High or moderate volumes These seem nosey questions but believe me, they're strictly audio-related.

 

No internal speaker amplifier is as good as a quality tube amplifier. So, it just depends how high quality audio playback you are seeking vs money spent.

 

If you like tube amps, that is.

 

About 2/3rd's on this forum like some sort of tube amplification and 1/3 prefer SS amplification per poll taken in July 2018..

 

I know; I'm on the SS camp.

 

In fairness, all that indicates are the preferences of those member's who have taken part in the poll.

Which do appear to be very tube centric.

In actuality, I would bet that 90-95 percent of all forum member's only own SS gear.

I highly doubt that most of there have any experience with vacuum tubes.

With regard to the public in general, I think that it is probably even higher than that.

While I am not at all a big fan of hybrid amplifier's, with a tube front end powering a SS power amp section, they might be bringing some amount of tube goodness to an an otherwise SS chain, in that aspect, they serve a purpose. True tube systems will have at least a tube power amp section, IMO.

I have SS amps and have no issues with their sound quality, with the power hungry speakers that I use them with.

I have tube amps and favor them. But, I favor them, because I use them with speaker's that have high sensitivity ratings.

MOST speaker's that are modern design, are voiced to sound their best with SS amplifier's. This is because, that is the type of amplifier, that they will most likely be used with.

I don't really see that much of a point and putting tube amplification on speaker's like this.

I get the impression that too many people are reading forum's like this one and are under the (mistaken) impression, that if they replace their SS amplifier, with a tube amplifier, something magical will happen with their system.

Mostly, it won't.

There are excellent reasons to use tubes and there are excellent reason's to use SS.

 

WISDOM And as usual, providing context that makes sense. You know your stuff, but I bet most people like to watch their tubes glowing while listening to their music, deluding themselves into thinking they are getting better sound only because they switched to tubes.

Properly matched, as in your case, they do magic.

 

I must agree with your post and would add that as much as I like tubes there not necessarily better in all system's.
Not to paint with a broad brush but to make things simpler, a bright sounding speaker may sound better with a softer sounding amp and vice versa. Not to say that all tubes are on the soft side. System synergy is the key regardless of amp technology.

 

Obviously I only have a $2,000 budget but I want sweet sweet audio playback.

 

I think I mentioned earlier I like pop music rock music jazz music a variety of things but I do not like hip hop or country music.

I could definitely go for some Led Zeppelin I can't quit you babe cranked up shaking the walls.

Room is about 12 by 15 that's the space I have to work with I can turn things up pretty loud occasionally but it's a house so I have neighbors that I have to respect but there are times when I can just let loose.

Somebody mentioned in amp earlier in this thread the NAD 389 or something that was at Crutchfield that looks interesting I never clicked on that link I clicked on it that looks like an interesting amp about the same price as a Yamaha but I haven't compared to specs.

I had some tube amps for my headphones tube amps are pretty cool but I think it's complicating things I just want something simple clean sound I don't know if I want to go down the tube route.

 

Tube amps are definitely not for everybody. Also, as @SandAndGlass notes, most modern speakers are NOT tube friendly -- it's really not a question of efficiency, it's a questions of impedance curve, phase angle and current demand. A tube amp is going to like as close to a purely resisitive load as possible, and a load that stays as close to the reflected impedance the tube amp expects to see as possible. Those are not characteristics of most modern speakers -- most have impedances that are all over the place and tend to dip pretty low in the mids and upper bass, where there's already a lot of demand for current and a lot of musical energy. You're going to have to take much greater care matching a tube amp and speaker than a solid state amp and speaker, to avoid higher than designed levels of distortion, frequency balance modifications from the changing speaker load, etc. Plus tube amps require more care and maintenance in terms of changing tubes, maybe biasing tubes, etc. I personally would NEVER recommend to a budding audiophile buying their first systems to start with tube gear.

 

Where are you located? I definitely would recommend if at all possible, not buying anything sound - unheard. Audio shops are few and often gear is indifferently demoed today, but I'd still recommend going out and hearing whatever you can: at shops, at hifi shows, at the homes of other audiophiles when they have get-togethers, etc.

 

My room is 12X13, got 80 wpch, 95.5 db efficiency speakers, and sometimes I have to use all of the amp's juice to get my 83 dbs at 10 feet from the couch. This is especially true with brickwalled recordings and/or recordings with a lot of bottom end. So if you want to shake the walls with tha Zepp, get a powerful amp and efficient speakers.

 

I'm not a big believer in "system synergy," when that means using the coloration of one component to balance the coloration of another, I think if you chase that you can wind up with gear that only sounds good with other specific gear chosen to make up for the deficiencies in the first piece of gear -- but I do think amp/speaker interoperability is going to be a defining characteristic of how a system sounds -- can the amp deliver the current that the speaker load demands without distortion? can it handle the changing load over the whole audio spectrum without resulting frequency response modification? This is going to be especially challenging with high output impedance, low power tube amps and a lot of modern speakers. A higher powered, class A/B, solid state amp that's not current limited (in the specs, see if the power doubles into 4 ohms relative to the power into 8 ohms) is going to be able to drive most speaker loads an average contemporary hifi buyer is going to encounter in today's market. Whether the characteristic sound of the amp is to one's taste or not is another matter, but an amp of that sort will make it a lot easier for a buyer to select speakers, and will deliver more consistent sound from one speaker to another.

You take all those compatibility concerns away with active speakers, and you have the inherent advantages of active crossovers. But it's true, especially at the cheaper end of the active spectrum, you might just get off the shelf Class D amp circuits and electronics parts that aren't necessarily great sounding.

 

Trying to mask a coloration is indeed wrong but most quality components are close to neutral so what some see as coloration may just be a pleasant sonic signature, which all gear has.
Lets keep in mind that many folks may have to make compromise's as they may not be able to go out and replace many pieces of gear to make things right.

 

My buddy has a pair of JBL 306 p powered studio monitors and they have class D amps and them and they sound fantastic.

 

Sounds to me like something's not operating correctly. I have a 30 watt tube amp, I sit 9 feet from 88 dB/m/w speakers, my room is 12.5' X 23' and I can get 85 dB peaks at noon on the volume knob. A 95.5 dB efficient speaker and an 80 wpc amp should be able to deliver 83 dB at 10 feet using no more than about 3-4% of the amp's power.

 

Yeah somethings not right there, with 1 watt at 4', 30 degree offset you should get about 95db with 95db efficient speakers. That works out to 113db at 64 watts.

 

And no active speaker distorts as badly either. You pays your money...

 

Just go for good gear and maybe a demo in a pro audio dealers. KRK, Akai, Yamaha, Mackie, Genelec, and Adam all have good designs for anything from £200 to £800. And more obviously, but the point is the choice is there at the entry level too.

 

Even with tbe amps, there are those with SS rectification and those that have tube rectification.

Rogue amps use SS rectification and have a tighter bass, That, together with the large amount of power that they put out 100-150 Watts, place then firmly in the call of a large SS amplifier and can effectively power speakers that were designed for SS amps to loud powerful dynamics, while perhaps taking off some of the edge that certain SS amps famously produce.

On the other hand, many SS class A/B integrated's are not made with big, heavy power supplies. I have a Peachtree Nova and INova that is rated about 65-Watts (into 8-Ohms) and these fit this case.

I like everything else about these amps and use them as a system source selector, DAC and class "A" preamp. They have both digital and analog inputs. I never was quite satisfied with their power amps section and instead, would use a 72-lb, Emotiva generation one, XPA-2 power amp for the front mains.

Any good tube amplifier is going to have a lot of iron, which means a large power supply and large output transformer' (that SS amplifier's lack) and many SS amps have small power supplies. So, in a case like this, a tube amp may better power a set of modern speakers, better than a modern SS amp, with not so strong of a power supply.

In a case like this, it don't think it has anything really to do with the tubes themselves as the design of of the amplifier.

Many tube amplifier's are just of average power and won't do what a more powerful SS amp can effectively do, power wise.

Once you start getting into a more powerful tube amplifier, like a 100-Watt Cronus Magnum, then the playing field begins to level out and one will work as good as the other.

 

Agreed but many SS amps have huge power supplies, my Mark Levinson 20.6 mono's were a 100 watts each and weighed 100 pounds each, ran hotter that any tubes I've owned by the way.
The Ayre amp I current use in the main system is 120 watts and 65 pounds, good solid state weighs a ton and it's mostly transformers.

 

So true...

Even though my Altec Lansing vintage A7's are not modern day speaker's, all that chervokas says holds true for them too.

All of these factors are in effect with both tube and SS amplifier's.

With tube amplifier's, the effects can be even more so.

For this reason, I do not use Altec Lansing's crossover's, because, other than the fact that I simply never cared for them, the do nothing to keep the impedance constant.

One of the reason's that I use custom crossover's from ALK engineering, is that they maintain a constant impedance load of 8-Ohms back to the amplifier. This does help to control volume level changes that occur at different frequencies, that are due to changes in impedance.

Because all speakers that employ a voice coil in their design are inductor's, as that is what a voice coil is. So no matter what, a speaker's output level, is not going to stay constant across all frequencies, due to these changes in impedance. So, you do what you can.

Well said. For the vast majority of people, for one reason or another, tube amplifier's are simply not their best option.

 

I think this stems from one single main problem.

People read something on the Internet...

I could go on all day with this...

 

Pretty heavy on the tube discussion. On the Yamaha as801 receiver would I be able to run powered monitor studio monitors on that I know it's a place on the back of the receiver to hook up speaker wires for speakers but I'm wondering about powered speakers?