SET and Vandersteen 7

[VFan]

Anyone tried Low watt SET with Vandersteen, in particular the 7?  Would like to hear your experience.  I tried a number of push pulls that did not work.  Intuitively I would assume SET does not work but asking just in case.

[Richard Vandersteen]

It is very difficult and inefficient to  make a SET powerful enough to drive the SEVENS to reasonable listening levels.  This is exactly why we designed the M7-HPA and the M5-HPA high-pass amplifiers.  These amps are push push using identical NPN circuits for both the negative and positive strokes kinda.  SET has a unique clarity I think because when the amplifier has to change direction they are not linear.   Push pull tube amps have hysteresis in the magnetics at  0 crossing and push pull solid state amplifiers have nonlinear issues at 0 crossings especially when not using feedback (which has its own problems).  We think our amps sounds the way they do because it behaves exactly the same when the signal goes positive and negative with plenty of power.

RV  

[ctsooner]

Thanks for sharing Richard.  As you know, this question gets asked all the time.  I can tell anyone who wants to know, that once I installed the M5-HPA and took out the Ayre, it was a night and day upgrade.  I've heard many of the uber amps on the Quatro's over the years and nothing was as good as the amps that are made for the speakers.  Like many, I too love a good SET amp, but there aren't any high efficiency speakers I've heard that I could live with for the long haul.  

[VFan]

Thanks RV for the confirmation.  I sort of knew the answer but thought I might get lucky 😄

[Richard Vandersteen]

On 7/20/2021 at 4:27 PM, VFan said:

Anyone tried Low watt SET with Vandersteen, in particular the 7?  Would like to hear your experience.  I tried a number of push pulls that did not work.  Intuitively I would assume SET does not work but asking just in case.

I don't know how lucky having compromised low frequencies, rolled off highs and high second harmonic distortion would be when one spent $60 thousand dollars for speakers to get all of that information with low distortion!  Some think that there is a combination possible that will make great recording sound fantastic with goose bumps and all and lessor recording of great music also sound great but that is against the laws of physics.  Part of the problem for many who have not experimented as much as I have is when they get a new record of music they love and it sounds bad they can become insecure with their choices.  This can put an audio enthusiast into a tail spin where my reaction is always "too bad they didn't record this great music better" and I listen to it anyway because it is great music.  I do believe that music lovers that listen to a wide variety of music need some way of modifying the sound enough to make the experience pleasant without needing to get a low-fi speaker homogenized enough to listen.  Unfortunately then the experience of great recordings will be forever compromised .  Some of our dealers have sold separate tone controls installed into the tape loop of the pre-amp for this very reason.

RV

[ctsooner]

I like controls when implemented properly. Not digital for me though