Alright what do ns10s sound like?

[jamesperrett]

This is the amp I use for my passive speakers, perhaps I should look at the 3B instead?

Take the innards out of the Thomann amp and put a set of Hypex modules in there. This will give you an amp that will give the Bryston a good run for its money. I did this with a Quad 405 and it has improved the sound slightly - although any difference is fairly subtle compared to the difference between NS10s and decent monitors.

 

[drtechno]

I'm not sure what a clean tube amp even is - most seem to thrive on what they do to the sound? I just cannot subscribe to that. Surely, what is needed of an amp is gain and no distortion, or at least as close. An amp that changes the sound can't be helpful, just as in speakers that change the sound can't really be things to judge what is fed into them?

I should be more precise to tell you, that I'm running a tube otl amp. Which I find is more responsive than a solid state amp. Even though its only 50W it sounds like I hooked it up to a 500W solid state amp. I've tried a lot of different amp combinations and I'm impressed how well these 15W home speakers stood up to all of this.

 

[rob aylestone]

You've totally lost me. Responsive? I've never thought that term would be applied to an amp - which has one purpose, to accurately reflect the input, in the output but just louder? I suppose slew rate and rise time are important, but I'm unsure what you mean by responsive? In what sense are you using the term?

 

[TalismanRich]

My Bryston is incredibly responsive... Specwise, it has slew rates of 60V/uS, extremely low noise, non-existent crosstalk, response is -3dB at 1 and 100K. THD and noise is -110dB at full song. It's clean, quiet and it's been reliable as well, having bought it in 1980. I've heard lots of other amps but there is nothing that ever made me think of changing.

I'll reserve my use of tube amps to guitars, where distortion is a "good thing".

 

[drtechno]

My Bryston is incredibly responsive... Specwise, it has slew rates of 60V/uS, extremely low noise, non-existent crosstalk, response is -3dB at 1 and 100K. THD and noise is -110dB at full song. It's clean, quiet and it's been reliable as well, having bought it in 1980. I've heard lots of other amps but there is nothing that ever made me think of changing.

I'll reserve my use of tube amps to guitars, where distortion is a "good thing".

Guitar amps are a different animal than my amp. Bryston amps are good amps and work great too. I didn't want to mention slew rate if this audience wasn't technical, but the slew rate of my OTL amp is about 2KV/uS. I'm used to working with monitors, but I was thinking about making an OTL headphone amp so I can push myself out of the comfort zone to mix with headphones, that I never could get a mix I liked when hearing it afterwards on speakers.

The tube amp is very much a different animal indeed when it doesn't have an output transformer. Guitar amp transformers are the bottom of the barrel when its comes to quality and bandwidth. But they are just a single purpose amp that is more geared towards accentuating the instrument and more of a tuned circuit than a reproduction device. That is why a Mesa sounds like a Mesa and a Fender sound like a Fender. But we can talk guitar amps in another thread if you want.