Some general thoughts on amps for the TQWT and DTQWTs: |
Over the last four decades I've had an endless list of amplifiers, mostly diy stuff based on designs published in magazines and mostly class AB solid state. Linsley Hood's 10 watt class A amp and Nelson Pass' 20 watt class A amps may ring a bell for those old enough. Next some Erno Borbely mos-fet amps were built before "The End" appeared in Danish "High Fidelity" magazine. This amp was developed into the LC Audio range of products and I built most of them. After that I started buying amplifiers and Luxman MQ70 (EL34 valves) was on the shelf for several years until someone brought in some 20 watt PSE 300B mono blocks and my road to aural nirvana took quite a turn as can be seen from my gear pages.
With regard to the DTQWT speaker, I wish I had a wider selection of amps to refer to but I've only had the opportunity to hear these speakers with a good handful of amps like my 8 watts 300B, 20 wpc Audio Mirror mono blocks, Gain Clone (used for CLIO measurements), Rotel RB981 solid state driven by my WOT line stage, 8 wpc 2A3 push-pull design (discontinued) from DiyHifiSupply Hong Kong, 15 wpc T16-OTL from Transcendent, 15 wpc 300B design from TriodeDick/Holland (built by DTQWT customer), 25 wpc amp from Jasmin (Sonata, EL156 valves) and most recently my JungSon JA88D. Amoung these I do not recommend the T16OTL, Rotel and Jasmin. BTW: I also tried a pair of (classic) 30 wpc EF86-ECC83-EL34 PP monoblocks designed by Claus Byrith (Denmark). Despite the use off serious global feed-back the sound was dynamic, smooth and easy - but transparency could have been better. Generally I prefer the valve amps over the solid state with the JungSon as an exception. What I would like to try are a few British amps like Croft, Exposure, Naim, Sugden (e.g. A21) and I'd also like to try some of the Nelson Pass' low-wattage amps to hear how they perform. All these to get more experience on solid state designs. My default amp(s) are the
(PSE) Audio Mirror mono blocks. They don't deliver the
ultimate bass punch but they add a little extra warmth to
my slightly tight sounding Beyma bass drivers I use. Due
to room placement I have minimum room-gain and I rush to
say that my DTQWTs in a smaller room and placed closer to
the corners may sound better in the bass region from
other amps with a more tight bass performance. The TQWT and DTQWT speakers
were designed to offer a speaker alternative to all those
investing in low-wattage SET amps, but somewhat to my
surprise most customers to these kits use solid state
gear. The majority of solid state amps are 50-100 wpc
push-pull class B amps and with all respect they may
offer a decent compromise with regard to price and
performance. To some DTQWT customers there may be more to
extract from your source material by trying a variety of
low-wattage valve/solid state amps where quality has
priority over quantity. It's easy - and cheap - these
days to make a 100-200 wpc solid state amp, but the
general concept of push-pull class B designs has its
shortcomings when it comes to sound quality. To my ears! As mentioned by Ilpo, the DTQWT can also play immensely loud with low distortion, thus an option for potent surround systems, something I hadn't anticipated when I made the speakers. Here some decent solid state gear may beat all the SET amps by a comfortable margin. Despite high efficiency we need quite a few watts to cope with 100-105 dB peak programme material. Pure math comes short here. It doesn't help calculating the watts needed to make 105 dB, we need serious headroom to cope with this kind of application. As you can see I've tried to avoid answering the question on whether the JungSon is a great amt for the DTQWT.....Hmm... give it 20-30 minutes to warm up and it will deliver a midrange transparency probably even more transparent than any of the amps listed. Problem is that the JungSon could run a whole stack of DTQWTs and it's kind of overkill - although at this price it's unbeatable. If the choice is between Jungson and some really good sounding valve amps, it's really a choice between sound because the Jungson sounds distinctively different from (my) valve amps. I'm sure that if I had an audience in for evaluating the Audio Mirror amps and JungSon, the discussion would be on which amp is the most correct because the JungSon may actually be more correct, where the non-feedback SET amps may have something (warmth) the JungSon does not. |