SET the best?

HanaleiMike, take a visit over to the JE Labs website. Question...do you listen to acoustic instruments or a lot of electronic instruments? For the latter, some other kind of amp/speaker combo might be better.

My 300B amp measures flat well below 30hz. 30hz is the lowest range of piano. They also measure beyond the upper limits of my hearing capability. I need to measure my 45 amp (have much smaller, cheaper transformers) and haven't done so yet. I cannot listen to the 45 amp wide open but can listen at a decent level...too much distortion and I'm guessing it is what Atmasphere describes. In another forum JohnK told me minimum 300B for my speakers and he was right...for optimum performance. Thanks JohnK.

Speakers are 100db at one meter. I think I have roughly somewhere between two to four watts to play with before the distortion really starts to kick in and become relevant. Four watts is 106db. I would be inclined to agree with Atmasphere on how much power is required for these sorts of amps. This for live music type levels not quiet listening.

However, this should be more about enjoying the music/sound (overall frequency response throughout the music spectrum) based on how you listen and not getting caught up with the manufacturers' spec chasing of lower and upper bandwidth statistics.

Perhaps a bigger reason SETs are popular is price/performance ratio. Nothing comes close imho.

http://members.myactv.net/~je205d/obsize-vs-freq.jpg

At the risk of appearing petty; I believe the lowest range of the piano is 27.5 Hz.

thanks Unsound...not petty at all

I knew it was close...my 300 B SET measures flat below 27.5Hz at 4 or 5 watts (can't remember exactly)...amazing, eh?

The cutoff frequency of the amp does play a role. Generally speaking, you can hear artifact associated with the cutoff (-3db point) at frequencies up to about 10 times the cutoff frequency. So if the amp starts to roll off at 20Hz, you can hear artifacts up to 200Hz.

The same is true of the HF rolloff- except that now its 1/10th the cutoff frequency. So if the amp rolls off at 20KHz, you will hear artifacts down to 2000Hz.

This is why designers try so hard to get bandwidth!

hey Atmasphere...interesting. i have heard the argument for frequency extension on the upper end. what do you mean by "artifacts"? are these artifacts measured or only heard? please forgive me as I am not an engineer. i'm looking at a square waves and looks pretty good to me. thanks....