Just finished fine tuning my First Watt F5 clone.

I built it about a year ago out of parts that I had on hand back then, including a power supply reused from another project. The resulting sound was rather disappointing. Now I spent time matching transistors and tuning the feedback network. The amplifier now is very close to the performance described in the original service manual.

I am listening to F5 (the music is Tchaikovsky performed by Wiener Philharmoniker and von Karajan) and realizing that it is so good that if this was my first amplifier, I might not be interested in building anything else.

Update: after a year, this is still the best amplifier.

Update: I purchased the official F5 PCBs from the diyAudio store. I will rebuild the amplifier, hopefully with better FETs and other parts.

Bruno Putzeys posted:

About power ratings, well... Normal "critical listening" levels hover around a long-term average of 85db SPL at the listening position. If we're assuming uncorrelated signals (rather inaccurate assumption but it'll do for the purpose) that is 82dB SPL for each speaker alone. Crudely calculating back from a 2m listening distance to the 1m standard measuring distance that's 88dBSPL, one speaker, one meter. It's not unusual for speakers to have an efficiency of 88dB/1w/1m so 1W is roughly the required amplifier power.

The current crop of unlistenable hypersquashed pop music has a peak to average range of around 4dB. So all it takes to reproduce pop at a reasonable level without clipping is a 4dBW (2.5W) rated amp.
Before the loudness war got into swing (say until the early 90's) peak-to-average ranges up to 14dB could be found in mainstream music. To play Sultans of Swing at the same average level requires an amp rated at 14dBW

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