mini aleph dynamic enough for 87db 4ohm monitors？

[PreSapian]

i have a chance to purchase a made aleph mini for a fair price. they will be used to drive my statement monitors of Jim Holtz's design from htguide.com. I‘d like to know，the mini aleph being a 10watter，would it have trouble delivering convincing bass to my speakers？will the dynamic be too soft for long engaging listen? and also how does the design compare to its bigger brothers? i've read aleph being compared to a good SET and that to me is all the advertising I need. Truly a legendary reputation indeed...

[h_a]

Well, a lot depends on build quality, particularly dynamic range (humm, grounding).

Otherwise, the Alephs are ideally paired with high sensitivity speakers and/or high impedance speakers. The CCS works quite hard into low impedances and tends to show some more distortion then.

Having said that, you see, there is no real reason not to simply try it

Bigger is better, I guess that's the unofficial DIYAudio-rule.*

* with exceptions like the Firstwatt amps...

[AndrewT]

95dB/W @ 1m 8ohm speakers would be a far better match for a 10W amplifier.
Some would say you need to go to 100dB/W.

That is for the whole frequency range, not just the bass range.

[Floric]

Depends on the listening levels you want to achieve. I run a Mini-J with (approx) 88dB Speakers and a friend of mine uses the Mini-A with Jordan Jx92 TMLs. In both cases sufficient for our needs.

Best regards

Flo

[juma]

Originally Posted by PreSapian

...the mini aleph being a 10watter，would it have trouble delivering convincing bass....

Alephs (mini, 3, 30, 5, 60) generally don't work as well with 4 Ohms speakers as with 8 Ohms variants unless you raise the bias significantly. Also, their bass delivery is not among the best (regardless of speaker's impedance)...

[Russellc]

Originally Posted by juma

Alephs (mini, 3, 30, 5, 60) generally don't work as well with 4 Ohms speakers as with 8 Ohms variants unless you raise the bias significantly. Also, their bass delivery is not among the best (regardless of speaker's impedance)...

juma, how is the mini Aleph bass compared to F-5?I'm building an Aleph eventually, either a mini or a 30 most likely and was just wondering...

Russellc

[PreSapian]

Originally Posted by h_a

Well, a lot depends on build quality, particularly dynamic range (humm, grounding).

Otherwise, the Alephs are ideally paired with high sensitivity speakers and/or high impedance speakers. The CCS works quite hard into low impedances and tends to show some more distortion then.

What could I do to improve the grounding for better dynamic range? Also, would the distortion include even order harmonic ones, too? do the distortions increase proportionally or do odd order ones start dominating?

[h_a]

That depends mostly on how well it is currently implemented.

There are a few things that one can change easily (routing of wires/cables), not so easily (grounding scheme) to pretty unpractical (removing the toroid further away from input/VAS circuitry).

Generally I would recommend to simply hook the amp to your system and if humm is not annoying or louder as you're already used to, then don't worry.

The Alephs being single ended (no cancelation of even order distortions) are dominantly even order (Aleph 0 (5?) might be an exception with its additional stage).

Distortion increases proportionally with power (until the amp clips).

[PreSapian]

pass AM (MINI)3mm×ÏÍ*ÇŽð·âµ¥¶Ë¼×Àà´øƽºâÊäÈëÀ®°È±£»¤¹¦·Å - ÌÔ±¦Íø

how does this board look to you?

the ones I have available to me are with aluminium heat blocks instead of copper ones. I don't know if that's a significant difference or not.

Also this question might be irrelevant to many of you, but it is to me and the air quality of my apt since I'm chemically sensitive. Aleph being class A, would the heat generated from it be sufficient enough to warm up the components to the point where they off-gas their material odors? I'm talking both directly by current passing through them and indirectly through transfer- such as the white wima type caps that look to be too close to the heat block with my untrained eyes. I can imagine them when they get too hot to touch thanks to their transistor neighbors, they start smelling like whatever the cheap quality plastic the Chinese components are made to cut costs with.

Also, does the board look to have too many resistors? Please let me know. Thanks for putting up with my ignorant questions. One of these days I will start studying...

[juma]

Originally Posted by Russellc

juma, how is the mini Aleph bass compared to F-5?I'm building an Aleph eventually, either a mini or a 30 most likely and was just wondering...

Russellc

IME F5 delivers much better performance (and not just in bass department).