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se amp how loud

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A friend of mine has a SE board he has had sitting around for a few years and looks like he is not going to build the amp.
I was thinking of picking it up from him and building the amp. My understanding is the amp puts out 2 watts. I was wondering what sort of volume this is. Course it is dependent on the efficiency of the speakers used. With that in mind does this amp produce a reasonable listening volume.
I know this is an open ended question but I don't know another way to ask it. My present music amp is a 20 watts NAD which is just fine with the speakers I built I never play it past half way so I am not looking for anything killer but would like an opinion from some builders.
Cheers Ron
 
I would get 45's if they produce a reasonable vol. Speakers are Peerless but i built them quite a few years ago, I know this is not helping much..

Sounds like you'll need as much power as possible, so 45's are NOT what you should be looking at. You should probably be looking at 300b's as output tubes. That may not be enough for your speakers thou. People running 300b SET amps are usually running speakers at least in the mid 90's spl, as sort of a ball park.

So Peerless woofers in a vented enclosure? Probably mid 80's db per speaker.

jeff
 
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I love this question as I lost many nights of sleep over it when I first got into single ended amps. So, the answer is you'd be astonished how loud a couple watts are with a SET or SEP. Now, that said, all my speakers are minimum 90db efficient, and my listening rooms are not large. I sit no farther that 10 feet from the system. As well, I have lots of 100+ watt transistor amps, and because of a lack of second order harmonics SETs produce, the SS stuff just sounds dull and less powerful. Human hearing is rather poorly understood, so the best thing to do is hook the SET up and see how you feel. I rarely listen to programming above 2 watts. The MOST important thing is to match speaker impedence well. You might have to go thru a few pairs of speakers before you find that perfect match. Either way, once you hear SET/SEP amps, for me, you can't imagine listening to anything else. YMMV. Cheers!
 
Thanks for the answers to my nebulous question. I think I get it. I can build some speakers once I get the amp built. I don't have very big rooms in my house.
So now it is a matter of getting the board and collecting the parts to make it go, which will be a leap outside my comfort zone which means I will learn something.
Thanks again for every-bodies kindness to help me, this is a wonderful forum.
Cheers Ron.
 
I used my 45 based TSE on my 87 dB Yamaha NS-10M's a lot. It was loud enough to get "turn it down" comments from my wife in another room.

At that time my listening room was 10 X 10 feet with my lab and workbench all stuffed inside. The listening environment was essentially near field with my head about 3 feet from the speakers.

Now my listening room is a 2000 square foot open basement. The TSE feeding the Yamahas doesn't even overcome the background noise from the air handler.....just mentioning another variable that has not been brought up.

Another big concern is your music choice, and how you play it.
 
Yet another possibility is to bi-amp your speakers. Use the solid state amp for the Woofer and use the SET for the mid and tweeter (assuming your speakers are 3 way). The vast amount of power goes into reproducing the bass notes. I did something similar to this with a 45 TSE and a big Parasound 275 watt SS. You’d be surprised how loud that set up is in an 800 sq ft room. If you get hooked, you can build some horn loaded speakers.
 
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