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FWIW, I had the SAM1's for about a week as part of the tour, and posted my impressions as part of an essay here.
i am not sure i would be looking for $3k amps for your sam-1's, aj..
That's because you've never heard them. The M1's, that is... Different strokes for different folks Doug. Me personally, I'm happy with a $400 Yaqin. YMMVcheers,AJ
hi aj!it's not cuz i didn't want to gear them, but you had some more upscale speakers at the caf this past summer. and they were definitely one of the better sounds i heard at that show. but i am w/you - i think there's plenty of excellent reasonably priced tube gear out there. if i were wanting more spendy stuff, based on my experience w/almarro, i would go w/that. still somewhat moderately priced, especially when you consider what it's compared to...best,doug s.
**I once made the mistake of hooking those aforementioned CAF speakers (with a very complex reactance at the time) to some 0.75 watt ( ) SETs....for about 20 seconds. Real horrow show. **
ya, i think for truly "flea power" amps, you need really efficient speakers = like >105db/1w/wm...doug s.
In this case, it wasn't the quantity of power that was the problem, but rather the "signal processing" caused by the lightbulbs' high output impedance. That is to say, one wasn't hearing clipping, one was simply hearing an ear-bleeding frequency imbalance.
yes, i agree that impedance matching is also important. i once had a pair of 14 ohm 97db-efficient speakers; a well respected ~5wpc 4 ohm amp sounded like crap w/them, when other 4-5wpc amps i had sounded superb w/them, thru 8 or 16 ohm taps that they had...still, even w/correct impedance, 3/4 of a watt isn't much for anything except soft listening levels with 86.5db speakers, even when only powering the midrange/treble above 200hz.doug s.
The speaker AJ and I are talking about was probably 10dB more sensitive than that (OEM'ed BMS concentric driver). And the woofer was self-powered.
oops - my bad. if they were like the ones aj had at the caf this past summer, then yes - a good deal more efficient. but, as i said, even 5w isn't enough, per my experience, w/a severe impedance mismatch.doug s.
Power is irrelevant here. Amps with 0.001W or 50kW are both going to be be low-fidelity devices if the amps aren't properly designed (very low output impedance) or the speakers aren't specially designed to cover for the basic design flaws of obsolete amps (i.e. extra passive junk in the crossover circuit to flatten the speakers' impedance as much as possible).
Hey, wow, just logged back into AC after a very long hiatus, and I see that this thread seems to have continued up until relatively recently. I'm sitting in front of my still beloved SAM1s, listening to some Me'shell N'degeocello with very deep bass, and loving it! These things cured me of speaker upgrade-itis the day I got them, and I haven't gotten sick since.
Yeah, mine still make me smile.Since you've been absent for awhile, you may not have heard that AJ discontinued the SAM1 and is working on a new model.
tell us more! doug s.
Other than the pictures AJ has posted on his website, I really don't know anything about the new models. http://soundfieldaudio.net/Coming_Soon.htmlKnowing AJ, I expect they will offer alot for the buck. I'm hoping he will show them at CAF this year.