AudioCircle
Industry Circles => Spatial Audio => Topic started by: BigRon on 2 Mar 2023, 05:00 am
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i have Spatial Audio M3TS. does anyone use 300B SE amps with them? What brand. My name is Ron and I,m curious about the different sounds of various tubes.
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i have Spatial Audio M3TS. does anyone use 300B SE amps with them? What brand. My name is Ron and I,m curious about the different sounds of various tubes.
Welcome top AC :thumb:
I will move this topic to the Spatial Circle for your convenience.
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Welcome!
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Welcome Ron,
I have the m3 turbo s and tried to have them running on a PSVANE TC-3 300b amp on the 4ohms taps, this is a budget but decent amp. Was plenty loud but couldn't do the spatial bass any justice and the sealed sub I had wouldn't blend.
I eventually bought a Line Magnetic 508ia (805 tubes), this is a beefy 48watt set with selectable negative feedback and can easily drive the speakers while retaining some of the SET magic - some of it, I would say the 300b was overall more transparent and flashier on voices but then I didn't upgrade the 300b and 805 on the line magnetic... with the line magnetic bass and dynamics are comparable to my Icepower 1200as.
I also tried a budget push pull, the Willsenton R8 and same story bass and dynamics had nothing missing but I didn't like the amp at all compared to the 300b amp, the 508ia is a good compromise - definitely closer to the PSVANE SET then the Willsenton (btw Willsenton have a 508 slightly cheaper then LM).
In insight I would probably got one of the LM 845 amps since the volume on the 508ia never gets past 12 I think the 845 should yeld a more refined sound. If I was in US, instead of trying so many amps I would have upgraded the speakers and spent less money by keeping the 300b.
The thing is all other spatial speakers, including the m3 triode master would have a better time with low watt SET amps. With the turbo s you can really tell what's missing in the bass department by simply attaching some random class d amp.
PS ymmv with higher quality 300b amps. I wrote to line magnetic and they actually said their LM-210ia 300b top of the line amp would have no proble with a difficult drive - hard to say if that's true or just marketing, but quality of transformers definitely plays a role in current drive.