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Why not tri amping with little 5w single ended amps?


JL Sargent

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colterphoto1 suggested I give this question a try here:

My crazy idea is to use active crossovers to drive 3 stereo 5w amps (like the old Magnavox console amps) into long horn (400 mids) type Cornscalas. So I'm talking a separate channel for each driver. Setting aside the challanges of phase/delay among the drivers, seems like the 15w per channel would be plenty of power to make it work. What about noise? I'm under the impression that noise would not be bad because power is kept at low levels, is that wrong? Any thoughts on this idea appreciated.

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Thats basically it. I want to experiment with horns, active xovers, 15" or bigger woofers on the bottom ported. I want to build the bass bins and then play with the whole thing to see what kind of sound I can get out of it. I like the little tube amps and they seem to be easy for me to find and certainly cheap enough. I do not want it to be real noisy though. I want it have potential for a good sounding system.

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Going active is a great approach, but there are some pitfalls if you're not careful. I would start by using the same amps for every channel unless you wanted to dive into the world of measurements (which might be argued a must as it can be very difficult to ensure proper acoustic summation by ear).

As far as noise, that's a function of the gain of the amp...not so much its power handling.

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I have had pretty good luck with tri-amping (and bi-amping) with home built speaker systems, both with SS or tubes on the bottom. Currently my system is all tubes with SET in the mid-range (300B). The system is designed to maximize tweaking potentials to adjust for an extremely wide variety of vinyl recordings. I have also introduced an Apex 204 aural exciter into the mix along with the three-way electronic crossover. Not sure this all strictly qualifies as "audiophile", but I am and have been quite happy with the results for a few years now. This gives me the maximum tweaking without the usual "tone" controls.

C&S

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