Quote:
Originally Posted by FreddieFerric
That is an intriguing statement Charles. Can you expound on his theory with a bit more detail? I'm a bit baffled how 450 watts boils down to 50.
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Freddie, excellent question. First of all, I think you made the right decision regarding the 462 vs 1502 unless you had your heart set on the 1502. Why? Because of the problems inherent with tubes as chronicled in the previous comments. Tubes are not as reliable as transistors but transistors can also fail. Any tube amp needs reliable protection circuits and if they don't have them, you are taking a risk.
To answer your specific question. I have always considered a tube watt about 10X a SS watt. A well made tube power amp will not change in sound quality when it approaches clipping and when it clips it does soft clipping as opposed to the hard clipping of a SS amp.
In addition, a SS amp sounds its best when it is loafing and in some amps you get some class A at one or two watts. The Relentless is 100 watts class A but 1,500 watts class AB. So with this monster amp 99% of the time it will be operating in class A.
With a tube amp like the 1502 I think of it as operating in "class A" probably up to 175-200 watts/ch, since Mac always conservatively rates their tube amps.
There are many advantages of tube amps over SS. I personally have never liked them because of their unreliability. I have purchased a pair of 3500 MKII's. However, I will never sell my 1.25KW's for this reason.
However, I consider the 3500 the more powerful of the two amps (3500 MKII vs 1.25KW) as far as sound
quality by a significant margin, since I will have the equivalent of 500 "class A watts". Again, when you read the description of the amp on the website, Mac says "conservatively rated at 350W/ch". My source at Mac says it will do over 500W/ch. The original did 550/ch even though it was rated at 350.
I would never use a tube amp for a sub. These arguments don't apply to subs.
Best
Charles