On Sat, 03 Jan 2004 22:11:11 +0000, Roy wrote:


"Form@C" wrote in message
news
On Sat, 03 Jan 2004 15:47:40 +0000, Fish wrote:

I'm moving to a smaller house soon and alas my present audio stuff
will need changing for a smaller, more neighbour-friendly set-up.

At present I have a Bryston pre/power combo (250-watter) and a pair of
large Dynaudio floorstanders. Nothing-special CD-player as imho
cd-players
are nothing special.


Sheesh - 250W is enough to cook on.... :-)

No, barely adequate.


Have a look at any mid-price, fairly sensitive, half-decent speakers &
couple them with a little pure class A amp. Valves are nice... (you
could even build your own! I've just built a MOSFET headphone amp that
would scale up quite easily. I bet it only cost me £30 or so if you
include the bits from the "scrap box".) You may be surprised at how
little power you really need; most people can get away with about 3W to
5W per channel under real-life surroundings.

During the "average" situation maybe. Lets say a symphony orchestra
burbling away steadily. Then comes the climax. One or two huge peak
demands. Maybe several hundred watts. It is the 5W valve amp's inability
to cope with peak requirements without distortion which is it's weakness.


But in this case the OP wants a more neighbour-friendly system... :-) We
arn't allowed to aim at full concert-hall volume here! In any case, how
close would you be sitting to the orchestra to reach the dB level for
"several hundred watts" *at your seat*? Remember to take the sqrt of the
power each time you double the distance back. You tend to sit far closer
to speakers than you do to the orchestra in a concert hall. Try it. Use a
*good* low power amp and sensitive speakers. It's no use turning down a
100-200W monster amp because you arn't running them at their best. They
will be set up, probably anyway, to sound best at about 25-50% of full
output.


Remember that to double the volume you have
to square the power, so 250W is about twice the volume of a 25W amp,
which in turn is about twice the volume of a 5W amp! The more sensitive
your speakers are, the better.


No. Highly efficient speakers are generally less accurate than "lowish"
efficiency speakers. They tend to become unlinear at high outputs.


He almost certainly won't be using high outputs (or he'll be wearing
headphones!). Generally the speakers, if fairly efficient, will be working
toward the bottom end of their range. It is hard to find even a very high
efficiency speaker that maxes out at 5W! I doubt if he has room for decent
horns...

Bass shouldn't be a problem. He hasn't to produce too much simply because
that is the thing that makes for neighbour-*unfriendly* systems. He is
going to have to learn to live with less, but cleanly defined, bass. I
would look at medium-large shelf-mounting or small floor-standing
sealed-box designs, unless the OP can get to listen to a range of ported
types *in his own home*. Shop demos are notoriously unreliable and
sealed-boxes tend to be happier under a wider range of circumstances (its
not easy to find efficient sealed boxes though, but size helps).

--
Mick
http://www.nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini information
Also at http://www.mixtel.co.uk where the collection started.
Currently deserting M$ for linux... :-)