It will Be a DEEP rabbit hole, i fell in face first while my ass was also on fire. It led to me buying, bartering and trading for thousands of dollars worth of amplifiers, dac’s, cables and freakishly blowing 2 sets of speakers, having to purchase a Pelican case to ship back and forth across the country to my dealer And working hand in hand with Jerry at Falcon to figure out what was going on. I love my own LS3/5A’s very much but they really had a STEEP learning curve and severe break in period.
No, They do no mate With well just any amplifier and It’s NOT about high power It really is about the types of amps and what environment you use them in.
Let me know if you want to know more about my own experiences and likes and dislikes…
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Dang man sounds like quite the epic journey! Definitely curious what amps you’ve used and which you settled on (if you have yet lol)? Also what your current setup is and the configuration?
Idk if you read above but my plan(ish) is near field in a room potentially with subs. Any advice or experiences is always awesome.
also currently in discussions about purchasing an old rogers (late 70’s early 80’s he figures), a stirling v2, or a p3esr special edition (I know its technically not a ls3/5a) so any advice there would be cool too
@donjklassen, My speakers are 15ohms and 83db. When brand new they require a slow prolonged break in period. I had success with a Sugden FPA-4 https://www.sugdenaudio.com/fpa-4-power-amplifier
I have also had success w/ a Line Magnetic 216ia which is just as hard to find.
I have used a Glow audio II GLOW Amp Two Push Pull Tube Amplifier – Glow Audio with success after they were well broken in and once i managed to roll some quality tubes. For near field it works well and is enjoyable but a bit more power output is required and appreciated when run head to head and compared to the other 2 amplifiers. (20-40 watts of quality power seems to be their sweet spot).
The speakers WILL work with many amplifiers, for example my Emotiva BassX but for multiple reasons they don’t sound right, the treble will be off, the midrange sounds anemic and the low end is off some how. If you feed them too much power you run the risk of separating the fine material that covers the tweeter, especially if they have been shipped via air at some point. It took their engineer a few weeks to figure out that quirky weird issue and we proved his theory correct, 2x 
.
I honestly thought because they are 15ohm they were dropping the output of the amplifier by half and along with their low sensitivity they needed more power, NOPE, they just need good class A or tube power to sound right. Their build and design is such that an old school designed amp seems best. That is MY experience and if you go and read some of the reviews on them and pay attention to which amps seem to give reviewers best results you will understand what i mean.
Next comes DAC and source material…ugh, where to begin here. These things will find any crap in your source or bad traits your DAC may have and throw them in you face for some reason. You will be sitting there listening to a song and wonder why it sounds “off” or worse yet hear crackles in the high end or muddied, sloppy mids and wonder what the heck is wrong. Well, guess what, that’s what your DAC and source really sound like…So then you will spend a bunch of money looking for a dac that plays well with them. Now we move onto your source itself, good record player? Probably have no issues. All digital front end? Have fun figuring that one out.
This is a funny little speaker design, it was originally designed to be consistent for the BBC and work with whatever it is the British used back in the early seventies in their studios And in their mobile stations. It scales with your system quality and has limitations. It’s “hard” to drive and requires a bit of finesse and patience to figure out. I can make them play and they will lull you into a state of tranquility, peace and relaxation or they will get on your nerves quickly, it really depends on the combo of kit you use.
I honestly don’t know about the other brands and makes, (Mine are Falcons) but if those manufacturers tried to follow the original design i would NOT recommend these for anyone with a short temper or shallow pockets IMHO. Audition them if you can and pay attention to what they are hooked up to. Read reviews and make sure you know what those folks are using to drive them with when thye are reviewing them and make sure your wallet can handle that. Plenty of other speakers out there at this price point that do not require this much coddling…YMMV and everything i went through Was due to my own lack of experience and Knowledge, it was a steep learning curve for me.
Also, the insides of my speakers, i am intimately familiar with them, read up on the crossovers if you like, to understand the tolerances these things are built to. There is a reason i have pics of the guts though…
Lastly, take a few minutes to read my adventures in this thread: i ate my words and upgraded the whole front-end for these buggers…read my profile for descriptions of kit purchased since then…
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This Vista Audio amp is a great pairing, apparently (Vista Audio Spark 2).
Edit: 390$ ? If it’s this one, Class AB, 20wpc.
The vista spark is a sweet little amp for the money, I would imagine it would be pretty nice with a bbc style monitor
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Yeah, I’d just buy that – otherwise trying different pairings is hell apparently. 
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Keep in mind it’s only 20 watts so you’re looking at a near field setup or music levels on the lighter side.
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I opened the video and read title " An Audiophile Desktop Solut…" and then i started laughing.
Closed the video.
A fantastic audiophile desktop solution. 
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I youtub’d AB is low watt but high current ?
Not sure what you mean. Can you elaborate?
A,B,A/B amps are low on horsepower but high on torque, like a large displacement motor ?
Well ab amps can get up to 300-600 watts per channel
That’s not how it works. Any amp can have any amount of power - it’s a matter of cost. A class A amp can have tons of power but usually doesn’t. This is because it creates a lot of heat. So it requires massive heatsinks and other hardware to dissipate the heat properly. Those materials jack up the price big time - one of the reasons you see crazy prices in the higher end stuff. However, class A is the best sounding.
Class D on the other hand doesn’t generate much heat at all. Hence, high powered amps in small chassis. But class D is not as musically apt as the others. Yet. It’s getting there.
Then there is class A/B which is in between.
When you’re talking about horsepower and torque, you’re talking about voltage and current. Both are needed but to various degrees depending on what you’re driving. Planars require a lot of torque. Dynamic speakers require less so. Both can be had in various ratios depending on the design of a particular amplifier. One note - tubed amps are low torque (current). It’s just the way tubes make power. A hybrid amp will usually use tubes to make voltage and then use solid state devices (class A, A/B, D, H, T) to make current.
The above are good rules of thumb but not set in stone.
An easy way to see if an amp makes a lot of current (torque) is to look at the power difference between 8 ohms and 4 ohms. If power doubles into 4 Ohms, the amp is producing the max current. If 8 ohm power and 4 ohm power are the same, the current is minimal.
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Maybe i shouldve used a welder analogy. or carb vs fuel injection. Sold, im gonna get me one to play with.
A looooot of heat depending on the amp lol, I can prob give myself a tan with some of my class a tube amps
I would say it depends, while my preference is class a, I have heard some excellent class d designs, so I would say it comes down to the amp and not the topology most of the time, but in theory class a is ideal yes sound quality wise
Yes for sure, imo it’s already at the point where they go head to head in the higher end and you are seeing more manufactures take class d amps to higher and higher levels (although they and up being pretty expensive, so this doesn’t account for cost or sound per dollar for a/ab vs d)
That’s why I wrote “these are rules of thumb, not set in stone” lol. You can make a total crap sounding class A amp pretty easily.
I’m actually running class D monoblocks on my 2ch rig. Though there’s likely a Pass class A amp in my future.
At the very high end, unfortunately the prices go bananas not only because of hardware costs but simply because people are willing to pay for having “the best”. Class D has no business costing as much as class A or A/B. The modules are all very simple, available off the shelf to anyone (including you or me) and don’t cost much. And you don’t need the hardware that A and A/B do. People paying a ton for class D are paying for bling.
Missed that lol, and yes there can be poor class a (lots of examples of these)
Noice, I have a first watt f8 on the way, will be curious to see how it stacks up against my j2, the j2 is just an excellent amp (as are most first watt amps)
I think it depends on how high end, like the top of the top of the top yes it does get pretty ridiculous.
If they are just using average hypex or ICE module implementations then that’s kinda a raw deal, but I’ve seen some pretty crazy designs around these modules that would most likely justify their price (going pretty nuts with their power supply or input stages or whatnot bypassing some aspects of the modules, and also I would assume that these more complex implementations do have some r&d behind it). I guess you could think of it in terms of high end dacs, while yes they might use a cheaper chip itself, the rest of the components and the quality of implementation can justify the cost imo
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I’m very interested to hear your thoughts on the f8
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Very cool. I keep thinking about First Watts but they’re so picky about speakers. I prefer amps that have a wider range of synergy.
True, true. I suppose it’s to some degree a personal bias. To me, for most implementations, class D should have a pretty big price advantage. If going for the Nth degree of goodness, then I don’t think anything beats class A so I can’t see the value of crazy expensive D. YMMV of course lol.
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