Quote:
Originally Posted by BearCityUSA
Dennis has been pushing his new Proac DT8s with the 45s he has been selling of late and is very excited by the pairing. He tends to listen at moderate levels and unless he has changed his equipment he has a lp-3a pushing them 45s into the DT8s which does push harder than the 27a. They are listed at 90 db @... but that will fool you. They are driven very well with tube amps. Their listing of 20W min to drive them is based on ss amps. I have been pushing my pair with 6f6g @ 4W/ch and am very happy. Albeit not to concert levels but much louder than my wife will accept.
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That is an interesting pairing with a 45 amp. Not only does 90db at 4 ohms not sound like a great candidate, ProAc towers have typically measured at less than spec on sensitivity. Their D28 tower was spec'ed at 88.5db and measured at 84.6. I believe their earlier D25 tower measured even lower. Their Response 1S monitor measured at 85db. So they have traditionally been a low efficiency speaker.
I've listened to a couple of ProAcs and generally liked them. Nice smooth sound.
Another British lower efficiency speaker manufacturer is Harbeth. Their speakers sound so clean and undistorted. But they LOVE power. Take a look at this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRMR9JZ1m0s
Note that the Harbeth 40.1 featured in the video, drawing up to 750w, has been measured at 84.5db. By comparison a 100db speaker would only need 22 watts to reach the same volume level.
Right now I am powering my Von Schweikert towers (92db) with my little Inspire EL84 amp (4 wpc). I hadn't tried this combination since moving into a much smaller listening space (600sf down to 230sf). As long as I keep volume levels reasonable and don't drive deep bass levels too hard, they sound pretty good. Vocals and midrange very nice. Maybe I'll stick with this combo for a few days to see how it wears on me.