[ManiacSmile]

Here's the thing. I have recently acquired the RKV and still going through the break-in stage. I'm falling in love with the sound of this amp. From my experience with solid state and tube amps, the RKV combines the good sides of both worlds. While the location where I live doesn't allow me to enjoy full scale speaker set up, after getting the RKV I stared thinking about actually building one for the near field listening. Following the link that Joelongwood kindly posted in his reply I wasn't really impressed with the selection (I do understand that it doesn't cover current line-up of all of the high-efficient speakers, though it does give a ballpark of what to look for). That's why I was trying to establish a rough estimate of what to expect from RKV in terms of power into 8 and 4 ohm loads. Maybe it could easily drive some of the Sonus Faber or B&W speakers, rather then Lowther designs.

 

[ServinginEcuador]

Maniac Smile,

I think that the amp will only put out three watts of power no matter what you hook-up to it. In order to use speakers you have to have an Impedancer, and the input side of the impedancer is what presents the load to the amp, and that is a constant load of well over 100ohms. The output of the Impedancer is tapped into 8, 16, 32, and 64 ohm taps. I think the max you can get out of this amp is 3W, regardless of the actual load hooked-up to the Impedancer.

Sorry if this is redundant. Just wanting to make sure you don't think about using low effeciency speakers hooked directly to the RKV headphone jack thinking it will output a lot of wattage. This will most likely kill your tubes is very, very short time and possibly damage the amp. contact Helmut or Jan Meier before trying this.

 

[ManiacSmile]

Quote:

Sorry if this is redundant. Just wanting to make sure you don't think about using low effeciency speakers hooked directly to the RKV headphone jack thinking it will output a lot of wattage. This will most likely kill your tubes is very, very short time and possibly damage the amp. contact Helmut or Jan Meier before trying this

ServinginEcuador,
I did keep in mind that I would need an Impedanzer to run the speakers, I'm just not quite sure about its role in the power>impedance conversion. I mean you can't just neglect the energy conservation law, can you

 

[ddriveman]

Quote:

Originally posted by ManiacSmile ....That's why I was trying to establish a rough estimate of what to expect from RKV in terms of power into 8 and 4 ohm loads. Maybe it could easily drive some of the Sonus Faber or B&W speakers, rather then Lowther designs.

ManiacSmile,

ServinginEcuador is right. The RKV cannot produce more than the 2.5WPC regardless of output impedance. Even though you can use Ohm's law and it says that the RKV should be able to produce more but it assumes that the amp has infinite voltage driving capability, which it does not. Having lived with tube amps, I can safely say that the RKV would not be able to drive Sonus Faber or B&W speakers well. You really need speakers of at least 94dB/1W @ 1M with a nominal impedance load of 8 ohms that does not go below 6 ohms throughout its entire freq range.
Check out this link too:

http://www.welbornelabs.com/recomendspeaks.htm

 

[ServinginEcuador]

Quote:

Originally posted by ManiacSmile ServinginEcuador, I did keep in mind that I would need an Impedanzer to run the speakers, I'm just not quite sure about its role in the power>impedance conversion. I mean you can't just neglect the energy conservation law, can you

True, but: at the full rated power output the amp puts out 60 volts according to the manual. That's probably almost maxed out and anything more might fry it internally.

 

[ManiacSmile]

ddriveman,

Thanks for the link, very informative.

ServinginE,

Quote:

the amp puts out 60 volts according to the manual

Either you had a typo and you meant 60 watts or you looked at something else, because I just checked the manual - it says 80V max. But that doesn't change the meaning of what you said anyway. I didn't look close enough into what Impedanzer does. It's just a transformer with a switchible windings, with the only purpose of impedance matching. While the voltage/current ratio changes, the derivative stays the same - 2,5~3,0 Watts. So probably I will have to go, cool down and stop inventing Perpetuum Mobile

 

[ServinginEcuador]

Quote:

Originally posted by ManiacSmile ServinginE, Either you had a typo and you meant 60 watts or you looked at something else, because I just checked the manual - it says 80V max. But that doesn't change the meaning of what you said anyway. I didn't look close enough into what Impedanzer does. It's just a transformer with a switchible windings, with the only purpose of impedance matching. While the voltage/current ratio changes, the derivative stays the same - 2,5~3,0 Watts. So probably I will have to go, cool down and stop inventing Perpetuum Mobile

Oops, I guess 80v is what the manual says. My memory ain't what it used to be. And no problem on the Impedancer issue. It is kind of weird the way they implemented it, but hey, it works! What more could you ask for. Those taps in the secondary are what the voltage comes across, the primary presents a steady load to the amp's headphone jack. For a transformer it does one incredible job of being as seemless as possible to signal quality.

 

[ManiacSmile]

Ok, ddriveman's link was very helpful (I didn't know Tannoy manufactured high-efficiency speakers) and I narrowed it down to Tannoy and Klipsch. Klipsch looks very appealing especially the Reference series - sensitivity range is 93-102 db@1watt/1meter. The price, the looks, the name – good match.

 

[Thump]

Thanks for starting this thread. I'm a new owner of a RKV with the impedancer as well, and was thinking about getting speakers for this but had doubts you could get anything decent that would work with so little power.

I'll have to investigate it further myself. This would be for the output on my computer system (mostly music with the occassional beep) so I would be sitting quite close to the speakers. The DIY PI's looked interesting at first blush.