tube amp Q's and advice

[twisted]

hey guys, im thinking about trying out a tube amp in my truck.
i have no experience with tubies so if anybody can answer a couple q's

1st will vibration from a automotive environment cause tube related distortion?

2nd can a tube amp effectivly drive a small say 10" sub?

i am thinking about the Helix e40 esprit amp to run my front stage and sub

here are the front stage im going to use
https://www.madisound.com/store/product ... ts_id=1613
https://www.madisound.com/store/product ... cts_id=633

i will be using the passives to my Q series quart comps with them.

then for a sub i am thinking of using this
https://www.madisound.com/store/product ... ts_id=8999

[dwnrodeo]

I haven't heard the Seas H1397 tweeter, but I have the H1396 which is the same but in a textile dome and it is already bright. The aluminum version might be even worse, but this is just speculation. They sound great though when attenuated properly.

[stipud]

Helix gear... gotta love it. Best sounding amps i've heard. No experience with their tubes, but I doubt Fischer would cut corners. Their engineering is top notch! Generally the vibration is not too big of an issue, though I wouldn't mount it to the sub box.

Whether it can drive a sub or not depends on the power output, not if it is a tube. From the E40 ratings, it looks like it does 220w bridged. On music this will have quite a bit of headroom, just like PG amps. I'd imagine it would sound comparable to a Ti500.4 running the whole system, just like I have it now. Definitely no complaints from me! Well balanced setup, just enough bass. Nice clean all-rounder!

My only concern with your setup is using the Q-series passives. If you intend to do that, you need to make damn sure the driver impedances are nearly identical, or the crossover frequencies will get messed up. The other thought is if the Q-series passives have notch filtration to make up for resonance frequencies in the Q-series drivers. Generally this would not sound great with mismatched speakers. I probably recommend if you do decide to do a passive setup, that you get Madisound to build you a custom crossover for it.

[ttocs]

tubes sensativity is the biggest problem. They do not deal well with extreme changes in temp nor vibrations which a car is good for both. As cool as they are I would not expect it to last more then a few years personally.

[twisted]

Helix gear... gotta love it. Best sounding amps i've heard. No experience with their tubes, but I doubt Fischer would cut corners. Their engineering is top notch! Generally the vibration is not too big of an issue, though I wouldn't mount it to the sub box.

Whether it can drive a sub or not depends on the power output, not if it is a tube. From the E40 ratings, it looks like it does 220w bridged. On music this will have quite a bit of headroom, just like PG amps. I'd imagine it would sound comparable to a Ti500.4 running the whole system, just like I have it now. Definitely no complaints from me! Well balanced setup, just enough bass. Nice clean all-rounder!

My only concern with your setup is using the Q-series passives. If you intend to do that, you need to make damn sure the driver impedances are nearly identical, or the crossover frequencies will get messed up. The other thought is if the Q-series passives have notch filtration to make up for resonance frequencies in the Q-series drivers. Generally this would not sound great with mismatched speakers. I probably recommend if you do decide to do a passive setup, that you get Madisound to build you a custom crossover for it.

it does have the power output i will need to drive the sub, just wondering if it being a tube amp if it would have characteristics that wouldnt allow it to drive a sub.

the reason ti chose the drivers i did is they match the parameters pretty closely to the quarts. i may take your advice on having madisound make the x-overs though.

the reason i wanted to try a tube amp is everything i hear about how warm and clean they are. thought i give it a listen.

the only downfall to this amp is the x-over does not do low pass only high pass at either 40 or 200 htz selections. so i will have to use a external x-over for the sub which isnt a problem at all.

here is a link to a reveiw about this amp
http://www.audiotec-fischer.com/fileadm ... lation.pdf

[ttocs]

you understand that the warmth that the experts describe, is also called noise by other experts right?

[stipud]

According to that article, the amp has a tube preamp but a regular transistor output. So you will have some smaller, more reliable tubes, but it won't be a real "tube amp", which uses tubes on the output stage (far less reliable). Based on that, you would probably get similar results by using a tube line driver, for example. Now I wonder if they are still using T03 transistors... knowing Helix, that is probably the case. If so, that would be a pretty sweet sounding amplifier. Their non-tube amps are phenomenal sounding as is.

The "warm" sound used to describe tube amps is that they generally react slower than transistor amps, so a sharp waveform is dulled out a bit. Generally this makes it easier to listen to at high volumes, but it is by definition less accurate. I think tubes make a lot of sense during production and recording, but are less important in reproduction. Tube guitar amps are great because you don't want a ton of painful distortion; smoothing out the peaks here makes sense. If you are playing back a tube-distorted guitar recording over a tube speaker you will be smoothing it out even further. At a certain point you loose too much of the original recording, but with just a tube preamp I think it will sound just fine.

[The Golden One]

tube amps can be less reliable than transistor amp's especialy in a car i got a planet audio tube amp from my brother maybe because of this i know he had to send it off few times. and when i got it from him one of the tube's was bad and now i dont think it works anymore. but my zx450 amp that sound's close to the same has been trough hell and back and still runs strong the defining moment is when it blew my friends volfenhag 15 and he thought it was my amp but no his voice coils were toast and my amp is fine. i guess 1500 watts of volfenhag cant hold to 500 watts of phoenix gold.

[twisted]

tube amps can be less reliable than transistor amp's especialy in a car i got a planet audio tube amp from my brother maybe because of this i know he had to send it off few times. and when i got it from him one of the tube's was bad and now i dont think it works anymore. but my zx450 amp that sound's close to the same has been trough hell and back and still runs strong.

and this is 1 of my concerns about running a tube amo in my truck, it rides pretty rough! its lifted 6" and has 37's on it.

[twisted]

According to that article, the amp has a tube preamp but a regular transistor output. So you will have some smaller, more reliable tubes, but it won't be a real "tube amp", which uses tubes on the output stage (far less reliable). Based on that, you would probably get similar results by using a tube line driver, for example. Now I wonder if they are still using T03 transistors... knowing Helix, that is probably the case. If so, that would be a pretty sweet sounding amplifier. Their non-tube amps are phenomenal sounding as is.

The "warm" sound used to describe tube amps is that they generally react slower than transistor amps, so a sharp waveform is dulled out a bit. Generally this makes it easier to listen to at high volumes, but it is by definition less accurate. I think tubes make a lot of sense during production and recording, but are less important in reproduction. Tube guitar amps are great because you don't want a ton of painful distortion; smoothing out the peaks here makes sense. If you are playing back a tube-distorted guitar recording over a tube speaker you will be smoothing it out even further. At a certain point you loose too much of the original recording, but with just a tube preamp I think it will sound just fine.

thank you for that.....as ive never messed with tube amps before, i wanted more info on them.
ive always been intruiged(sp?) by them but have never even heard 1.

maybe i should stick to the good ole tried and true

[twisted]

I would love to try a new Ti800.4 but its not in the finances