First few class A Watts

How important is it to stay within the first few Watts of an amplifier's performance?

[ptg]

Great explanation !!! Love Class A especially for super efficient speakers....

[johnmarchington]

In my opinion, pure class A operation results in the finest sound quality, although modern, well-designed class D amps are impressing me as well.

[hoobsgroove]

I love that at the end what you do of that secondhand car salesman expression

[mikerolls]

Hey paul its me Mike from Shallow Lake Ontario. You are the teacher and friend i always wanted. Im so glad i found your videos. Speakers are my passion but housing has put me in a position that left me without. I bought and sold many item i miss my focal chorus center channel. And my 7.2 polk setup 😢. And now i have a 2ch focal setup its holding me down for now. But if u have any junk laying around please. Help me out. Be my dad for a day. I love broken things. I can fix anything Paul. I just tied up in my house. As u kno houses are expensive, especially with kids. I love whhat you do. 304 shallow lake Ontario i could uae an amp and sub. Ill pay for shipping. Keep on keeping us listening. Thanks

[DalstonVinyl]

I use a wonderful Musical Fidelity A1 Final Edition, a Tim de Paravicini limited edition 2 box integrated, which is an AB mosfet circuit (totally different to the A1), of about 35-44W, heavily biased into class A operation, the sound definitely hardens up, sounding less sweet and organic and dimensional, when the volume knob passes the 12 o'clock position, but that's DAMN loud in my moderate room with 92db efficient speakers, it's in class A operation for 99%+ of the time. I hope this is a useful comment to someone in our community. Cheers from London, Paul!

[johnshaw]

One of those power consumption meters will tell you how many idle watts and will be showing steady power consumption if you don't push the output into A/B when listening.

[PSA]

I'm not sure how much that comes from what, but bias adjustment is one of the upgrades included from Gordon (ampdoctor UK) for car amps and it's been worth every penny. And those old British Genesis amps are still popular for SQ in their factory spec for a good reason. 😄

[jaimeceularcarranco]

great!!! 90.5db can be considered high efficiency speakers?

[spacemissing]

Paul is spot-on in this one.

You "first" and "second" posters need to get lives.
If you can't say something that connects with the subject of the video,
you are wasting your time AND making yourselves look stupid.

[paulstubbs]

But how smooth is the transition from A to AB?

[a.o.]

What a nice office! Does that lake have a name?

[biketech]

A higher power all class A amp consumes a lot of power relative to the amount of power going to the speaker (load) and runs hot . Amps that switch to class AB above a certain level run cooler, consuming less power than fully class A .Triode single ended tube power amps are class A and act like room heaters as well .

[ford]

it is very common that, for example, the first 20w are class-A and the rest AB.

But Class-A has a very bad sound when the transistors are cold and they have to warm up before the sound is good. class-A is very troublesome with this, much worse than class-AB and class-D where you don't hear as big a difference between cold and hot transistors

[endrizo]

is that a boat office? haa looks that he is sailing on a lake or river

[CarlVanDoren]

Nelson Pass A w Mosfets
Doug Dale class A w BJT 😊

[davidstevens]

Lets not confuse people with high bias class ab with true class a topology.. true class a uses a single output device to push and pull the driver.. class ab uses one trsnsistor to push and another to pull the driver.. ALL CLASS AB amps have a bias circuit that marrys both together.. now amps that are static bias and are slightly gapped between push and pull ..are concidered class b..all class ab amps are adjusted to slightly over lap the conductance..ALL OF THEM. Some brands run high bias ..which means Overlap the two sides more..this makes the amp run hotter but slightly more musical with cleaner midbass..

[joejoejoejoejoejoe]

Just get a cheap 3 watt chip amp board, hook it up and realize a just how little power you are using for normal listening.
Trying 3 watt chip amps totally changed my outlook on hi fi.

[joelowens]

Class A typically purest quality sound but throws off monster heat so not for small rooms. Class A/B can still sound very nice with less heat Nothing perfect all have pro's and con's.

[larrygaines]

I don't like music that I have to beg the amp to roar. I like class d for 100 watts up and ab 500watt for the subs . 8's and 18's for my room. No below 91 db/watt drivers bought drivers

[bobcat]

Class A and Class AB are NOT the same, If you want Class A then get a pure Class A, you WILL NOT get Class A performance from a Class AB amplifier, even at low volume levels. I would be clear about this! Pure Class A's use single ended drivers, Class AB use push-pull drivers.