guys,
I got an Opera Consonance Reference 5.5mk2 amp recently. I'm trying to find out what speakers I can get for it.
Currently I have B&W CDM 7NTs which are hooked up on my AV amp, and I also managed to use them very adequately on my mengyue X1 (24W el cheapo tube amp). However, I'm not so sure I can drive them with the 18W 300B tube driven R5.5 amp.
I had some in mind, like the CAV MD-EX3, but they actually don't sound any better than my B&Ws, so they are off the list. I guess some possibilities are HiVi speakers (I thought of the F2.2F), or perhaps the ShengYa LS-210 (also known as Vincent LS-310 in europe). The latter I found some marginal test reports on form Germany. They seem to indicate they are good speakers for modern Solid State stuff, but actually are a lot better on low powered tube amps, which is a statement that surprised me a bit, and I haven't been able to find anything to substantiate that statement. At the moment the LS-310 are my preference IF they can be driven by my amp. Alternatively I could go for Opera Consonance's own speakers, like the M8, M12 baroque, or M12.

Any alternative suggestions would be very welcome!

Oh, my budget is around 20-25k RMB

I can't tell if this is a question or an essay. Considering the vast quantity of technical jargon in your post, I'm guessing that you are the most competent authority on tube amps on this forum.

My advice? Go to a music store, try out a few different speakers, and pick the one that works the best.

You may check in Buy and Sell section of the forum. There loads of ready-be-abandoned shite.
It's better to buy there because probably soon you may re-list it there for sale.

I would go old school for such a small amp. I have a selection at home for office and bedroom setups.

You can get Mission 30i here in Shanghai in quite a few shops. These are may favorite bookself speakers thar can pack a punch. I did have them bounce off the bookself putting around 50w rms playing 'Stairway to Heaven'.

Next a pair of Wharfedale Modus Cubes, I think I got the last pair in Shanghai to add to the pair I already have with me from the UK. Mostly used with a Cambridge Audio Amp of around 30w or my trusted Tandy SA 155!!!! Most people have them down as surround sound speakers, but they are a lot better then that. You could go with the cubes big brothers of Black Diamond 9.0.

If you can find them on ebay Eltax Monitor III may fit your requirements, but the base is difficult to control I find.

Wharfedale and Mission are easy to find here in Shanghai and are perfect for your needs.

WISH THERE WAS A RICHERSOUNDS HERE IN SHANGHAI, its where all my student grant checks use to go when I was at University.

Why not go with the same company's speakers. A large driver with horn seems would probably sound very good.

Opera Consonance not the same as opera?

The difference between 18 watts and 24 watts will result in about 1.5 dB increase in actual sound output, which is barely noticable (doubling the power increases the sound pressure level by 3 dB).

If it is a good quality tube amp, it's worth looking at some nice high-end speakers. The B&Ws you have are already pretty decent. Shenya's are also quite nice. Mission, Wharfdale are decent but not high-end. HiVi and CAV, are, well, HiVi and CAV.

In general the foreign brands of speakers cost more here than in US/Europe due to import duties, VAT, and distribution costs. Some of the local brands are decent, but you have to watch the quality and consistancy.

There is a HiFi show coming up in Shanghai the first weekend in March, you might have fun looking at that. Otherwise, the ads from expats leaving Shanghai, as suggested above, should be a good place to look.

Ah, HiFi show in SHanghai in March? When's that? Any info on that? I'll be up for that one! I missed the Grandprix hifi show in october due to not knowing it was happening.
I've learned CAV is more about bling than about sound. when I tried their MD-EX3's I was unimpressed.
Yes, my B&W's are pretty decent, and I was actually surprised about the detail and sound quality they could reproduce from the amp. But I was told that to be able to hear all details etc on a good recording, the sensitivity would have to be quite high. Higher than my current B&W's.
As for the wharfedales and missions, well, I don't think they are in the same league as my current speakers unless you go for their very best ones, in which case a lot better can be had for the same money.

For those who wonder about opera-consonance, have a look at these websites:
http://www.opera-consonance.com/
http://www.operaudio.com.cn/

They are the same company.

As for the power output of the two amps (18W vs 24W). I don't know how that translates to dB, but I do know the mengyue X1 is a real budget tube amp, whereas the one I got now, is a completely different ballgame and sound is just not comparable.

The show will be at the Pullman Hotel on Fri-Sun, March 4-6 (15 Dapu Lu). I'll post their website if I can find it again.

If you got a higher quality amp with a bit less power, it is a good deal. Like I wrote, to get 3 dB more sound output requires 2 x the power. So if you go from 24 watts to 18, you are losing around 1.5 db, which is not much.

If you are not getting the detail you think you should be, you might try another CD player....a good one with a good analog section can make a difference.

Efficiency is a speaker rating, usually showing something like "86dB". That means that with 1 watt of pink noise input, the speaker will produced 86 dB at 1 meter distance. So, if your amp does 18 watts, you will get about 86 + 13 = 99 dB (double the power 4 times gets you to 16 watts, and you get 3 extra dB per doubling). That 99 dB is at one meter. You'll be sitting further away than that, so you get at least 90dB at your seat. That's a bit weak for a real home theater, but is plenty loud for normal music listening, especially in an apartment.

You'll find most hifi speaker's efficiency is around 84-87 dB, home theater front speakers are usually 90-93dB.

Well, as I use an 18W tube amp, I think it's fair to conclude that whatever speakers I hook up to it, won't be used for home theatre (I use a 100w/ch AV amp for that one)

Also, it's not that I'm not getting the detail I think I should do, if anything, it shows a lot more detail than I heard when running my SACD player via the AV amp. I hear details I never heard before, which is pretty amazing. However, obviously it's possible that there is much more detail to obtain, hence I am considering new speakers for the tube amp, and continue to use my B&W's for my AV installation.

You'll find most hifi speaker's efficiency is around 84-87 dB, home theater front speakers are usually 90-93dB.

I'm a bit surprised by this statement. Generally, for HiFi music listening, people put more demands on their speakers, especially when tube gear gets involved. Usually the characteristics required from home theatre speakers are quite different from those for hifi speakers.
And for same price, I have never seen home cinema speaker systems to have a higher sensitivity than hifi speakers. If this was the case, why not just use home theatre speakers rather than hifi speakers when the home theatre speakers are better for hifi than hifi speakers. Maybe I am missing something, but it doesn't really make much sense to me...

Efficiency is only one of many trade-offs in speaker design. Higher efficiency does not necessarily lead to more detail...for example the speakers in a normal movie theater have 105 dB or more efficiency, and are nowhere near as detailed as what you have.

I believe that your B&W CDM7NT's were packaged and marketed as home theater speakers, with a center channel and surround available. Their efficiency is around 90 dB.

But whether they are marketed for home theater or not, they are very nice for music. Very nice. I bet whatever better speakers you find will cost a lot more. I think you'll get more results more quickly (and more cheaply) by looking at the rest of your audio chain...CD/SACD player, cables, etc. (By the way, one of the best ways to bring out more detail in a good system is to make sure the room is really quiet...it is amazing how much detail gets lost in the background noise.)

Good luck.

Sure, I can believe background noise tends to hide details. Which is possibly why others like high sensitivity speakers, so their low power tube amp can reveal the low level details.
I know mine are nice and I guess I got a bit spoiled by having them for wanting to have something nicer now. If I could get hold of some 804S speakers, that'd be great, though I think they aren't cheap here in Shanghai.
As an alternative I was considering LS-310's from Shengya (in the west sold under the name "vincent"). A German magazine did a comparison between the LS310's and klipsch 83s and tannoy turnberry's, and it scored actually quite well, though still at 3rd place (I need to dig out the link if you want to see it).
However, the big difference is that LS310's cost 4400 euro's in euroland, whereas in China they cost around 10k RMB, which puts it in the same price category as my CDM 7NTs (retailed at 1300GBP at the time). For me THAT would be an interesting comparison! I mean, considering that they should be compared with something in their actual price class rather than the after import price in the EU

I take back what I said before. Apparently everybody on this forum is an expert on tube amps.

Just as a note for Mister happy. What's available in China is much better than Richer Sound. RS is known for shifting rubbish at - for UK- cheap prices. Occasionally you can find a gem at RS, but after having bought my Sony ES AV amp, I never seen anything of that value. They just shift boxes and that's it. Not to mention their lousy customer service. I had to wait 1,5 month for them to ALWAYS forget they had to get a turntable form one shop to the one I was at, even after writing it down 5 times.

Anyway, back to topic, Chinese local stuff can be pretty decent, especially their tube stuff. Ok, sometimes you have to replace some tubes for better ones, and revamp the circuits, but usually not too hard, and then you can get something pretty damn good for peanuts. No way getting that done back in the UK...

As for being experts on tube stuff, it's not me! Otherwise I wouldn't be asking those questions here
And anyway, when people call themselves experts in something, I always crinch and get doomsday feelings

What are the advantages are to using SET amps with high efficiency speakers?

To answer this, lets start with the advantages of a SET amplifier over any other type. A Single Ended Triode is the simplest circuit design there is, using the least number of parts. Typically this is a driver stage coupled to a single output device. Triodes do not require negative feedback, something found in most all push-pull circuits, solid state or tube. Negative feedback is used to lower distortion specs and in the case of solid state devices it is often the only thing keeping the transistors from exploding all over the inside of your amplifier. Feedback a problem?

Aside from the amplifier’s superiority by simplicity, there is a more profound reason for using SET amplifiers. The magic predominately lies in the first watt. By magic I mean inner detail and most of the dynamics. For example, a pair of 96dB speakers playing with one watt of power against the average noise floor in your listening room (55dB) is 40 dB of dynamic range. (96 – 55 = 41 dB) Adding a second watt increases the dynamic range by only 3 dB. For every additional 3 dB you need to double your power. This should clearly illustrate that there is over 10 times the dynamic range in the first watt as there is in the second.

This brings us directly to loudspeakers. A typical loudspeaker today is 86 dB efficient with 1 watt. It also usually has a complex crossover that attempts to keep the frequency response and impedance flat. The crossover alone will usually dissipate a significant portion of the first watt as heat before it even reaches the drivers. To reach the same loudness level as the 96 dB speaker will with 1 watt requires over 8 watts on the 86dB speaker. If we used 2 watts on the 96 dB speaker the other would require 16 watts to keep up. If we used 4 watts on the 96 dB speaker the other would require 32 watts to keep up.

The problem here is resolution. If you can’t hit a listening level with the 1st watt, you’re not likely to hear what’s happening in that 1st watt. For a driver to achieve a high efficiency it’s moving parts must be low in mass. That makes it dramatically faster or more accurate than a speaker with heavier moving parts. If you like inner detail and want to hear all of the textures and layers of a good recording you need fast, efficient and coherent speakers.

The discussion of tube vs. transistors is a debate that has gone on for decades. It is a subject of continuing speculation, postulation and experimentation. The proponents from both camps are committed to the "logic" of their arguments.

There have been attempts to create solid state devices called Field Effect Transistors (FET) that operate more like tubes and less like bipolar transistors. These attempts have been more or less a wash as they are devices that simply sound different from either tubes or bipolars. Of all these devices the MOSFET probably comes closest to replicating the sound of a tube. This points up the fact that in tubes, triodes sound different than pentodes, beam power or transmision type tubes. In solid state, bipolar, MOSFETS and J-FETS all have a distinct sound. The circuits to drive these devices also vary in complexity which will affect the sound quality and cost.

Sorry for wasting your time with so much 'Bollocks'.

This has been typed while listing to Pink Floyd's 'DSOM' held on my PC as a FLAC file, played into my NAD C320 BEE with output via Wharfedale Black Dimonds 9.2 and a Yamaha 45w sub woofer!

If you are my age, have worked in ship building and been to so many Dammed concerts my ears are now deaf and I can't hear the difference between my NAD system and a 500rmb Microlab Multimedia Amplifier!

HAHAHAHHA MR.HAPPY YOU TOOL. MYGOD WHATS WRONG WITH PEOPLE ON THIS FORUM? THEY"RE ALL COMPLETE BUFFOONS. i knew i saw that wring somewhere before.


http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/manufacture/0703/


as for the OP, i'd imagine any speakers with 87db+ sensitivity with a friendly impedance load will suit your amp fine. friendly impedance meaning the curve never dropping below 4ohm. this leaves you open for wide variety of choices. for 25k, or any amount of money, my first recommendation would always be DIY. with your budget you could afford some alnico woofers, accuston midrage and some quality ribbon tweets, along with mundorf caps. the quality of components alone would have you matching up to $20-30k commercial designs. i built my 3 ways for about 10k rmb and yes, it gives speakers 10 times that price a run for their money. if you don't care for the hassle, i'd say aurum cantus might be a safe choice.

StarShapedHole wrote: i knew i saw that wring somewhere before.

Yep, I couldn't be assed to write it myself!

Mister_happy wrote:MYGOD WHATS WRONG WITH PEOPLE ON THIS FORUM? THEY"RE ALL COMPLETE BUFFOONS.

The more expensive and obscure the HIFI system the less the person listens to music. The end point of having the most expensive HIFI is not to listen to music(as that wears the system out) but to own the most expensive system.

My first PHONOGRAPH was bright orange and purchased from Woolworths, it was one of those modern ones with a auto stack to play multiple records one after the other. It played Pinky and Perky ok!

says the guy with the eardrum elasticity of a dock side whore's labia. i doubt you neither have the money to own the most expensive system nor the understanding of the audiophile term 'audio nirvana' to know what the hell you're talking about. you have no credibility here especially not after your pathetic attempt at plagiarism.

I rather suggest some speakers with 90db+ sensitivity e.g. KEF XQ 40 Loudspeakers which are avalable in Shanghai.
If you are satisfied with 87db I might have some older Heco Superior 800 speakers for sale.

I can make a couple of suggestions that should make you quite happy.

Klipsch Heresy III speakers. These have recently had some trully outstanding reviews. They are almost 100db efficient, so believe us when we tell you 7w is more than enough. These are a floor standing speaker in a very traditional design. Full spec: http://www.klipsch.com/na-en/products/h ... fications/.

Speakers: RRP - £1700 UK

If you could get them there: www.zuaudio.com. Excellent speakers...owned by loads of critics of audio. They make kick ass, fun, high end gear that is very high efficiency.

Zu Audio offers both bookshelf and floorstanding units. I myself have Zu Audio Essence speakers, but they are bringing out the Omen Def line as well. The price point on these speakers is also very reasonable. How much do you want to spend and how big is the room?

Hello again KSporry,

here are the contacts for Zu Audio products both on the mainland and in Hong Kong.

Contact for Mainland China is Nelson Fung, nosmallart@hotmail.com

Distributor in Hong Kong is Hit Audio, Contact Arthur- hitaudio@netvigator.com

They can help you with getting information and perhaps auditioning the Zu Audio gear.

Best regards,

RC

Klipsch are available in Shanghai at the address below:

SHANGHAI JAMO AUDIO CO,.LTD
Room 13F-D,9 Joy Tower
No. 9 Zhenning Road, Changning District
Shanghai, Shanghai 200050
China
Phone 86-21-62136655
jamosh@jamo.com.cn
www.jamo.com.cn

As a furniture designer and HiFi freak I can offer to build you a pair of Autographs... That would be a great set-up.
I've made a set of Autograph before back home in Sweden, I am not a big fan of if but damn does it sound good!
Once I arrive to SH and get some gear shipped over I will have a pair of McIntosh 275 tube amps (that I will overhaul and make some minor modifications on) good for a listening session ^_^

ksporry wrote:Just as a note for Mister happy. What's available in China is much better than Richer Sound. RS is known for shifting rubbish at - for UK- cheap prices. Occasionally you can find a gem at RS, but after having bought my Sony ES AV amp, I never seen anything of that value. They just shift boxes and that's it. Not to mention their lousy customer service. I had to wait 1,5 month for them to ALWAYS forget they had to get a turntable form one shop to the one I was at, even after writing it down 5 times.

Anyway, back to topic, Chinese local stuff can be pretty decent, especially their tube stuff. Ok, sometimes you have to replace some tubes for better ones, and revamp the circuits, but usually not too hard, and then you can get something pretty damn good for peanuts. No way getting that done back in the UK...

As for being experts on tube stuff, it's not me! Otherwise I wouldn't be asking those questions here
And anyway, when people call themselves experts in something, I always crinch and get doomsday feelings

May I ask what you chose in the end? As a fellow Ref. 5.5 owner, I'm merely curious....

Also - are you still using the stock tubes (Electro-Harmonix and Shuguang), or have you started substituting NOS and TJ Full Music yet? If you have, what can you recommend?

If you are refering to the amp, it was a reference 5.5.
As for speakers, i got the LS310 shenyas. However, i actually use my b&ws with the amp. Aft i connected the shenyas they just didnt sound that great. Ofcourse hey need o be worked in, so i am using them on my av system. I havent tried them on the amp since, maybe i should...
I did get the lp5.0 afterwards, which is an amazing machine!

You may find the Shengyas just need some serious burning-in!

I'm using Aurum Cantus Leshen Minis (Music Goddess Mini), a newish 3-way floorstander with a ribbon tweeter. Efficiency is only 89dB, but the load is a very easy 8 Ohms (a bit like your B&Ws.....). 18 single-ended Watts are more than enough for large-scale symphonic music!

When I first got the ACs, I nearly sent them back because I thought they were faulty! Harsh, screechy treble and no bass whatsoever - totally unlike the demonstrators in the shop. I then read that ACs are notoriously poor prior to burn-in, and decided to persevere. Three months later, they began to sound OK. Six months later, they were very impressive (and they began to move away from the wall, further into the room). I am now extremely satisfied with the result. Maybe the same is true of your Shengyas. I have heard that in general, Chinese manufacturers don't bother to break in or even soak-test products for the domestic market - it's cheaper to leave the customers to do this!

BTW - do you find that the bias voltage on your output tubes drops a little on warm-up (about 1-2mm on the uncalibrated meter, after about 2 hours)?

I usually don't check the bias unless I feel there is an actual need to do so. I may do that this time round because I recently moved apartments, so something may have gone wrong

Well, had my LS310's for a year or so now, and they have had plenty time to get exercised. I now hooked them up to my opera tube amp, and man, they sound real good. I mean REAL good! they definitely compete with my B&W's! Although probably a bit too close to the wall as the bass is a bit too strong.
The bass is controlled though. Tight and accurate. Lots of authority. The highs seem clean to me, certainly not bright. In fact, come to think of it, I have so little to say that they MUST be decent... :p