Earlier the comment was made:
Quote:I've never heard a SET design with my Cornwalls, and I wonder how the sound would differ with that design from what I have now, which is a push pull type amp.
The differences from biggest to least are as follows:
1) Negative Feedback. A SET will not need or use it, at least not a Decware. Negative feedback smears the sound, destroys super depth in the sound stage, which is the most noticeable part if you have a real listening room because the amps with negative feedback will have a soundstage that doesn't go very far behind the speakers. On the other hand the amp without negative feedback can go back as far as 30 feet behind the speakers.
2) Class A operation with one less stage. SET runs in class A for it's entire power band. It is a single tube doing everything so it never shuts off. Because it is a single tube it does not need a phase-splitter (the additional stage) so there are less parts in the signal path.
Push pull amps are almost always set up as pentodes because the whole idea of push-pull is to get some power. Pentodes are not linear. They require lots of negative feedback to force them to become linear unless cleverly designed by Decware which is the exception not the norm.
What does this mean to the sound - With SET, especial ours, you will hear deeper into the music, it will become more dimensional, have more layers.
Layers in a sound stage are a lot like bits in a recording. CD's have 16 bits where the least-significant 4 bits are discarded from the 20 bit masters. Negative feedback is like this. It simply kills (smears) the ambience that is in those 4 bits so you don't hear any real difference between the two. That said, when you take an amplifier with only two stages, one coupling capacitor, and two resistors with no negative feedback and use a 20 bit master -- you will hear those layers with the complete signature of the recording space
in tact. If you're like me, the first time you experience this you get almost pissed, feeling like you've been getting robbed all this time.
So using these examples, worse case you will hear better liquidity, less smear, more openness. Best case you might see God. Your room, speakers, wires, source and ears combine to create potentially hundreds of handicaps that themselves smear the sound as we only hear it get as good as the weakest link in that long complicated chain.
This is why the difference on the street between the two amp topologies is minimized or missed altogether. Many listen to 16 bit digital, in their home with no room treatments and have the speakers and listening chair where they look good instead of where they sound best. Also, if they're set up for push-pull that often means the speakers need some power. Then they try SET and find it lacking in grunt... which all combine to formulate a lot of the consensus on the internet which is never actually... spot on.
The Klipsch Cornwall are actually well suited to SET amplification. That's what Paul Klipsch used as his own amplifier during the development of the entire original Klipsch speaker line. His was 4 watts. He called 100 watt solid state amplifiers, stoves.
Steve