German Amplifiers

Recently there are quite a lot of interest on German amplifiers owing to some magazine write up. Brands such as Klangfilm, Siemens were recently being chased by "collectors".

I have a brief experience with the Siemens projector amplifiers. The pros for the ampplifiers are very well built & good sound. The cons are that the watts are very small around 5 watts, which work well with high efficient speakers. For those of you who is thinking of jumping into the world of German amplifiers, please take note of the following. The Siemens projectors amplifiers watts are small.

Those bigger Klangflim ones have very huge power (50 watts and above) meaning that unless you have a big house, you may find the amplifiers too BIG for comfort. Talking about BIG, the size of the many V69 models for example are really huge. It will be like having two huge "fish tanks" of amplifiers sitting in your living room. As mentioned by one expert in Hong Kong, these amplifiers were meant for cinema usage, normal home pre amplifiers may not be suitable for some of the power amplifiers. Moreover, look of the amplifiers (being able to see through the capacitors, resistors may not be too appealing to the female Boss at home). Moreover, the costs of these amplifiers are NOT cheap now and the resale values will be questionable as currently it is only limited to the few audiophiles.

I have started with Mcintosh MC240 with a power of 35-40 watts which I think is already good enough for low sensitive speakers such as the LS3/5a (some says that it is the best for LS3/5a). Imagine having German cinema amplifiers with power watts over 100 (we are talking about tube amplifers power watts). The gain in power would indirecly mean the loss in smoothness.

Thus, while it is interesting to play wit the German amplifiers, unlike the Marantz, Mcintosh, Fishers, Quad etc who were meant for home use, one has to think properly before jumping into the black hole of German amplifiers.

If I have excess cash and have a huge living room plus a desire for huge power amplifier, I may try. However, now bearing in mind my Tannoy Speakers and Western Electric 755a speakers with ideal power watts of below 20 watts, I would rather save my money for a Western Electric 124 or 142, or Brooks 10, or Dynatron...all small power watts amplifiers I am afraid.

Some expert says that when one play with power amplifiers, one will start with huge power (such as Mcintosh MC275, Marantz 9) and later to small watts then to single ended....

Let's see how each of us evolve in our hifi journey...but remember the starting point is what kind of music you like and what speakers you like..


For details, please see:

http://klangfilm.free.fr/index.php?lng=0&music=&type=0&frame=1&item=&title=&dir=&num=

http://www.tube-classics.de/TC/Klangfilm/2000amps/2000amps.htm