The sensitivity of the Arcona 40 is the lowest I have ever seen; 79.6 db/watt!

My Vandersteen Treos are considered very low at 84 db/watt.

I am curious what your experience has been driving them with your current amplifier; which model is it and what wattage is it supposed to put out?

Your speaker is only rated to put out a maximum sound level of 91 db at 1 meter. Even in a small room that is not particularly loud. Most speakers are rated to put out 50 to 100 times as much sound. It is good that your room is small.

Since your speaker puts out 79.6 db at 1 meter with one watt of power, a calculation reveals that you will need only about 12 watts of power to reach the speaker's maximum sound level of 91 db. IT WILL BE VERY EASY TO APPLY TOO MUCH POWER TO THESE SPEAKERS, WHICH WILL CAUSE THEM TO DISTORT!

I wonder if that is what is happening with your current Marantz amplifier. Perhaps you are simply trying to get more sound out of them than they are capable of, and you are blaming the resulting distortion mistakenly on the amplifier.

That means that almost any amplifier rated for 20 watts or more will have all of the power you need, but the amplifier does need to be able to handle the very low impedance of the 40, which goes as low as 2.4 ohms; a difficult load.

The Creek EVO 50 might be one to consider.

Another would be the Arcam A19.

For a phono stage, I suggest the Musical Fidelity V90, which is excellent.

The Arcam has its own phono preamp, but the Creek requires an extra-cost plugin phono preamp board.

The Rogers LS 35/a speakers had sensitivity of around 83 dB/1 Watt but were limited in power handling capability. Such that max power was specified about 24-30 Watts. That is an example of a low sensitivity speaker for which nothing can be done to get more volume out of them.

Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica

Oga wrote:

geoffkait wrote:

The Rogers LS 35/a speakers had sensitivity of around 83 dB/1 Watt but were limited in power handling capability. Such that max power was specified about 24-30 Watts. That is an example of a low sensitivity speaker for which nothing can be done to get more volume out of them.

Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica

Thank you guys for the feedback! Arcam was one of the things I had an eye on. The volume is definitely not what I am looking for. They are by far loud enough. I am after a low distortion and detailing of the sound. Allrighty. I am off to the dealer to get the Arcam for a test... All the best for the weekend from Riga, Latvia!

Good luck getting the right amplifier.

Riga! I was there once...for one day..lol...a cruise ship stopover with a walking tour. It seemed very nice.

Hi Martin (nice name ;-)),

I heard the Arcona 40 by myself and can say that they are very very good for the price! In order to get some deep bass out of the relatively small cabinet, the designer choose to limit its power handling capabilities/sensitivity. If it fits for your room and your ears: great!

I know that Dr. Gauder likes his speakers to be combined with tube amps and also personally I prefer amps without negative feedback and in class A design (I have the Berlina 7 Diamond). If you have the possibility, try a small tube amp. As said above around 20 watts should be enough!

Martin

Oga wrote:

Thank you, Martin!
I'll work on that as well. Despite that tubes >10W/channel are not exactly cheap :) But there are always some options...

The Jolida JD102CRC has 25 watts per channel and Music Direct sells it in the USA for $900. I have no idea whether it is available to you.

The Amazon.de (Germany) website has the Dynavox VR-20 tube amplifier for sale for 425 EURO. The specs I see include no power ratings, but it has two tubes in the output stage so I would assume it has over 10 watts. I know nothing about it at all.

Cayin, which is a Chinese company, makes a line of tube amplifiers which are sold in many countries.