VTL Amps (1 Viewer)

[Earl J]

Has anybody every heard of this company or own any of their products? It seems that whenever I read about their amps, it's for 2 channel audio only and never for home theater. Are tube amps only good for music and not home theater? Thanks.

 

[chung_sotheby]

Most of the time, tube amps for HT is not the best of combinations. For HT, you need a lot of power (depending on your speakers, of course) to get to reference levels of playback, and also you want to have as much neutrality and clarity as possible. With tube amps, you have to pay 3-10x as much for the same power as solid state amps, and they do not handle dips in ohms very well. Also, tubes generally sound a bit "warmer" than solid state, so they tend to sometimes augment the sound to make the sound seem more "life-like" So, unless you have an incredibly bright system or you can afford to put 7 channel of 200+ watt tube power, then it is best to stay with solid state for HT.
As for VTL, they make really great, but lo-powered, tube amps. VTL stands for Vacuum Tube Logic, if I rememmber correctly.

 

[Alex Prosak]

What Chung said it pretty much right on, you probably don't want to use tubes for HT. VTL does make excellent equipment but I certainly wouldn't say they are low power. They actually make some of the more powerful tubes amps there are. Their amps range from 25 wpc to 1250 wpc.

 

[Scott Oliver]

I will have to disagree with the above to a degree.
Tubes can do Ht well but I would only suggest them for the front two channels. I haven't seen a multi channel tube amp yet, so having three 2 channel tube amps seems a little excessive.
However watts are overrated for a lot of speaker designs if they have a high enough sensitivity and an easy impedance curve. I have powered my fronts with tube amps ranging from 30 to 80 watts and could probably get by with as little as 20 and my speakers are only 89 dB and 4 ohm.
Go to this site and read the article "How much power do you really need?" SMR Home Theatre

 

[Earl J]

Thanks for the information everyone. I recently had the opportunity to demo some of their amps and was pleasantly surprised with their sound versus some solid state amplifiers. Granted this was only for 2 channel music. With DVD-Audio and SACD bringing multi-channel to different heights, I wonder what effect this will have on 2 channel music demand and for the tube amp industry as a whole.

 

[Chu Gai]

Martice posted the following link: http://www.behringer.com/02_products...T1951&lang=eng
which came from this thread
I thought it sounded particularly interesting for those intrigued by the tube sound. Of course such an idea is an anathema to purists of either side, but...

 

[Lee Scoggins]

Tubes can do Ht well but I would only suggest them for the front two channels. I haven't seen a multi channel tube amp yet, so having three 2 channel tube amps seems a little excessive.

Tubes do HT just fine, but you need to have plenty of power which the newer tube amps can easily offer.

The amount of watts is not as important as the current delivery in most cases. This is where measurements can be misleading.

There is an old audio myth that tubes lacks bass and power, but this no longer applies as the old myth about solid state lacking midrange clarity and sounstaging ability is also not true. Good designs of both can sound remarkably good.

I know Luke Manley of VTL and he and his company are good people with good integrity and they make a great product. We used them for playback for a long time in the post-studio work I did in the 90s.

The new VTL has split into two companies, EveAnna Manley makes Manley amps, makers of the world-class Steelhead phono pre-amp and VTL, her brother Luke's company that recently supplied the amps for several Absolute Sound SuperSystems. VTL has been around longer since it was started by their father David who built some real wonderful studio amps to start with. VTL does offer several HT options.

Both companies are highly regarded audiophile firms.