Anyone has a reference system where amplification is SS ?

ahha, Amir did load your lips. 20 year old hifi history. not quite what happened many many years ago. Amir drags this out from time to time. sigh.

is that the best you can do? you need to be a better troll. anything original from you yourself?

I am naive to think that all people can train their ears in acoustics ...Some are ideologically deaf and need double blind test to say anything ...

Now mocking someone about an alleged failed blind test is the last argument it seems ...😁

I hate ad hominem attacks on credibility ... With or without blind test ...

agon needs the ignore button more than ever… don’t water the wretched soul…. or troll…. ignored thus, they blow away like tumbleweeds, gather together in misery hiding from the wind….

“ahha, Amir did load your lips.”

hardly. I am one of the most hated people on ASR. I call them on their BS as well as your kind of BS. Speaking of Amir, I call him out all the time on his B.S. In fact I did so on your behalf! Remember when he reported on ASR that your system was mediocre? I think he gave it a 4 on a scale of 1-10? Remember that? I called him out on that. He was being a dick to you and a total hypocrite. He complained that the levels were too low. I pointed out to him that all he had to do was speak the **** up and have you turn up the volume. Instead he based his evaluation on an easily solvable issue, ignored Fletcher Munson curves and ignored the basic scientific principle of his own bias effects. I shredded him for that..

You are welcome.

”20 year old hifi history.”

so 20 years ago you couldn’t tell the difference between your turntable and a digital copy but now now you can? What has changed in 20 years that would negate that test?

”not quite what happened many many years ago.”

it is a exactly what happened. It was documented on Audio Asylum. The archives don’t lie.

“is that the best you can do? you need to be a better troll. anything original from you yourself?”

do I need to do better? We can always do some more DBTs using your gear at your home with your choice of source material. I look forward to reading your excuses for not doing so. You already know how it will work out for you having been through it once. 

It’s funny, by the looks of it Amir really got under your skin. Ironically I really get under his skin when I call him on his BS

“I am naive to think that all people can train their ears in acoustics ...Some are ideologically deaf and need double blind test to say anything ...”

I think you are being a bit rough on Mike here. No amount of training can change the human thresholds of audibility. Mike wasn’t able to tell the difference between his turntable and a digital copy because there were no audible differences

“Now mocking someone about an allegedfailed blind test is the last argument it seems ...😁”

Reminding someone of their own experience with controlled listening tests is not mocking them. Mike made the unwise choice to make this about status and ego . There is nothing “alleged” about this particular test. It is well documented on Audio Asylum. Including Mike’s concession that he could not distinguish between his turntable and a digital copy. Again no shame in not hearing what is not audible.

“I hate ad hominem attacks on credibility ... With or without blind test ...”

so do I. Mike should know better than to just label people and dismiss them based on the label he gave them. 

The aural memory and the attention focus are heavily contextual dependant ...

Out of my own acoustic created environment i know for sure that i am more prone to be confused ...Even stress modify the results ..

It is why blind test has a meaning statistically but not so much in an artificial setting in an individual case ... And observe that the room acoustic of someone is not the acoustic theater where the test is done doubly blinded ruled by other people .. And our acoustic perception are acoustic dependent by a trained habit somewhere where there is our familiar specific acoustics conditions ... The ears must not be uproot from his familiar life milieu and acoustic context ...

Evaluating the emotion behind a new spoken language , a new acoustic is impossible because of that... We do it easily trained in our own speech ..

I am sure i could fail to pass some blind test in a new acoustic  environtment  i had pass in my environment where all is familiar, under my control because i designed it ...I am sure of that ...

Anyway i know nothing about this Mike blindtest on Asylum and i am not interested by double blind test anyway ... The only blind test that interested me are those i did in my environment ,simply blind, and in a relaxed mode not as a debunking tool but as a tool to improve my optimization process one step at a time and it worked well ...

I am not against blind test, i am against the way some people use them for an ideological goal ...

Including Mike’s concession that he could not distinguish between his turntable and a digital copy.

oy vay

this was a decent thread... until...

While it's true that many audiophiles often associate high-end audio systems with tube amplification due to the unique sound characteristics and aesthetic appeal of tube amplifiers, there are certainly exceptions, and transistor amplification can also be highly regarded in the audiophile community.

Transistor amplifiers have their own advantages, such as generally being more compact, durable, and less prone to maintenance issues than tube amplifiers. Solid-state amplifiers, which use transistors or other semiconductor devices, can provide excellent performance, precision, and reliability. They are often preferred in professional audio settings and for certain types of music where accuracy and transparency are crucial.

Audiophile preferences can be highly subjective, and some individuals may prefer the warmth, harmonic distortion, and "character" that tubes are known for. Others may appreciate the clarity, precision, and neutrality offered by well-designed transistor amplifiers.

In recent years, advancements in transistor technology and amplifier design have led to the creation of high-quality solid-state amplifiers that challenge traditional perceptions. Ultimately, the choice between tube and transistor amplification comes down to personal preference, the characteristics of the audio source, and the type of music being listened to. Some audiophiles may even have both types of amplifiers in their collection, using them in different scenarios or for different genres of music.
 

😂 Nice use of a Chat bot here. 

I think part of the contention here is that many audiophiles delve into tubes before encountering true reference grade SS which tends to be rather expensive. IME the value quotient can actually become inverse at a pretty low budget point, where a $2K tube amp can subjectively sound quite a lot better than $3 or $4K SS. Whereas in the very entry-level realm (under $1K or so) SS tends to perform better with most speakers. There’s this $1K to $6K range where tube amps often sound smoother and more euphoric and such, beyond which the value equation CAN (*key word) flip back in favor of SS. For example, I have yet to hear a tube product that actually sounds more refined than the average ≈$6K class-A SS product.

That isn’t to say tubes won’t produce more even order (“euphoric”) harmonics that get mistaken for “decay” and what not, but personally, I can often detect those even order distortions in spite of the assertion the brain always conflates them with music notes. This is especially the case when listening to certain genres of music. Tube amps, perhaps ironically, perform very poorly in masking their distortions when rendering heavy electric guitar. But if one only ever listens to pipe-n-slipper chamber or quartet recordings, then yeah, they’re not likely to ever parse between those low order distortions and the actual recording. 

I suspect another source of confusion can be attributed to the likelihood that tube fanatics 💩 on SS because the best they experienced was bottlenecked somewhere else in the system. I’d wager the most likely bottleneck in most SS systems is the preamp. Most SS preamps are rather mediocre sounding. They tend to sound either grainy or lean or flat. There are great ones but they tend to be the exception rather than the rule. But the exceptions can be surprisingly affordable. 
 

Regardless of all that, if a chain of components lacks the right synergy, it won’t matter whether it’s comprised of tubes or SS or a hybrid. So if you go audition a $500K system comprised of “reference” level (cuz reference = expensive right 😂😂) and it doesn’t sound as good as a the $50K tube-powered system in the next room, you must consider the leg work that was devoted or not devoted to getting the best from the SS. Of course the same can be said for tubes when it comes to subjective performance. But when it comes to all objective metrics we know how to (dirty word alert* 😮) measure, it’s simply indisputable that SS has a higher performance limit. We should not apply Flat-Earth thinking to what is considered state-of-the-art. That’s a fool’s endeavor. 

I dont have the great experience some here have with tubes versus S.S. at all levels ...

I think helomech post make sense...

Anyway my S.S. is the best amplifier i owned , the Sansui alpha, and the power transformer quality and the pre-amplification are critical ...

This is why his headphone out can beat one of the best headphone tube amplifier on the market because of synergy too for sure , this headphone amplifier i tried was very good and of the highest quality but synergy is the basis of component pairing ...😊

Then i discard anything nor any choices , nor tubes nor S.S. nor any other class A or D or hybrid etc nor any solutions...It is all up to synergy , costs and needs ...

Generalizations claims as rule are generally childish ...One thousand factors cannot be reduced to a rule or two about components choices ...

My rule, for the sake of contradicting myself here , 😁 was going for the minimal acoustical satisfaction threshold at the best quality/price ratio ...For that we need to be creative, purchasing gear upgrades will not be enough ...Money dont buy meaning, even acoustical meaning ...

By the way the minimal acoustical satisfaction threshold is enough for  me and  for most and it is in no way a mere stop-gap as some think not knowing acoustics fixated on gear price tags 😁... To reach the maximal acoustical satisfaction threshold is not given to all anyway , it ask for a very great amount of money and a more importantly a great deal of acquired  knowledge ...

It is way more easier and more affordable for all of us since Dr. Choueiri revolution for sure ,... We are lucky as music lovers to be here to profit from all gains in design and acoustics ... Thanks to Dr. Choueiri the distance separating the minimal satisfaction threshold and the maximal one has decreased for the benefit of all , asking less of us in works and money ..

I do think in many cases people just can’t handle what they get with good SS gear so they resort to tubes in order to calm things down a bit.

Also tubes are of course all glow-y and way cool looking so there is that.

Good tube gear does not calm things down, it is very revealing. So much nonsense in this and other threads. Well, thanks to Mike, there is at least one person to talk to.

It is easy to build your own tube amplifier and if you use premium parts, the most you will spend will be a few hundred dollars for the same design that costs five figures. Learning how to design one from a book such as Beginner's Guide to Tube Audio will take less time and effort than raising tens of thousands of dollars to buy a high end tube amplifier.