Beginners guide to tube audiio.

The book Rodman links to is by Robert Harley who is the Editor of Absolute Sound. It provides an excellent overview of all things audio. He has published two other books on the subject as well. See them all at:

http://www.hifibooks.com/

The above mentioned books are excellent reads. If you are lloking for something lighter: This book- (http://cgi.ebay.com/The-Complete-Guide-to-High-End-Audio_W0QQitemZ280332119531QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Nonfiction_Book?hash=item280332119531&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50) Contains some good, basic and practical info about tubed pres, amps, DAC's, etc., their circuitry and what to look out for when auditioning. That's besides all the other great info concerning the entire system/listening room acoustics/etc.

A primer for what the terms are or a primer on textbook on circuit design?

Elevick & T_bone:

Thank you, this is exactly the type of information I have been looking for, and free to boot.
Still looking for suggestions of books on the basics, primers, on tube audio.

RH

Rhanechak, as you might have gleaned from the responses, there may be some confusion as to what you are looking to achieve.

The Sonic Frontiers "A Taste of Tubes" is here. It is a good primer to what tubes are and what they do.

A cool guide to vacuum tubes for amps written from a slightly different perspective is here. It is more easily understood after having read the Taste of Tubes.

One of the reference papers is Hamm's "Tubes vs Transistors".

Finally, if you do some searching on the internet as Ckorody suggests, there is ALL kinds of stuff out there. The most recent reference I have found and am working my way through is here. There are lots more, probably many which are more worthwhile. This just happens to be the latest I came across.

Go to the discussion forums here as well as the sale items and educate yourself. Your can get an idea about what to buy here, how to set it up and you can ask questions as well.

This forum is as good as any book. You can see what people value in the present time and consider to be good sound. Look at McIntosh tube amps, Audio Research tube amps, etc.

go to www.sonicfrontiers.com
get on the anthem side of the site and search for
"A Taste of Tubes". Awesome reading.

Do a search on Amazon. Most of the books that I have found on tube amplifiers etc are pretty technical. Frankly I found them virtually unreadable. They were most certainly over my head.

I also suggest doing some Internet research. There is an enormous amount of information - and opinion - out there.