Solid State vs. Tubes - What if Transistors came first?


What do you guys think?

If transistors came first, and then decades later tubes were invented, would we have any tube amps we would call high end?

Wouldn’t they all fail to reach the height of performance and transparency set by transistor amps?

Best,

E

P.S. I love Conrad Johnson. I'm just wondering how  much of our arguments have to do with timing. 
erik_squires
Then the thread will be "What if our brain implants were made with tubes"

Very tough topic! Its all about a matter of preference. I have several tube amps. All time preference / all season will be a KT-88 output tubes to have a thumping power of the solid state derived from the mosfet amps  70's with the Motorola J transistors that made the hi-fi solid states era incredible. The other side of the tubes is the warmth sound very hard to explain. But I will always have a backup tube amp just in case.

Yeah, brain implants with tubes, dick implants with transistors. Or would it be better the other way around? They'll figure it out, I don't even want to think about it.
Two things that are suspected to be quite bad for an audiophile’s hearing. One is sitting in close proximity to aircraft engines all day for twenty years. The other is listening to solid state amplifiers and radios for twenty years. They’re also suspected of causing, you know.... 🍑 🍔 🍔
Ha, ha, it’s true, my hearing is shot, but at least I didn’t get my DNA strained through a sheet. And, I do love peaches and hamburgers. 👍
Why not, you do regularly as some weird form of pseudo sexual sadism. 🙀

The guy seems quite sanguine to your fixation with him. 
inna skates by with a dick reference...I get shut down if I even infer something.
maritime51
Why not, you do regularly as some weird form of pseudo sexual sadism.

>>>I guess you would know.
Ok Maritime51, I think you are a dick.  Let’s see how long this one stays up.
maritime51,

The guy seems quite sanguine to your fixation with him.
To tell you the truth, I would not mind joking with geoffkait, if it were leveled. I enjoy a little bit of multi-faceted humor involving a few topics at once. However, like this, I have to make sure my references do not go above what I learned in elementary school.
dave_b,

I have no problem with whatever language, but if it is some sort of race, I can report it for the benefit of competitive spirit.
How puerile, but predictable.
Why do we say "kidding" for something that is not supposed to be serious when kids take everything seriously?
If this turns into some RNA/DNA/abnormalities thread, can we make sure to leave geoffkait's favorite syndrome out of discussion?

September is the month for Erdheim-Chester awareness here. It hits you in 50s, or later, so many here may start taking notice.
Glupson...E-C sounds awful:(). As with most disease, Immune system/inflammation seems to be involved.  Thanks for clueing me in 👍
dave_b,

I was not trying to poach threads, but have been annoyed by this ridiculing of Asperger's. Instead, I thought of a little awareness raising for other things, too. Different syndrome every month. Until those peaches and hamburgers go away.
Ad hominems are weapons of the ignorant. The irony of the use of ad hominems is only exceeded by the lack of skill in application. 
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Actually, to be completely up front about it, I do not ridicule Asperger’s or anyone who might have it. I might even exhibit a few symptoms myself from time to time. Asperger’s symptoms appear to your humble narrator to be a lot like symptoms of our old friend, audio nervosa. Look inside. 👀

Famous Autistic People
Dan Aykroyd
Hans Christian Andersen
Benjamin Banneker – African American almanac author, surveyor, naturalist, and farmer
Jodie Foster
Robin Williams
Tim Burton
Bobby Fisher
Stanley Kubrick
Lewis Carroll – Author of “Alice in Wonderland”
Henry Cavendish – Scientist
Lee Deforest - Scientist
Albert Einstein
Abraham Lincoln


Hi, M51 👋🏻  Just wondering, did you take a major in egotism or does it come natural to you?
Guess that’s a big hell yeah 👨🏻‍🚀
Remember to check your oxygen levels up there 👆 
Nothing to do with timing....   back when I was playing in a band - when tubes and transistors were in its transitional stage... we simply knew that tubes simply sounded better for music.
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@mckinneymike—I'm curious, who/what/where are these new vacuum tube production facilities? The Noritaki "nutube" thing is just a restricted special purpose curiosity product of virtually no use in hi-end audio, the RCH Labs startup recently died in a bankruptcy auction, and the Western Electric reissue trial is a small, limited, insider-use effort.

The existing public vacuum tube suppliers are all marginal, unmonitored profiteers located in China, Russia, and other obscure ex-Soviet block satellites, and wholly dependent on the guitar amplifier and "tube audiophile" market. There's no other receiving-type vacuum tube usage anywhere in the world, for any purpose.

Where are those "new and modernizing tube manufacturing facilities" that you cite?
vtvmvodtm,

It is puzzling that all that you wrote somehow escapes the reality check among enthusiasts. Again, long live tubes, but on any scale they are virtually non-existent. As a poster, I forgot who it was, noted earlier...it is just plain economy.

Tubes are a niche product with some value for those who like them to the level of idolizing, but so is my manual transmission.
I almost agree with Elizabeth. It is nostalgia. But it’s nostalgia for listening to what voices and musical instruments really sound like. You know, instead of thin, two dimensional, airless, synthetic, bland, metallic, generic, irritating and hard like you get with solid state. It’s like organic food vs non organic food.
Somehow M51 can post vulgarities, but others can not?  Mother jokes?  Wow
Arf, arf!

Well, here I sit, turbine damaged hearing and all, loving my solid state gear. 

Time to light up the wheelchair turbine....🙀
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Turbines explain the deafness but the dumb part seems to come natural ✈️👂
This seems apropos, you know, from the point of view of the solid state believers.

“The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the original false conception come true. This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.

In other words, a positive or negative prophecy, strongly held belief, or delusion—declared as truth when it is actually false—may sufficiently influence people so that their reactions ultimately fulfill the once-false prophecy.

Self-fulfilling prophecy are effects in behavioral confirmation effect, in which behavior, influenced by expectations, causes those expectations to come true. It is complementary to the self-defeating prophecy.”
I am sitting and listening to a live CD (Leonard Cohen, Can’t Forget: A Souvenir Of A Grand Tour. track 4 La Manic) wondering about this tube/transistor debate. What do sound systems at relatively large concerts use? Is it tubes? Is it solid state? If I wanted to reproduce what I heard at the concert, would it make more sense to use something more similar to what I listened to during the live performance?

For this particular concert, I highly doubt any kind of home equipment would put you back there. CD is good, but the sound is not right.