will, if you want to post those websites you told me about here, that would be ok too. |
ahha wow ..what a comeback of an OLD OLD THREAD :p ahah
i log in after almost a year..and one of my thread is still active! lol :)
great inputs guys :) |
Will, if you want to say something, please just say it.
What do you mean?
What in these ideas is out of date? What do you disagree with? Please be specific, make cogent replies and offer REASONS. That is what dialogue is.
It is very easy to swoop in with some conclusory statement without providing support. That is psuedo-intellectualism.
The comments I made above were nearly a year ago. Why do you feel the need to come in now - with conclusory, unsupported statements - when this has been dead since then? In that context, I don't understand your motive. There are other threads where I've talked about many of these same ideas since last year and you have chosen, assumably, to never respond to those. So why now, and why here? This seems incongruent to me.
If you are going to insinuate that someone's ideas are irrelevant and they are a posturing intellectual, then please, have the courage to make an argument, rather than jumping out of the bushes a year later. |
Bravo to Cornfedboy for calling pseudointellectualism what it is. Psychology that's thirty years out of date melded with philosophy that's thirty years out of date. Wearisome.
will |
Muralman, I found you!!
Really though. I just read my last post here, about a year ago now (re-read nothing before it; head hurts to much today). Admittedly, 6ch, I went off the deep end there, regardless. Hmmm. That must have been one pissy bad day. Overdue apologies. Frustrated "Me". Well, makes me feel good actually because barely recognize him, but also gives me some insight into why some of you would approach me now somewhat with headgear on. Hmmm, again. I will keep that in mind in the future and practice some delicacy (although I think you all can take it...)
Hey Muralman, you didn't find this thread looking around to see if I was a drunk did you? tisk, tisk... |
Man, I missed all the fun. Reading through the posts, I saw a lot of good hard fact finding and opinionating by some and psychodelic op art by .... Then, Bwhite had me in joyful tears. What a release!
One thing caught my eye way up there; something about linearity and simplicity. I have yet to see any amp comparing in simplicity to the solid state Pass X amps, ss or tube. Like several other ss amp builders Nelson has found less compromising ways to rid distortion other than utilizing feedback. Simplifying is how some ss amp builders are closing in on tube amps when it comes to music enjoyment, and not just accuracy. |
Man, you guys proselytize your positions on very esoteric levels. That's all well and good, but if you are going to do so, at least use spel chek so you don't lose the credibility you worked so hard to establish. |
Tubes do not "interpolate" values or anything else.
Solid state is not inherently more precise.
Jinmtvt has it wrong, completely wrong.
Since almost everyone's digital today has a real brick wall at just over 20kHz. the bandwidth of almost any half decent amp, tube or solid state will exceed that of the digital source by a wide margin.
The fact is that the very best solid state amps and the very best tube amps start to sound remarkably similar. They do tend to diverge in different directions,and that is due to certain inherent characteristics of the devices and the circuits that they are likely to be put into. So, the sound that we often refer to is more due to application issues both in practical circuits and less than optimal implementations and the characteristic signatures that they then produce...
Given the same bandwidth, neither is "more accurate" - at that point the only difference is the spectrum of distortion products. Which, in short is where you'd find something to measure that relates back to what you are hearing.
So, *if* there is a characteristic difference between tube sound and solid state sound it's gonna be found in the spectrum of distortion products...(and there is a real difference there) |
Wow, Asa, you are good! In your responded in 11-2-01, you
could just say listen to music, honestly. :-)
last paragraph:
"Importantly..." |
C'mon, Asa, you needn't pee in the sandbox.... |
Well that puts rather a gloom over the day doesn't it?
I enjoyed this thread. Admittedly, it did make my head hurt a little. The notion that our primal instincts affect our listening, "visualizing" and ultimately the appreciation of music is fascinating to me.
Thanks to all who participated. I feel I've learned a lot from reading this thread.
|
Forget it, gentlemen, I'm out. Every so often I become overly optimistic and put my finger in the water to see if anything meaningful will come up and bite. If you want to understand what I'm saying, then order the articles I wrote for Ultimate Audio magazine under the name Mark Bucksath on Musicality. For those of you not threatened by different ways of speaking, ideas, etc, thank you. For those of you who revel in anonymity in a microcosm to vent your neurosis, congratulations, you're a dime a dozen. |
Asa, thanks for replying to my questions. To the extent that I fully understand your posts, I still don't see where you've established any connection between solid state equipment and any of your various states of listening. Furthermore, interior mental states are essentially opaque to scrutiny. Is it possible that the cognitive-absent mental states you describe are attainable without external audiophile stimuli? Why invest in audiophile equipment when you can just meditate on the idea of music reach a trans-cognitive mental state. It certainly would be cheaper. |
Leave her out of this, Bry! |
Are we talking about Tubes and SS or is this Dianetics? |
* the desire to cognicize perception*? excuse me, but i think one would need to visit a very large feedlot to "cognicize" a larger pile of visually perceptible or olfactorable cow dung. please understand, i mean no cognizably perceivable offense and any emotive reactions to the contrary are merely illusory and ultimately meaningless, if ya know what i mean. -cfb |
Asa, Onhwy61.
Sorry, I only have a minute.
Asa, please don't be so defensive! Whereas my accusation may have seemed callous, it was simply a non-calculated quick response to your first conjectures re "tubes=pleasure" vs "ss=cognition", if you will.
I don't wish to engage in an overly-wrought series of argument cum counter-argument, but I notice, and struggle to understand, the migration (and evolution) of your thoughts as stated away from the earlier provocative, simplistic stabs that, through their conclusions, drew my
bow.
(On a more personal level I wish you'd refrain fom assuming that my knowledge base is gleaned from magazines rather than
empirical data. I know SOME of the whys of tube sound because I've measured them! Now, please, don't run with this! I don't at all believe that the finest human sense is sufficiently understood to be even a slight bit comprehended
objectively, let alone measured fully. (If science at this point could explain it all, then I don't believe "musical pleasure", as we experience it, could exist.)
So I appreciate your comments of late re musical "awareness"--its cognition, states of experience, or whatever. Your discourse so far illustrates your interest
in our collective quest for exploring the complex experiences involved in "music" and our
endeavors to reproduce these experiences at will in our homes.
In light of your profound intellectual investment re the understanding of experiential states and strata, your first simplistic (don't misunderstand, please!) comments
carving the "tubes vs. ss" poles seems somewhat beneath this sophisticated thinking.
I struggle to link your lingo to complex experiences I have
AS A MUSICIAN and (and sometimes, "vs.") a LISTENER, for example, to further understand YOUR postulated states of awareness, being, or whatever.
I had been playing baroque and liturgical acoustic and Hammond orgean for a decade before my adulthood, and now lose myself readily THROUGH the practiced cognitive exercises of reading and playing my Steinway as the modus operandi of arrival at truly satisfying musical experience.
Is it helpful that my "B" is in tune, or well-regulated, or that the neighbors' kids and lawnmowers are at a null?
Absolutely. When I listen to reproduced music it's helpful that my speaker-room-power paradigm is optimized, and that
the paltry 16bit software source is somehow "handled" 24/192, etc., into a form that "exercises" the ear-brain to
as many and deep levels of experience as possible.
But "tubes vs. ss"? Glad we're getting beyond that, Asa.
Gotta go help Ellen prep for dinner for 12 tomorrow.
Smuggled in some foies gras entiers, confit de canard, and amazing olives, yet she wants me to slice and toast eggplant slices into "chips" for the tapenades.
Yeah...pass the Poupon, hwy61! |
Oh, you're no limo-waiter, Onhwy61. Thank you for you questions; they raise some very important issues. Admittedly, this is a very difficult area with a learning curve of trying to understand what each other is saying. I will try to do my best to answer your questions, in order:
1, 2 and part of 3:. The problem we first must clear up is that "musicality" is not some-thing out there. Language is prone towards abraction and sometimes we make these absractions into a thing (symptomatic of our objective cognitive faculties). For instance, I can not look out my front door and point to "democracy" because it not a thing, but a desription of an agreed upon thought between minds. Similarly, when discussing "musicality" we must be on guard to always remember that we are discribing a state of consciousness. Moreover, it describes a dynamic of movement of the mind, the listening mind, as it seeps deeper into the experience. In other words, my position is that "musicality" is characterized by such movement and that the nature of this dynamic is one that moves, upon first sitting down, from a cognitive identification to trans-cognitve receptibility; meaning that your mind's orientation to music changes as you listen from active identification using your thinking mind to a receptive space-of-mind that experiences the musical message, but which does so in a state absent cognition; when you look at Van Gogh's "Night Sky" you approach it searching with an active comparing mind - scanning brushstroke technique, composition, or perhaps, comparing to other abstract expressionist works, or other Van Gogh periods - then you slowly "take in" the work. This "taking in" is characterized by an opening which can be described by the dynamic of releasing the desire to cognicize perception. Each level, both cognitive and trans-cognitive, disclose symmetries of perception, and hence, knowledge, of the music. However, as the experience deepens, and becomes less cognitive-based in the mind, the perception of defining the experience as a thing out there decreases until the mind's propensity to objectify evaporates into an "event" of experience, ie subject/object dichotomies dissolve.
"Musical" components are ones that disclose truths of each level on the continuum moving from cognitive to trans-cognitive, and, importantly, catalyze that movement (the component does not cause the movement, but can facillitate it for the mind that can release an attachment to the power of objectified thinking). The important issue is that all levels disclose a truth indicative of their level (and, not incidentally, produce their own language terms, usually moving from analytic, object-focused visual based language, to emotive based, to, well, beyond language). In this sense, the levels are not exclusive, but inclusive (this is an integrative theory of aesthetics). What is objectified when first listening is valid, just as the experiential info disclosed at deeper levels is valid. The problem arises when those attached to cognitive processing (carrying that attachment into listening) say that theirs'is the only level, or that seeing a perception beyond their mode of perception is non-existent (and then they start with the accusations of irrationality, like scientists do when dealing with trtans-cognitive perception. See Desartes below). Components can be accurately musical ("accurate" an abstraction to describe desires towards greater detail, etc.) as the mind seeks for objective info to bound its experience, but also musical at deeper levels (and, which, we presently lack a language for because the gurus at the hi-Fi "journals" are attached to objectifying levels). People who see the mind as only having one mode of perception (active, cognitve)inherently relegate other experiences (tran-cognitive)(reason for this below).
First part of 3, 4: "Objective mind" is a simplified descriptive use for a a part of the functioning of thinking consciousness; the whole of thinking consciousness psychologists describe as "formal operational, hypo-deductive cognition" (using Piaget terms). I have not gotten into the temporal aspect because this is a big enough subject already (and, temporal comparison is also dualistically objectifying).
So, what is the objective mind, or what is the nature of its objectifying? We have evolved to see prey; look at a green tree and you can't see a green bird until it moves (it becomes an identified object as it moves in time). We look out at reality objectively based on evolutionarily-based structures in our collective minds. Our culture of predation of mind-against-mind in search of the accumulation of objects ("Capitalism", or Lockean mutually-reinforced rules of self interest)is both a symptom of this "genetic" and a reiforcement of it through the individual's minds acceptance of its assumptions that it learns from other minds. The objective mind, as we practice it, is highly reductionist and seeks to divide into either this or that, but genetics is not exclusionary of socialization, just as shallow active listening is not exclusionary of deep receptive listening.
Importantly, we possess this objective bias because we define our thinking mind as our only perception (Descartes' I think, therefore, I am). But this is false. Admittedly, it is a faculty that can bring many objects and increase your assumed viability, or allow you to objectify sound as you listen into a "statue garden" (as Valin is, symptomatically, apt to say), but it is not the only way to perceive reality. It is: I am, therefore, I think, sometimes. Think about it: when you looked at the sunset without thought, did you become non-existent? When you sank into the music and thought ceased, did you fail to exist? The silent receptive mind is the ground of cognition; it precedes it casually. The space around sound-objects is their ground of arisement; it precedes them. To deny the silent space of your mind or the space beneath sound is to deny your true deep nature, and also the deeper experience of music. Those deny deeper spaces of listening perception, or their value, deny a potential in themselves (accounting for their recoil).
Enough. Thank you for your patience. |
Asa, please help me understand some of your above comments.
1. What is musicality as it relates to equipment. Give an example of a accurate, but non- musical piece of equipment. I always thought that if it's accurate, then it also really should be musical.
2. If accuracy and musicality are not mutually exclusive, then are they really in opposition? You seem to imply that they still are. If that's the case, would not a component that was "under-accurate", as opposed to your over-accurate, then qualify as musical?
3. Please define the phrase "objective mind" and explain why a "listening mind" is an objective mind. While you're at it you could also explain what is a "listening mind".
4. Is being highly attached to ones objectifying cognitive faculties a genetic fault or is it a learned behavoir?
I have more question, but I gots to go. I have to go down into the hotel lobby and be seen waiting for my limo. |
Subaruguru, thank you for your response. Yes, you are wrong: my position on a cognitive attachment to accuracy did not imply, per se, or any other way, an acceptance of "overly-rolled" components. Most people who are attached to accuracy respond to a disclosure of its limitations by attacking what they perceive as its opposite argument, ie its either rolled or accurate, a limited departure for dialogue that the magazines have taught you.
On a content level, I'm confused because you attack content but offer no counter arguments. To wit: you say that my position is "patently absurd", assumably meaning that it is easily deconstructed, but you provide no contra-arguments, not even once saying why such a theory is flawed. Similarly, you histrionically say that my argument is "exagerated" and based on "shaky factiods", but you never say WHY that is the case nor cite which "factiods" you are taking about. In other words, dialogue is considered authentic when a person responds in an authentic way - with reference and argument.
Its not just about distortion - thats what accuracy attached people think and their quest for lesser distortion (read: mechanical artifacts in the sound-object) is symptomatic of that same attachment. Distortive images and non-distortive images can both attract the visualizing mind; it is the relationship between the object and space which was my argument, and which again you failed to address (other than some vague references to aesthetic theory [far beyond "colorists in art studio", whoever they are...] or supercial psych theory, which you again don't specify. What theories are you talking about and how do they elucidate your arguments - such as they are - and how do they relate to mine?
Which brings me to the words. Yea, I like "Big Cahuna", and yes, bigger words are an easy target in a venue where many people come only for entertainment, but here's my question: How can you patronize what I've said with off-handed remarks about entry-level psych, as if I should know and you do (and, therefore, you are sophisticated enough to understand them, assumably), and then complain about my use of those terms. In other words, if you are so erudite in their use and application, then why are you troubled by my use of them? Like your emotionally-pointed arguments that are not arguments, this seems disingenuous.
If you want to step up to the plate, then please, don't look to the grandstands for support while you evade an argument. Everyone wants to be a rock star... |
euh mmmm...
i didn't understand nothing..thanhks to my great english :p
can't an SS amp sound exactly like a tube amp if tuned to ?
is the sound difference really related to the major composants or is it more related to the way it is build
and how the engineer thought about it ?
i mean..do all tube amps sounds the same ?
like the base sound.. compared to all SS the same too ? |
Asa, your well-crafted post is engaging but wildly built on
exagerrated, shaky "factoids". To relegate ss and tube camps to assigned cognition strata is patently absurd.
I first took your error in postulating "over-accuracy" with a grain of salt, believing that you were simply trying to metaphorically attach sound perception to the eye-brain's use of boundary recognition to "see" images more sharply. Most first or second year experimental psych students have done fun experiments in the lab explaining this. Colorists in art studios study this to death! So it may be the case that DISTORTIONS in signal reproduction, especially odd-order ones in the treble region, serve to similarly "highlight" transient (and therefore image? hmmm...) edges. But to throw the baby out with the bathwater by moving en masse to an amplification system that
may simply roll off the info, and/or NOT resolve transients as finely, hoping to thusly not "alert" the ear-brain into a kind of hyper-recognition of detail is an UNfortunate state...NOT one to be the goal of accurate (no such thing as hyper-accurate...c'mon, man!) AND satisfying musical reproduction systems. Lots of tube amps interact with speakers to pump up the glorious mids and soften the "ugly,
detail-laden highs" is another way of restating your premise? I'd rather leave the frequency response shaping to a GREAT speakermaker, and use neutral electronics and room treatment to acquire a satisfying experience.
Granted it costs more. It's EASY to get good sound with tubes CHEAP. Hell, I remember the utter coherence of those 5 tube radios of the 50s pumping a naked 4" full-range.
Those dudes had midrange honesty! Just be sure to roll the highs and make sure the FM response didn't have TOO good a signal to noise ratio, eh? The orignal cheap dither?!
OT3rdH, I use Pass Alephs. Tube sound (huh?) with ss bass, detail, and ultrareliability. So I guess I'm in your camp, too...somewhat. But Christ, man, let's cool it with the musicopsychobabble and try to look for REAL reasons for the elicitation of musical pleasure. I think PRAT is the big cahuna, followed by timbral accuracy (for me, as a pianist),
followed by lack of distortion (in all its guises).
I'll agree that tubes can provide decent PRAT, SOMETIMES timbral near-truth (depends on output impedence, speaker load, etc.), and generate lovely 2nd order harmonics (I used to play Hammond organ a lot as a kid...adding those 2nds and 4ths ALWAYS enriched the sound)... ear-brain again, while perhaps masking upper order and high freq crap that ss just allows through. So, for a reasonable price, you takes your pick:
somewhat rose-colored glasses OR a clear lens you have to clean a lot!
Thanks for the fun, Asa, and keep well. Ern
hyper-sensitivity to detail and data |
Accuracy and musicality are not mutually exclusive experiences, but over-accuracy - assuming we define it as added detail to the source sound projection - can diminish "musicality".
This happens because the objective mind, the listening mind, has an evolutionary predisposition to "look" towards objects by defining them against a background (hence, our objective audio language using visual terms). You see (forgive the pun), "musicality" is not something that happens "out there" but is an event between your mind and the musical wave that carries musical information, or message (musicality describes a dynamic of listening consciousness). The deeper you go in listening, the more you transcend your predisposition to objectify the sound wave. If you are a person who is highly attached to his/her objectifying cognitive faculties, then you do not fall deeper into the music because you stay at the the more superficial levels of listening. At those levels, where you focus on the sound as an object, you then, by operation, discount those experiences of music that do not predomonantly deal with your accurate sound-object; you reduce the importance of space, which you will note is not objectifiable. It is no coincidence that those minds who favor accuracy and detail of the singer are the same minds that gravitate towards SS and decry tubes.
Why? Because SS designs relegate the importance of space in favor of greater defining detail in the sound-object. Importantly, as you seep deeper into the music, your intuitive abilties to discern spatial incongruencies increases and tubes excel at spatial rendition at deeper listening levels (also, in deepening levels, sensitivity to detail insufficiencies become less important, which is nwhy tubes guys can sit down to listen to their stereos and objectively note detail "insufficiencies relative to SS gear, but, for some reason, once they are deep into the music, it doesn't seem to matter).
I hope we eventually find mechanical, design-based explanations to definitively desribe these differences in perception as they relate to the gear, but it really doesn't matter. They -tubes and SS- are, as all technological devices, are simply different rearrangements of matter, so it is itself irrational to favor one arrangement over another in a vacuum from the results that they produce. It doesn't matter what given rearrangement produces what result if the results are different; taste is in the tasting.
Last, we will never end this argument of tube vs. SS because we have two minds that are speaking from two different levels of musical perceptibility. Knowledge of deeper levels is state-specific, meaning that its experience can not be described to those attached to shallower levels because those attached minds literally believe that their detailed level is the only one existant and they are unable to conduct the experiment in their own minds because this would mean letting go of their attachment to objectifying cognition. (Which is also why "smart" people who are real good at accumulating objects in our culture many times have musically sterile systems, predominantly SS-based).
Put that in your empiric pipe and smoke it. |
I agree with Fatparrot, tube equipment can look wonderful, but otherwise his 10/28 post reinforces a point I made back on 10/25. Simply substitute solid state electronics for Fatparrot's quartz watches.
BTW, good music has soul and bad music doesn't. This fact is readily evident over tube, solid state or mechanical (a cup at the end of a string) type equipment. |
I like your style Mr. Fatparrot but I take exception to your comments on the Moog synthesizer! Don't be so harsh on the Moog. That old analog circuitry and early digital had real "soul" compared to the mass produced Yamaha and Casio stuff we find in the consumer electronics stores today. ;-) |
C'mon, Fatparrot! I grew up playing a Hammond B (a pre-synth?) for 10 years.
My mostly baroque experience may not have met your "soulful" requirements, but I hope Jimmy Smith, et al, don't read your post! |
I was thinking about this post again...tube equipment is just so damn visually pleasing! An electrical device used to build the amp actually becomes part of the design esthetics! And the warm glow of tubes in a darkened room reminds me of a soothing fire in the hearth. I also appreciate the fine craftsmanship required to make a tube! Does a transistor marked "Motorola" inspire awe the way a tube marked "Mullard" does? I think not! For that matter module (quartz) watches are usually MUCH more accurate than movement (mechanical) watches. How many truly fine watches (audiophile quality!!!) use quartz modules? NONE! Why? Because modules don't have a "soul"! Finely crafted products all have "souls"! A Stradivarius violin has a "Soul". A Moog synthesizer does not. Music has a soul. Sounds do not. Something with a soul combines both science and art...and I think that art can de defined as inspiration and passion. Therefore, I submit that tubes have a "soul" and transistors DO NOT! |
Hmmm...I thought most folks preferred the tubelike naturalness of the fully Class A Alephs over the more-efficient A-B X Series... well, at least I do.
What's an Aleph 6?...and 11% efficiency? Hardly. My Aleph 2 idle at 300watts, yet pump 100/8 and a very meaty 200 into 4 ohms. (Parsifal Encore woofers are 4s, so this is a great match!) Non-linear? Are you kidding? And really--tube amp distortion is "solely contributed by output transformers"? Hmm.... |
...yes, I've ment ansamble(lake a band),Subaruguru. Class A is a picky issue in designing amplifiers. In the SS case it's very inefficient, although it is the way to get tube-like output. If you get Pass Aleph 6, you will be OK in the winter time without heater but what about summer? Besides for 60 output watts it consumes ~500watts from your power socket! To acheive a clear performance in the class A the active elements has to operate in small signal regime. Theoretically only small signal output characteristics of a transistor are linear. It means that Class A is good for a small input signal... That limits these amps in terms of dynamic performance.
If I would go for Pass I would take Pass X350 or higher power models. (in fact I wouldn't go for lower than 225W/ch SS amp)
There are Plinius models that can be a good match and more valuable financially.
Pass discondinued to produce class A amps and Pass X... line is already class A/B. (not "Stereophile class A")
Class A/B in my opinion is better since it's more music-independed.
Did I controverse myself previously? NO! The harmonic distortions of tube amps are solely from output transformers since the're not as lenear as tubes The higher output power tube amps used the higher amplitude of unwanted distortions will be produced. Also as I've mentioned before, these distortions are neglectable if placed next to number of advantages we gain from tubes.
|
Mara,
Lets see in your first post you say that SS has less Harmonic distortion than a tube amp. Now all of a sudden that has no value. Please make up your mind. Tube amps offer many advantages. Tubes are more linear devices than SS components. Tube equiment uses less complex circuitry (this comes from the school that simplier is better). Tubes "break up" more gracefully. Tubes need less negative feedback. Tubes also operate in a much higher voltage potential enabling them to swing more voltage, thus sound more powerful. SS amps on the other hand are "current amplifiers that swing current but need more negative feedback which takes away the musicality of the gear. SS amps are quieter due to no output transformer, but the more complex circuitry required for SS equipment can rob the amp of signal purity. One also must consider the Power supply of a tube amp. The higher working voltages present in tube amplifiers generally allows better voltage swing capability and better headroom. This higher working voltage yields higher audible energy storage with a lower value capacitor (audible energy storage is voltage squared divided by 2 multiplied by capacitance) Compare 600 working volts of tube amplifiers vs. 80 working volts of transistor amplifiers. This is most likely why many listeners feel that tubes sound more powerful. |
Also keep in mind that the ultimate tweak in tube amps is...CHANGING THE TUBES! It has been my experience that N.O.S. tubes will dramatically change the sound for the better over stock Russian tubes. Of course, multiple N.O.S. power tubes are pretty much cost prohibitive these days, but I have achieved these results with small signal tubes. And you don't need to go bonkers with pricy Mullards either! |
Sorry, Mara..., try that again, please. And what is "ansable"?
Good post, onhwy. Totally agree. Tube amp output impedence/speaker load interactions that change frequency response are the greatest factor in ascribing tube amp tonal effects, no? Some of these can be grotesque, too, as when I tried a VAC Avatar on my Parsifal Encores. What a way to destroy a fine speaker! OTOH some systems need that soft-top, vivid-mid, bass-bump that can sometimes be acvieved benignly and therefore euphonically.
I prefer the transducers neat, however.
So is Class A SS (like Pass amps)the best of both worlds? |
Chuck, this mostly have nothing to do with tubes or SS rather than in type of amplifier's operation (Class B amps as an example or push-pull, eliminates even harmonic distortion components).
Harmonic distortions aren't realy important if the're lower than 0.4%
The MOST important thing for the music reproduction is an ansable of your components with speakers. Carefull analysis and/or listening to every component is the way to acheive the most desirable music reproduction you aim.
Bringing up tubes to drive your speakers will be just only 2 cents
Hope you follow...? |
This tube vs. solid state sound thing is one of the great misunderstandings in high end audio. The tube "magic" doesn't exist. There are no significant sonic differences between well designed amp circuits using either technology. I place a particular emphasis on the phrase well designed, by which I mean a circuit design that attempts to accurately reproduce an input signal. I'm not denying that it is possible to design a non-accurate tube product that sounds quite musical. Nor am I denying that such euphonic products have a rightful place in the high end audio world. However, if the goal is to faithfully amplify the input signal, then there is a convergence in sound quality between tube and solid state products.
As evidence of my statements I point to those manufacturers who produce both tube and solid state products. I strongly suggest you give a listen to Audio Research, Conrad Johnson, Lamm or EAR products of both type. It would be particularly interesting to find out whether these manufacturers specifically voice their products to play towards the audiophile preconception that tubes should sound different than solid state. I suspect many audiophiles crave the euphonic sound and manufacturers are only too willing to oblige. |
One more thing.
Tube based units generally produce more even order harmonic distortion while SS designs produce more odd order harmonic distortion. Odd order distortion is more easily heard by the ear wheras even order Harmonic distortion may actually be pleasing to the ear.
my .02 cent worth. |
Marakanetz: thanks for the great answer..
so are the harmonic distortions really important ?
wich factor in all make for a great sound?
i mean what is really important to be able to enjoy the music reproduction ? |
Wrong,
The digital signal circuitry can be done with tubes too, but very ineficient since they aren't fast enough on higher freequencies.
Transistors as well as tubes can produce digital and analogue signals as well(in fact there is no such thing as digital signal inside the active element tube or semi-conductor -- it's just only convention that sampled analogue signal is considered to be digitally coded and can be used for the the "portion processing" depending on phase and offset position of a certain sample).
The main difference (visit www.vtl.com) is that tube circuitry is much simplier, the output characteristics are more linear i.e. do not require deep neg. feedback. And the result is less circuit elements on the signal path give a possibility of a better and natural transparency.
The other difference is derived from linearity of tubes' output characteristics, that gives a possibility to use them at the full power without clipping. Saying simply, tube power is more efficient than SS.
SS advantages:
1. No need for an output transformer to match impedance(very very important!)which makes SS more quiet.
2. Less harmonic distortions which are basically derived from the first advantage.
3. Larger possibility of gain with smaller number of active elements(usually SS have more gain than tubes).
4. Transistors are tended to have a lifspan 100x as tubes so there is no need to replace them every couple of years.
I do sacrifice for output transformer hum in my VTLs but I do gain natural voice and rather detailed highs than harsh ones on SS. |
