The ups and downs of tube vs. SS...

Solid state has relatively better THD numbers than tubes. OK, I’ll grant you that. Of course everybody and his brother knows THD doesn’t really mean anything. 🤡

kosst_amojan
Dear God.... That staid dogma about tubes Geoff just spouted is such obtuse nonsense! All this magical jazz people attribute to tubes has practically nothing to do with the tubes themselves. It’s far more a product of the topology. Plenty of solid state amps make that case.

Did somebody forget to take his smart pills? I never said I was talking about the tubes themselves, silly goose. I actually already made that very clear. Besides it was not (rpt not) dogma, anyway. I acknowledged that solid state has some strengths. It’s not all black and white in my world as it is in yours.

That’s the exception that proves the rule. 😛

There is no substitute for tubes. Solid state can do some things extremely well, but cannot beat tubes for harmonic structure integrity and seductive sound. Solid state is cardboard or paper mache. Tubes are liquid and human sounding.

+ 1 on the Fisher 500C. I bought one at a yard sale for $1 and had BWS Consulting upgrade it, including putting in some Bendix aircraft quality tubes. My Fisher 500C drove Fulton Nuance floorstanders for many years. No complaints here.

There it is! 

Well, to be fair, everything sounds different. Capacitors sound different. Resistors sound different. Fuses sound different. Transformers sound different. Connectors sound different. Cryo’d capacitors sound different. Cryo’s transistors sound different. Cryo’d tubes sound different. See where I’m going with this?

Oh, great! What’s next, transistor rolling? 🤡

Uh, when most people talk about tubes in the context of tubes vs solid state electronics I am pretty sure they’re referring to the whole electronics package. It’s an expression. You know, like I like tubes. Or I like how tubes sound. In that vein. 💉 When someone says I like transistors or I like how transistors sound chances are great he is not referring to actual transistors per se. 

If you think the cost of tubes is high, and I’m talking about really good NOS Bad Boys and Orange Globes and Bugle Boys and so forth, wait’ll ya get a load of the cost of tube dampers, especially when you do what I did and use two dampers per tube. That’s right, two! And I’m talking about the Herbies dampers, not the cheap little elastomer jobs that don’t do anything.