Tube amps and a Stradivarius

The Neumann U 87 is still one of the greatest vocal microphones ever (tube). Records have a warm rich rumble that sounds great. Vocals don't have warm and rich rumble. 

Tubes are a physical effect mechanism that have nothing to do with accuracy. They are signal processing. Under Capital Records are 8 rooms, pie shaped with lacquer paint a Shure 88 microphone and a voice of the theater speaker in the corner, these are the most prestigious reverb rooms in the world but the equipment in their is not close to state of the art. 

Do you want the sound to be accurate or sound cool. There are objective engineering philosophies that clash between flat and good when it comes to sound. The best answer to me is to have the goal of putting the musician in your listening room playing the instrument but then the Stradivarius comes in and says wait you can't design magic. Form will follow function if we demand designers produce accurate equipment and speakers ultimately the end result will be more musical. It is so tempting to add all the flavorings to music and movie that was unintended simply to make the experience more exciting. Is that wrong?

Also if you think tube amps are more accurate you are simply fooling yourself. I use tube amps (hybrid) in my 2 Channel system but I know they are not more accurate they sound better and more musical than SS amps but the audiophile community needs to know the difference if this community is to make a difference in the future of equipment.

Triodes are more linear than transistors, which can also make them sound more realistic than solid state

Do you have any articles to back this up, everyone would agree tube sound is more pleasent but any info looking at input and output through a tube as being more accurate than high quality transistors.

Here is an interesting article that kinda supports your view, but looking at input then output with quality transistors there is really no comparison. 

 

invalid

You are right, a designer must use feedback that is always a compromise but transistors are still more accurate (don’t sound better) than tubes if you look at them on a scope. Another fare worse aspect is how transistors distort when clipped they sound awful but tubes sound smooth and forgiving. Audiophiles use underpowered amps in general, it takes a lot of power to produce loud sounds from some of our big not so efficient speakers. Tube amps are always way lower power than ss amps but because of the nice distortion it doesn’t matter as much. But physics is physics it takes a certon amount of power to produce a high volume from the speaker and it is very rare that tube amps have even close to enough power in fact it is the exception that even ss amps have enough power to produce movie theater volumes at home. By the way even golden ears have a hard time hearing <15% distortion at high volumes.

invalid Just asking an honest question, I assume you have tube amps, as I do as well. What sort of system do you use to change all the tubes just change them all each year or 6 months, they start sounding bad very slowly and It's hard to realize the sound is degrading, like a frog being boiled very slowly eventually you have dead sound.

Movie theaters use ss equipment because tubes would be a nightmare the tubes would always be sounding not like new and it would be nearly impossible to get the LF response needed to make spec. Sure there are tube amps that can put out a lot of power but the tubes are very expensive, unreliable, and degrade immediately after putting them in the slot they also are about 90% inefficient creating more heat than power. 

My amps are the BHK 300s by PF Audio they make sense to me because the front end is tubes and the power side is mosfet, gives you the best of both. Guitar amps are always tubes they need the ring, warmth and distortion characteristics that tubes can bring, but now guitar amps can be ss and simply be programed to emulate other tube amps, the best of these emulators can fool anyone.

@desktopguy Records sound better than CDs everyone knows which format is more accurate. Tubes sound better than ss everyone knows which system is more accurate. I like tubes better also. It just shows that accuracy is not more musical in this state of our technology. No one mixes up a real piano with a recording of a piano in real life, I have a beautiful Steinway B grand its a Spiro /r that plays by way of a digital engine that has 1000 levels or resolution, it plays exactly the way the original player plays it and it doesn't sound like a recording. We have a long way to go to get real accuracy.

@mulveling Headphones, yep your right. I have a set of Focal Stellia and a Naim amp that is ok but isn't as good as it is expensive I want to change to a tube amp also. Bigger amps even ss amps vibrate naturally, could it be that the natural field of the amp creates creates microphony in tube amps also? 

@atmasphere Also I have had my tube amps and preamp for about 3 years I've bought all the cool tubes that are supposed to make the equipment sound better and there has been a big difference, that is really scary to me there is no way I can use my home system to evaluate what's real, I can of course compare it to other music and movies I've listened to on that system. My question is how do you manage the tubes, they slowly get bad I can't take it, I feel like they start going bad the second I put a new one in and I'm just not noticing it because the bad sound happen so slowly, very frustrating. How do I manage tubes?

@atmasphere Thank you for that great post. Your words carry a lot of knowledge and experience in the audiophile world, exactly what I wanted. I did professional sound for 35 years never used a tube amp but I liked them so much after I retired I bought them for my home system. I have a professional Genelec "the Ones" Dolby Atmos system in the same room as my home theater Dolby Atmos and my 2 channel system my home system sounds so much better not more accurate but worlds better, I do think it's because of the tube amps PS Audio BHKs and also BHK preamp. I didn't think there was a technical reason why the tubes would sound better. Very interesting. 

@femoore12 exactly that happened to me a few years ago I worked with a singer everyone knows she and I were on a TV show so I knew her voice perfectly, when she make an album at capitol records I was able to go with her. This was so interesting for me because I knew her voice so well  I used one of the songs on that recording as my reference to test some high end speakers it was very interesting because I didn't like anything I heard until got the top of the line Paradigm beryllium speakers so I bought them. Recently I put in a Dolby Atmos mixing studio with Genelec powered "the one" speakers these speakers showed flaws in the recording I never heard before. My home setup sounds better but definitely not more accurate. The tubes have a wonderful way of covering some of the sins of recording being played back on powered studio monitors.