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Tube Equipment: Gimmick?

I recently had a mechanical engineer (who has no interest in audio equipment or the industry) express amazement when I told him about the high prices of tube gear. His amazement, he said, stemmed from the fact that tubes are antiquated gear, incapable of separating signals the way (what we call "solid state") equipment can.

In essence, he said tubes could never be as accurate as SS gear, even at the height of the technology's maturity. This seems substantiated by the high-dollar tube gear I've heard - many of the things that many here love so much about the "tube sound" are wonderful - but to my ears, not true to the recording, being either too "bloomy" in the vocal range or too "saturated" throughout, if that makes any sense.

I have limited experience with tubes, so my questions are: what is the attraction of tubes, and when we talk about SS gear, do we hit a point where the equipment is so resolving that it makes listening to music no fun? Hmmm..or maybe being *too* accurate is the reason folks turn from SS to tubes?

Thanks in advance for the thoughts!
aggielaw

Showing 1 response by bin

bin
119 posts
 
So much partial or misinformation.
ALL amps start to distort immediately. There is always some sonic degradation all you can do is keep it to a minimum.
Tube amps tend to produce even order harmonic distortion which is more musical sounding. It is more musical because it is an even multiple of the note or an octave difference. That always sounds better to the ear. That being said they tend to get canceled in the output transformer anyway on push pull designs.
SS amps tend to produce odd order harmonics which do not sound as musical as it isn’t a perfect multiple, it is considered a 1/3 or an integral of a third.
Personally I like tubes for everything above 250hz and use solid state for everything 250 and below.
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