Some of you may find this interesting... Below is something posted on www.joule-electra.com. Aggielaw, Jud Barber also used to think like your engineer buddy. Now he makes some of the finest tube equipment anywhere.
I'll tell you this. Too much tube equipment does "sound like tubes", in my opinion. "Tube" does not necessarily mean "lack of transparency" although I think there is plenty of tube gear out there that can give you that impression. Syrupy mids, etc. That is not the good stuff. If you ever hear the good stuff you will know the difference. Try an OTL amp and go from there...
From www.joule-electra.com:
"WHY TUBES?
A COMMENT ON TUBES VERSUS TRANSISTORS FOR REPRODUCTION OF RECORDED MUSIC
By Jud Barber
President, Joule Electra
I first became interested in Audio in the early fifties, well before transistors and other high tech materials became available to the Audio Industry. We were constantly looking for ways to improve in the quality of sound production, even before the development of stereo vinyl. Stereo tapes were available, but the program material was so limited that few people had invested in two channel systems,
Instead some of us went to great extremes to try to improve the realism of our playback system, I remember well my first three channel, monaural system which used passive high level crossovers to divide the music spectrum into three audio bands. The crossovers were at 500 hertz and 5000 hertz and separate amplifiers were used for each of the three frequency ranges. The results were not particularly good, but we thought it was great, being driven more by the quantity of hardware in the system than by sonic splendor.
Then came the first stereo vinyl recordings which were really very good even today, when played with state of the art turntable cartridge systems. The problem was the transducers, both at the beginning and the end of the playback system. Compliance without excessive resonance was an elusive goal for the cartridge designers at the time. The first cartridge I bought, a Grado, was probably the first they ever designed. It weighed several ounces and really made a great sinker for fishing line. As a retriever of the nuances of audio from fragile vinyl it was a disaster.
The tube technology used for amplification was very mature by this time and probably much better than we realized. It was the transducers that were limiting the quality of reproduced sound. A good phono cartridge was extremely difficult to make and when the design was good it was very difficult to make them in quantity with the same level of performance. Later, in the fifties and early sixties, transistor equipment became available and everyone was entranced by the absence of noise and ease with which good specifications could be achieved for a modest cost.
In fact, it was the transistor that prompted me to quit designing and building tube-based equipment. Even very simple solid state circuits performed better on the workbench than my most sophisticated tube designs. At the time I decided that it was the answer to the quest for the grail in amplification and I began to look for the pot of gold at the rainbow's end. Oddly enough, it was not to be found and sound reproduction seemed to have reached a plateau that was good, but not great. By the mid seventies virtually all space-age technology had seeped into the audio world and transducers were steadily improving.
By the early eighties the advent of the CD player (unfortunately transistor based) was revolutionizing the beginning of the audio reproduction chain and the new materials available were allowing designers to develop phono cartridges and speakers with dramatically improved characteristics. But there was still something missing in most music reproduction. No one really understood why, even with hardware that measured magnitudes better than that available in the fifties and sixties, recorded music still did not sound very good let alone create an illusion of the real thing.
I should have been able to make the discovery that turned this thing around, but being an engineer, I was convinced that what measured the best, sounded the best! For fifteen agonizing years the audio community struggled with the realization that tube hardware used judiciously in a playback system almost always produced a more enjoyable sound and a better illusions of live music.
The engineers laughed at this and continued to bash anything that did not measure perfectly. In fact they were so sure that ordinary copper wire measured so perfect, the developing high end cable industry was thought to be a bad joke. In fact you still hear some engineers say that the best amplifier is a straight wire with gain. Wow, how wrong can you be!
To put it simply, tubes have a sonic signature that mimics acoustic music and transistors do not. Now I'm going to lay low while the cannon shots pass over my head. It is certainly true that good, let's say average, performance is easier to obtain with solid state hardware than with tube designs. However, well designed tube equipment coupled with a good output transformer will sound more musical and is more satisfying to listen to than solid state at any price. It does take a little maintenance, but it will warm your feet on a cold winter night. The next level of sonic achievement can be obtained by use of an all tube OTL - but that's another story.
The real improvement in audio reproduction in the last forty years has taken place at the ends of the chain - namely good transducers. These are the devices that change acoustic energy to electrical energy and back again. Even the CD player, which begins its life with solid state technology, is a major advancement in transducer technology. Better analogue circuitry has resulted in very good sounding digital information recovery, but it still lies in the realm of the vacuum tube to produce the recorded sound musically and with realism.
You will notice that I don't use the term accuracy. This throws us back into the engineer's argument with the artisans that the most accurate is the best. The answer to that is a flat no."
I'll tell you this. Too much tube equipment does "sound like tubes", in my opinion. "Tube" does not necessarily mean "lack of transparency" although I think there is plenty of tube gear out there that can give you that impression. Syrupy mids, etc. That is not the good stuff. If you ever hear the good stuff you will know the difference. Try an OTL amp and go from there...
From www.joule-electra.com:
"WHY TUBES?
A COMMENT ON TUBES VERSUS TRANSISTORS FOR REPRODUCTION OF RECORDED MUSIC
By Jud Barber
President, Joule Electra
I first became interested in Audio in the early fifties, well before transistors and other high tech materials became available to the Audio Industry. We were constantly looking for ways to improve in the quality of sound production, even before the development of stereo vinyl. Stereo tapes were available, but the program material was so limited that few people had invested in two channel systems,
Instead some of us went to great extremes to try to improve the realism of our playback system, I remember well my first three channel, monaural system which used passive high level crossovers to divide the music spectrum into three audio bands. The crossovers were at 500 hertz and 5000 hertz and separate amplifiers were used for each of the three frequency ranges. The results were not particularly good, but we thought it was great, being driven more by the quantity of hardware in the system than by sonic splendor.
Then came the first stereo vinyl recordings which were really very good even today, when played with state of the art turntable cartridge systems. The problem was the transducers, both at the beginning and the end of the playback system. Compliance without excessive resonance was an elusive goal for the cartridge designers at the time. The first cartridge I bought, a Grado, was probably the first they ever designed. It weighed several ounces and really made a great sinker for fishing line. As a retriever of the nuances of audio from fragile vinyl it was a disaster.
The tube technology used for amplification was very mature by this time and probably much better than we realized. It was the transducers that were limiting the quality of reproduced sound. A good phono cartridge was extremely difficult to make and when the design was good it was very difficult to make them in quantity with the same level of performance. Later, in the fifties and early sixties, transistor equipment became available and everyone was entranced by the absence of noise and ease with which good specifications could be achieved for a modest cost.
In fact, it was the transistor that prompted me to quit designing and building tube-based equipment. Even very simple solid state circuits performed better on the workbench than my most sophisticated tube designs. At the time I decided that it was the answer to the quest for the grail in amplification and I began to look for the pot of gold at the rainbow's end. Oddly enough, it was not to be found and sound reproduction seemed to have reached a plateau that was good, but not great. By the mid seventies virtually all space-age technology had seeped into the audio world and transducers were steadily improving.
By the early eighties the advent of the CD player (unfortunately transistor based) was revolutionizing the beginning of the audio reproduction chain and the new materials available were allowing designers to develop phono cartridges and speakers with dramatically improved characteristics. But there was still something missing in most music reproduction. No one really understood why, even with hardware that measured magnitudes better than that available in the fifties and sixties, recorded music still did not sound very good let alone create an illusion of the real thing.
I should have been able to make the discovery that turned this thing around, but being an engineer, I was convinced that what measured the best, sounded the best! For fifteen agonizing years the audio community struggled with the realization that tube hardware used judiciously in a playback system almost always produced a more enjoyable sound and a better illusions of live music.
The engineers laughed at this and continued to bash anything that did not measure perfectly. In fact they were so sure that ordinary copper wire measured so perfect, the developing high end cable industry was thought to be a bad joke. In fact you still hear some engineers say that the best amplifier is a straight wire with gain. Wow, how wrong can you be!
To put it simply, tubes have a sonic signature that mimics acoustic music and transistors do not. Now I'm going to lay low while the cannon shots pass over my head. It is certainly true that good, let's say average, performance is easier to obtain with solid state hardware than with tube designs. However, well designed tube equipment coupled with a good output transformer will sound more musical and is more satisfying to listen to than solid state at any price. It does take a little maintenance, but it will warm your feet on a cold winter night. The next level of sonic achievement can be obtained by use of an all tube OTL - but that's another story.
The real improvement in audio reproduction in the last forty years has taken place at the ends of the chain - namely good transducers. These are the devices that change acoustic energy to electrical energy and back again. Even the CD player, which begins its life with solid state technology, is a major advancement in transducer technology. Better analogue circuitry has resulted in very good sounding digital information recovery, but it still lies in the realm of the vacuum tube to produce the recorded sound musically and with realism.
You will notice that I don't use the term accuracy. This throws us back into the engineer's argument with the artisans that the most accurate is the best. The answer to that is a flat no."