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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 williamdc

williamdc
47 posts
 
It is a mistake to assume that tube equipment is less "accurate" than solid state gear.

Here is a recent M.I.T. thesis you might be interested in looking at:

http://web.mit.edu/cheever/www/cheever_thesis.pdf

On page 26, for example, Cheever discusses the 45 tube:

"The type 45 produces the most linear open loop transfer characteristic over a large portion of its operation range of any device I have tested, solid state or otherwise."

"In chapter 2 I show that the open-loop behaviour of an amplifying element strongly determines the end circuits subjective sound quality".
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