The tube vs SS debate is older than this forum! And it was worn out when it arrived here. Only thing you have to know is: Tubes rule!
Tube vs. Solid State Amplifiers
I found this really good link regarding the differences:
https://www.caryaudio.com/2018/06/04/vacuum-tube-vs-solid-state/
I've heard some (who are much more knowledgeable than me) say that a tube amp and solid state amp which are rated at the same output power in practice will not drive a speaker to the same level, that in selecting amplifier power levels, you would get similar results from lower powered tube amps.
I thought it would be interesting to see what those who know much more about this subject would contribute to this discussion.
https://www.caryaudio.com/2018/06/04/vacuum-tube-vs-solid-state/
I've heard some (who are much more knowledgeable than me) say that a tube amp and solid state amp which are rated at the same output power in practice will not drive a speaker to the same level, that in selecting amplifier power levels, you would get similar results from lower powered tube amps.
I thought it would be interesting to see what those who know much more about this subject would contribute to this discussion.
77 responses Add your response
Well if it isnt the super special retired at 40 guy !!! Yay !!. Clearly you have too much time on your hands. You still have not learned to do a little background on someone before you go on bumping your gums into uncharted T and make a fool of yourself. AGD chose me because this is a company of substance not façade. Truth and not charade. Same reason I chose AGD. It just so happened they represent the most cutting edge amplifier technology in this industry. While AGD values cosmetic as art, and decided to create the physical embodiment of their circuits within functional sculpture is something that clearly exists in the strata above your melon. (Melone in Italian) People who are passionate about music do not consider anything visual when critiquing how good music sounds. Its why the worlds Artists can look however they want. Something called freedom of expression. Clearly you feel threatened by this so you blindly lash out against it. Art freaks you out because you dont understand it. So what does your super special retired at 40 rhetoric get you here ? Jack Stool. You just missed out on what very well may be the highest performing amplifier yet experienced in HiFi. You let your unfounded, premature judgement of someone you do not know blind you. Very irresponsible and completely passe. Its Anger Management circa 1987. I can tell you right now AGD is not a brand for you. Our switching speed is too high. We have no compatible resonance. McIntosh is your amp. Its got great resale value and everybody knows what it is, right ? Yes. People that understand AGD dont require an exit clause, we know its staying. We knew it 5 minutes into listening. Parting words of wisdom to the guy in early retirement trying to understand HiFi. The best products in this industry are the ones you’ve never heard of. By the time they become so popular, everyone knows them, its too late . The company has been sold to bankers and the product has had the soul bled from it. |
If sticking a candle in the middle of an ashtray can be considered art then your spot on. I dont buy ANY gear regardless of how it sounds (Amp or Speaker) if I dont like the appearance as well. Not alone in that category. Sorry but if I owned SAKS on 5th avenue I wouldnt hire Oscar Madison to be the Clerk behind the Louis Vuitton counter. No anger here. Nothing to be angry about. Just observation. Cutting edge?? Product is already 4-5 years old. I dont own any Mcintosh gear and I havent since my very 1st purchase...live and learn. |
Hate to be crotchety here but artistic expression in Industrial Design is secondary to making money. A lot of research and design by Volkswagen, Apple, etc… is to determine an aesthetic that will drive consumerism. If a manufacturer misses the mark in terms of it’s Industrial or Graphic Design, that determiner is supported primarily by a lack of revenue. Aesthetic principles however should support the functionality of the product, just as Set Design should support the play it was created for. There have been numerous times when I’ve found certain products to be less than visually appealing however they sold well and so there was no incentive for the manufacturer to change its appearance. So to each his own but for the company, it’s just a business decision. |
| Post removed |
Ive got about 15 amps and at least Half are Tube Amps. Never commented on your appearance at all. I have NO IDEA what you look like nor do I care. Maybe I should have said RUDY from "Used Cars" instead to get the point across. Jay wants you to post another 1000 word Tirade on his thread all in 1 sentence again. It will be completely ignored just like the last one. Nobody cares about what you think anymore than they care what my opinion of the appearance of these amps are. Best of luck moving your "art". 4-5 years and hardly anybody has ever heard of them. If they were a Vinyl Record they would be in the Cutout Bin. If smoking comes back in vogue I’ll order some of those ashtrays from you. You wont be pocketing $3000+ per pair from me though. PT Barnum indeed. If these amps are so wonderful and you have total conviction why are you not re-investing all those people's money and put it into ADVERTISING??? Thats how one makes a product become KNOWN....not word of mouth from the same 3 guys on Audiogon who are obviously shilling for you. Put your money where your mouth is...Business 101. |
I have a tube preamp and SS amp. I've listened to both tube and SS amps. They both can sound great. I shied away from tube amps due to the risk of tubes going bad or bursting. An excellent sounding amp is still an excellent sound amp. Listen to Audio Research amp versus a Naim or Boulder unit and I think you may recognize there's more than one way for excellent sound. Are exellent tube amps with the price in money and the time (warmup, service, etc)? |
I had a conversation with a friend of mine who teaches piano. She has a refurbished Steinway grand in her living room and was thinking about getting rid of it and buying another. Different piano manufacturers came up, Weber, Bechstein, Bosendorfer, Baldwin, Yamaha, etc… The focus topic was; ‘which of these piano makers could create an outstanding grand piano’? We both agreed to the same answer, ‘all of them’. My thought is that both, solid state amplifier makers and tube amplifier makers make wonderful sounding amps but who is able to shell out the money to buy them? |
riaa_award_collectors_on_facebook. It appears you dont like it when the narrative does not agree with yours. Its very ironic you dont want me to disagree with a thread , when its OK for you to do exactly what you accuse me of except you want to disparage. Its clear whats important to you and your friends is to limit yourself to the corporate widget brands so that they are easier to sell on the second hand market. Nothing wrong if that’s the goal, because everybody that knows nothing about audio knows those names and thinks they are the top brands and sound the best. This is why people keep selling off gear and buying a different piece. The gear does not do what the marketing says or implies. It falls short and costs a premium. I stand against this practice. Marketing en full regalia is what investment bankers do. People that push crap they couldnt care less about as its about the profit numbers before the product and how well it performs. In other words you are talking about products that require advertising to sell. AGD Innovates and Innovation is something done in place of buying ads. Besides you can hide nearly anything behind good marketing . Look at William Hung "She Bang" marketing can make anything a superstar. While power selling widgets on Amazon may be your thing, its not AGD’s nor mine. AGD actually cares about building a better amplifier, and does so clearly. Because you hold looks so important, even in an industry where sound is clearly more important, you relegate yourself to old technology and otherwise complete mediocrity. Stereophile just raved about the AGD amp from the show last weekend. Seems that people who REALLY know high end audio are very impressed with the design. https://www.stereophile.com/content/agd-gran-vivace-gan-tube-monoblock-amplifier-andante-pre-dac-str... anyways , have fun listening I cant waste any more time with this. There are roughly 30 pair in the field and many more coming. |
I think my life long Audio journey experience has lead me to believe now OTL are the most superior to my opinion against Any SET amplifier or Solid State amplifier as long as you Match the OTL Amps to a 16-ohms Speaker!!! Owning 845, 211, 805, 45s EL34s KT88 120 and 300Bs and a mix of Japanese made tube amps purchased from ebay and direct from Sound-gate in Japan. The only SET Amp i have not tried but curious about is the 212 super large tubes. To my Ears OTL gives me everything i want from a Solid State & from a SET Tube Amplifier in one with out the trade-offs I am not into Artificial Distortion and syrupy mushy or Lush sounding Amplifiers i find that after sometime i get sick of it. I need an amp that can handle any type of music i throw at it. I gave up on Solid State few years back over time i gave up on SET Amplifiers after trying and buying and loosing a ton of money on resale. Got tired of Changing tubes constantly trying to improve on it. Once I went down the OTL route with Speakers to match it was the end of my Amp-Speaker Journey. |
So for an OTL amp, you’re in need of a 16-ohm pair of speakers which I would think is rather limiting. As I’ve mentioned above, there are amplifiers that offer sound characteristics equal to the best of both tube and solid state. I can’t understand why someone would overlook those manufacturers if that sound quality is what there looking for. |
As I’ve stated earlier, in general, solid state amps are more like professional tools and tube amps are more like items of luxury that are too pricey per given performance. they’re similar to super cars like Bentley, Bugatti, Maybach. I’ve always preferred Toyota, because these cars/trucks have everything you need and almost nothing you don’t need. |
So for an OTL amp, you’re in need of a 16-ohm pair of speakers which I would think is rather limiting.@goofyfoot Just so you know, this statement is false. Smaller OTLs are nice on 16 ohms but FWIW the most popular speakers for many years with our M-60 monoblocks was the Merlin VSM which is about 6-8 ohms. Merlin showed with Joule Electra at shows so its not just about us. Our bigger amps like the MA-1 and MA-2 can do very nicely on 4 ohm loads. |
@goofyfoot https://www.lineartubeaudio.com/products/zotl-40-reference-amplifier Scroll down for speaker recommendations. |
Guess maybe if you tried a modern quality tube amp with quality tubes like Ayon, AR, Macintosh, Jardis, Quicksilver, AH Qualiton, Quad or the like you would have found the joy many of us have.Owning 845, 211, 805, 45s EL34s KT88 120 and 300Bs and a mix of Japanese made tube amps purchased from ebay and direct from Sound-gate in Japan.I am not into Artificial Distortion and syrupy mushy or Lush sounding Amplifiers i find that after sometime i get sick of it. I need an amp that can handle any type of music i throw at it. But to each their own and enjoy what you have. |
certainly would like to own an Atmasphere valve amp. Understanding the options better would help in deciding which one.In the smaller amps there are three options- copper foil Teflon V-Caps for coupling capacitors in the amps, additional filter capacitance in the output section (useful for keeping IMD down at higher power levels) and the Caddock resistor option. In all cases these options are available so you don't have to open up the amp to 'tweak' it. We've seen audiophiles do this sort of thing for decades and most of the time (not all) they actually do more harm than good. So we offer the most effective tweaks in advance. The larger amps like the MA-1 have some of the options as standard; the MA-2 and MA-3 have all of them as standard. |
@goofyfoot wrote: "atmasphere, certainly would like to own an Atmasphere valve amp. Understanding the options better would help in deciding which one. " I’m one of Ralph’s dealers and also a speaker manufacturer. If by "the options" you mean "speakers that work well with Ralph’s lower-powered amps", that depends in large part on the specifics of the speaker’s impedance curve. Sometimes it is possible to tweak the impedance curve a bit without otherwise affecting the speaker. The Zero Autoformer from Paul Speltz is one way of doing so, and there are other ways which are also benign. If you have a particular speaker in mind, shoot me an e-mail or a message and maybe I can offer some thoughts. Eight ohm speakers can work very well with Ralph’s smaller amps if they have compatible characteristics, so you are not limited to 16-ohm speakers. Duke |
I bought my Audions direct from Alberto. Had nothing to do with OCD Mikey. You don’t want to see what the fuss about is, your choice. Meanwhile those who know by direct experience, know exactly what I’m talking about. These amps are a game-changing experience to golden ears. If they didn’t so ‘rock my world’ so to speak, I would have returned them without regrets. I have no time for hype as this is serious money. That said it’s worth every penny. So good I’m actually upgrading to the Gran Vivaces. Happy Listening :) |
The differences between tube and solid-state lie within their circuits, featuring different components depending on the design. Tube amps work through voltage, needing an output transformer to convert it to the current running throughout the wiring and finally into the speakers. Solid-states are driven by current from the output devices, so they typically have a single power transformer and silicon transistors – offering a cleaner and more detailed sound overall. I found a relevant post about this, maybe you would check that |