Tubes Do It -- Transistors Don't.

Damn Asa, you did it again! Great post.

Unsound, virtually any PA system anyone in this country would have heard a live event amplified through in the last 30+ years would be solid state (this, BTW, has almost nothing to do with sound per se, and everything to do with lightweight, cool-running, durable, and inexpensive high-power capability). I have owned many tubed guitar and bass amps, but if this is what you're referring to, the analogy is inherently flawed. Such amps are to be considered part of the instrument, and as such participate intimately in the creation of the sound - not the reproduction of it. (I do think, however, that being a player who has used both tubed and SS instrument amplifiers extensively will give one a valuable insight into how these technologies can respond differently to the music's touch.)

Asa, with all due respect some individuals "who after a long progression of evolution in stereo" say that solid state is better than tube because it's true to them. Often they say that while they were enamoured with tubes they felt the need to return to fidelity. There sure seems to be a lot of folks here on Audiogon who have gone from tubes to Pass. While I disagree that your evidence is empirical. The fact that so many people agree with your origianl statement is worthy of contemplation. The satisfaction that you recieve from tubes seems to be echoed from many others as well. The fact that solid state ususally measures better than tubes either indicates that tubes offer a euphonic colorization or that we haven't the unbiased equipment to measure solid states shortcomings or that we have different priorities when it comes to sonic short comings. IMHO it's the latter. I look forward to an update of this discussion when there are more digital amps available.

Zaikesman, yes I was referring to instrument amplification and your point is well taken.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. What I am seeing here is simply a re-hashing of the old "measurements" argument that was totally de-bunked, and trashed over 20 years ago. The measurements do not reflect the sound of the equipment when it is used in real world applications. Yet people still cling to this dead horse. And it gives rise to these incorrect statements about tube colorations and distortion, in comparison to SS amps' colorations and distortions which are usually designed from the ground up to have great measured specs, but can't cut it as well in the listening room. Look, a cheap Yamaha reciever will measure out better than a Ongaku amp in the lab. Is there anyone who thinks that the Yamaha will sound better or be more truly accurate at reproducing music than the Ongaku? Puhleeeese. If measurements are your thing, then go out and buy a set of test instruments and hook your SS amp up to them and watch the meters move. If sound is your thing, then buy a good tube amp and hook it up to your speakers and enjoy music. If you think for one minute that those specification measurements are going to tell you anything about the real world capability of that amp, then you are sadly mistaken. Specs are a marketing scam, and that is all they are. I am very surprised that people on this board are still under the same misconceptions that were thrown out the window 20 years ago. The only spec I need to know is if the unit will turn on. The rest is done with the ears. By the way, the THD of this post was <.00000001%. Wanna buy it?

TWL, I think you are putting too much emphasis on Unsound's mentioning specs. Asa, as has been pointed out to you, there are a great number of tube users switching to Pass solid states, class A amps, and hybrid amps. The same can be made of ss users crossing paths with the former.

I am wondering what definition of "space" we are discussing. Coming from a science background, I can only envision a "formless waste."

If it is that all that pervasive thickness that clings to you like a muggy summer day I left behind when I switched to Pass from what I admit wasn't the last word in valve technology, than I don't miss it. If it is the sense of performance ambience that is delineated by location acoustics you want, then what you need is a transparent amp. Secondly, also bare in mind, to reach that end, the choice of speaker is even more important.

I'm partial to both ss and tube camps. I have found a way to harness both's positive attributes, leaving behind negatives. It works for me.

TWL, actually the Total Distortion of your post was 100%. I suppose you use those arguements with the judge for a speeding ticket. "Gee Mr. Judge, it didn't feel that fast, no matter what the instruments indicate".

Lighten up! Its just a discussion about why some people prefer Tubes over SS, not a personal attack.

Salut, Bob P.

Okay, I'm out of this thread. Go ahead and hug your measurements. The funny thing is that this argument was over and done with 20 years ago, and many of you haven't even caught on to that yet. I just hate to see people floundering around in the dark. Just in case you need an update, the news in 1980 was that specs don't tell the story. Nothing has changed about that since. I thought this was an audiophile site.

I'm with Twl; never even read the specs written in your amp manual - ooo6% is meaningless. It is the final sound that counts. Then again, just saying tubes rule, says nothing, except that of your personal experience.

Great tubes are expensive. I use to employ 22 tubes to do the job of powering my ribbons. I just spent $100 on a pair of small (5751) tubes for my cd player. At that rate, I would spend $1100 for the whole lot. Anybody who knows valve amps, know that what you tube it with is crucial. Most people I know use Telefunken and spend $80 - over $200 for each small 12AX7 tube. Now we are talking big money.

I enjoy all the benefits of tube sound with out all the expense. It's even better with vinyl....And no tubes.

Specs like everything else in the world can be used or abused. I'm quite sure that the manufacturer used specs in the development of your tube equipment. Don't you guy's narrow down the field of appropriate equipment by power and impedance tolerance? Aren't the taps on your tube amps labled by Ohms instead of A or B or 1 or 2. While our ears are the ultimate test equipment to toss everything else out is like throwing the baby out with the bath water. While specs may have yet to produce the ideal equipment, they probably have saved us from the worst.

I'd like to toss out my own empirical tale for comment. I have a Placette pre-amp with a headphone jack. I have both a CJ tube amp and a Pass X-150 SS amp. The CJ does some wonderful things and, in some important respects, sounds more lifelike than the Pass (which, by the way, has never sounded particularly tubelike to me).

Now, back to the headphones. Which amp, playing though my speakers, sounds more like the headphones coming off the Placette? It's the Pass, no doubt about it.

Measurements, be damned, what is a rational person to conclude from this? I conclude that the Pass passes the signal with greater fidelity and the CJ with less fidelity. The end result with the CJ may be more effective musically, but this must be the result of adding something that isn't there or otherwise altering the signal, must it not? Is there another conclusion?

/dan

The accuracy thing bugs me. Nothing out there is accurate. Every amp presents a facsimile of the musical event, and none is true to it. Some of the SS people just want to push the "science" thing, but it's all for naught.

Again, measurements basically mean crap. I agree with Twl that this should have been discarded long ago. I remember all the older SS amps I had with 0.0001% distortion. They sounded like garbage.

The ultimate question is: which sounds more like real music being reproduced -- tubes or transistors? My experience tells me tubes, but I started this thread to see other's opinions, and I'm open to them. But let's not fool ourselves into thinking what we are listening to is accurate.....nothing is.

Perhaps nothing is accurate, but isn't fiedelity what we aspire to?

Aaaaahhh, ASA, it also felt good to read your fine analysis. I love my Spectral system, especially when I am after the intricacies of a given composition, letting my mind follow the musical weavings the composer wrought, analysing and marvelling at a structure, which show mastery of the craft. With the Jadis heated up, I fall into the music, let myself be carried away, forget all until there is nothing but the music....and sometimes even beyond that. It is exactly as you say and there to be experienced and difficult to argue it away.

If all tube amps sounded the same and all SS amps sounded the same, then maybe this argument would have a verdict. Actually, it is the design and implentation of these technologies that make the most difference and should be debated.

Even if you concluded that all tube gear generally sounds alike, the other components of a system (especially speakers) can dictate whether SS or tube gear is preferred. In my system, I have found even more exceptions, so unless you have the exact same system, I can't contribute much information that would be helpful.

My one possible contribution is to Kevziek regarding his initial comments. If the McCormack Rev A is the best SS amp you listened to, then your conclusions may be incomplete. I have a Rev A and it is a great amp, but it does not come close to Rev A Gold (which I also have) in delivering the virtues you ascribe to tubes. There are other SS amps (price aside) that may also challenge your assumptions about what transistors can do.

Drubin, that's what I've been saying. What cd player are you using? The Pass X amp acts as a signal magnifying free flowing conduit. According to a professional audio system designer I know, the Pass X and XA stand alone. He says, "No one combines execution and sheer circuit-inspiration as completely as Nelson (Pass)"

A group of audiophiles witnessed my system change it's stripes completely, time after time, as we inserted many of currently available cd players. The Pass just got out of the way completely. Sounds swung from warm and wooly, to steely clinical. Among the auditioners, a Musical Fidelity got the nod as the most listenable. It sounded overly lush to me. I still liked best the clean tube sound of my Jolida 100.

Kevziek, I respectfully disagree with your generalization that all amps have a sound. I don't want my amp to have a "sound." Check out the literature concerning modern amp building. There is a small group of designers, led by Nelson Pass, that firmly believe simple circuits are better. Taking that mantra to the outer limits is how Nelson has been able to create the monster X 1000 (kilowatt) that preserves the sweetness, staging, and detail of very simple circuitry.

It is with his ingeniously invisible amp, the X-150, that I have been able to preserve the very best of the Sylvania tube sound coming from my cd player.

Thank you all for your comments. Even though we disagree, lots of smart people with measured responses. Isn't that nice? You know, not so, er, "unilateral".

twl, thank you for pointing out the inherent flaws in relying completely on empiric evidence to draw conclusions.
Unsound, thank you for pointing out, that even though only a partial view of reality, empiric evidence is still valid and should be considered and not discounted.

I agree with both positions. The problem comes in when people become attached to one assumption or the other, which, by operation, negates the opposing pole completely.

Unsound, I want to address some issues you brought up; if not explicitly, then implicitly.

It always is interesting to me that people adopt assumptions without reflecting on the fact that these assumptions themselves rest upon deeper assumptions. A huge assumption adopted by 96% of post modern western culture regards "science", and the attachment to this assumption effects how you choose your stereo components (ie. what sound you conclude has "fidelity"; Unsound's implied measuring description for being closer to the Truth/Sound Absolute).

First, if we are being truly rigorous, assumably like a scientist, we should ask, What IS "science"? Well, I can't walk out my front door and point to it, so its not a thing. Its an abstraction used to encompass a set of assumptions about "reality" (like any philosophy), and like many assumptions it seems to become monolithic over time and through significant attachment to its ideas - but it is only a set of assumptions.

Then we should ask, what are the assumptions of "science"? Science assumes that all truth is derived from the manipulation and observation of changes in matter over time; we label this with the abstraction "empiric method", and it derives from the philosopher Descartes' ideas (whose worldview we call "Cartesian"). Galileo expanded this by saying that reality is like a machine and we can see the changes in matter easiest by observing certain variables of form: volume, length, etc. In other words, truth comes to us - or rather, we pull truth out of reality - if we limit ourselves to quantitative observation of physical reality (matter, or form). There are other assumptions, but these are the basic ones. The important part of this, however, is to then see that "science" has also, by implicit operation, adopted an even deeper assumption: that all ideas contrary to its assumptions are non-existent, or, if conceded, effectively non-existent because any knowldge outside "science" is inherently unknowable. Through this denial of that which is not itself -ideas not its ideas - it effectively reduces any other possible means of seeing truth (not coincidentally, the philosphy that science supplanted, medieval Judeo-Christian doctrine, applied this same assumption to science, ie. all rigid paradigms of assumptions deny that beyond itself).

Interestingly, the assumptions that "science" rests upon have been thoroughly deconstructed in the past fifty years and this is not disputed, even by most philosophers who love "science". Basically, Popper, Kuhn, Freyerabend etc. have shown that science itself can not stand up to its own assumptions. I'm not going to go into it, way too long, but essentially the reductionism used by science has led to the deconstruction of itself.

So, if scientific materialist assumptions have been shown to be partial, even using the rules of science, then why do people still cling to their attachment to them, as if they are sancrosanct? Isn't that irrational?

We can point to the relationship of capitalism (another abstraction, whose meaning is mutually reinforced self-interest, or another way, mutually-reinforced predation) and science, whereby science's power over matter results in technology. OK, yes, and many other surface symptoms, but there is an assumption still deeper in science - and that effects those who listen to mussic and who, unreflectively, adhere to its worldview.

If you look above, you'll see I said that science "pulls" truth from reality. In other words, an underlying, determitive assumption of science (as it operates in the world) is to assume that the truth it can derive is obtained (like an object) by taking truth FROM reality. This assumption is how you approach reality, namely, in an active way where the matter of reality is seen by the mind as "out there"; reality releases truth only with our minds' objectifying manipulation of it.

Now, in stereo an orientation of this type produces certain choices; you choose components that produce a sound that is congruent with you orientation. Hence, if you adhere to "science" - and all its assumptions, even if you are not aware of all of them - they produce a filtering effect on what you choose. In this case, each of the cascading assumptions described above produces a certain choice (or argument supporting that choice), namely, an adherence to the assumption on objectifying matter produces a bias torwards believing that a soundfield is most "accurate" or has the most "fidelity" to truth where objects are primary (carving out of sources as things and implicit reduction of space, even to the point where space is seen as a void, ie, non-existent, as with the above poster who said space was "formless waste"); an adherence to assumption that such truth is found by examining the soundfield with an active identifying mind that defaults towards greater detail in sources (bounding them into more easily identified objects); an adherence to "science" as the primary diviner of truth coupled with a recoil from all ideas that are not "scientific"; a bias torwards "scientific" means (measurement)with all outside of that derived knowledge significantly relegated, if not denied, etc.

It is NOT coincidental that those who prefer SS that carves out images into source-objects, who want "accuracy" through Galilean quantitainve means, who favor source-object over space, are the same minds who adhere, unreflectively, to the assumptions of science. These peoples' stereos create a soundfield "out there" as if it were a thing because they are orientated towards reality in this way.

And this effects how they listen and what they are willing to concede can be heard by others. When you sit down initially to listen, the active mind carries over from your active day (from a capitalistic culture chasing the quantitative accummulation of objects) and looks at sound as if it were "out there", seeing the detail, gauging with thinking the quantitative volume of what's produced. But, as you sink deeper and thinking fades, the concerns of that thinking mind fade and other truths of the music are revealed; with the fading of objectified thinking that which not an object (space) rises as an integral part of the music, and the other intra-related nuances noted in my first post. But the active mind, the scientific attached mind that believes it must be active to see truth fails to let go of that thinking, fails to open to the music in receptivity. In that recoil from opening to other ways to see truth (or to listen)the actively-attached mind denies any deeper levels as...non-existent.

It is not a coincidence that people who listen to SS as the diviner of truth - a technology that values accuracy of source detail over space - are the same people who trumpet "science" as the primary means to truth and any other means, or the levels of listening depths accomplished by other menas, as non-existant.

They must stay active, they must have objects of detailed sound, they must reduce all that is not a sound-object into "formless waste" of non-existence, they must apply their minds to the soundfield "out there" and rearrange and carve its sound-objects.

Above all, beneath all, they must not become receptive. Because you see, the ability to become receptive is attained not by grasping at the soundfield "out there" but by letting go of your attachment to do so.

It is very simple, actually; but not simplistic.

Thank you for your patience in reading this.

Hello Detlof,
"Perhaps it is the ambient noise of a life event , which I miss in classical CDs. Instead of blackness, I expect to hear those subtle cues, which tell me of the size of the hall, those reverbs from the side-, or backwalls, which simply are not there"

I have "that" what you've missed!...on my system. They are all there!!! And they are in CD's format.:-)

Regards

ISTT

On Pass. I like it: had a 30 for about a year, and have recommended it to some people in the past. Ono was nice, etc. and were very similar in sound. Like it more than almost all other SS.

Yes, the SE topology, assuming that's the factor, does make Pass more "realistic" in terms of objective criteria and more musical (meaning: catalyzes seeping into the music and receptive state of listening) more than many SS units (I also have recommended to people the Lamm 1.1 hybrids for the same reasons).

With that said, the Pass units suffer from some of the same problems. Source projection contains more air, but leading transient still posseses a discernible "dryness" which increases in obviousness as energy increases and one approaches boundary between source and space (hence, still delineating that dichotomy). Power handling can help (with its own trade-offs) but not to great degree IMHO. The air around sources, in fact, seems more pressurized, but still dissipates as you move away from sources and particlarly in the furthest depth field. Space has tendancy towards sterility rather than "aliveness" in most circumstances (you can tip the tendancy a bit with component matching, so Pass has more flexibility in this regard, but the wall is still there on spatial performance).

Nice stuff, better than the rest, I like it more than mushy euphonic tube gear much of the time, but still not close in these respects. I'd go for a Lamm 1.1 before Pass.

Well here you have it, Audiogon meets the philosophy majors. I'm going home to have a can of my favorite beverage, or maybe a bottle, or maybe a can or maybe I'll pour the contents of the can in the bottle.

Jetter, you can also pilosophise with beer, sometimes even better and deeper. There is no contradiction there. 6chac, congratulations on your system. Which CD's do you refer to, which can really do this? Very curious... Cheers,

Hello Detlof, thanks, quite a few, but just to name one, the CD is Telarc/Mozart Requiem. That same CD was dull, opague, compress on my old system which I'd sold in 1992. Check my answers in other treads.

Regards

ISTT

Jetter, I wrote that when I was drunk! Sincerest apologies. I regret every word, just ignore it. Oh my God, what will happen to us if we read such things!!

Pass another cold one...

Asa, I've read with interest both of your treatises. You sound like an old friend of mine, a Professor of Philosophy. I haven't heard such an emotional science versus art lecture since my friend bent my ear over Science's inhumanity in dealing with philosopher Velikovsky and his planetary theory.

I, for one, need to see or hear to believe. I will not rest my beliefs on traditional myths. For instance, I have found, to my satisfaction, the science of evolution triumphs over myth; truck loads of circumstantial evidence supports the seventeenth Earl of Oxford over Shaksper of Stratford, and, thanks to science, today's best of audio selection is better than that of fifty years ago. The scientific method is very important in these matters. However, as an artist, I can also tell you this. Scientists don't know everything. Art is just as important. Nelson Pass knows this too. That is why he continues to simplify his products, knowing customers hear the difference.

Like you, I have heard the Pass sound a little dry, nothing like Krell, but definitely supplanted in the ss clade. I expected better. After rolling some cd player tubes, finding Mullard was musical, but veiling, Phillips flat and dull, etc. I settled on a half century old Sylvania set. Gone is any hint of dryness. Now the delivery is sweet, dynamic, sensory airy, and with great body. I had to stop and think about all this for a while, because I just listen to the music these days.

When it comes to reproduced music, I just trust my ear/brain. I wouldn't be carrying on this discussion if I hadn't had a gestalt audiophile experience one day. I had walked into a audio listening room in an old brick store and office building. I had been there before where I listened to the best audio equipment of the day. This day was different. Keith Yates (check out his site) the proprietor of the shop was nowhere to be seen. As I entered, I became aware of someone, distinctly in a room somewhere, playing a piano. What appeared to be great room dividers were sitting in Keith's marvelous room. After some investigating, I came to the conclusion the big dividers were not the source of the piano playing. How could they be? I was hearing and thinking a real performance in a real place. Resuming my search through the building for the person playing, I finally stumbled on the answer. This utterly convincing image was a mirage. A first rate vinyl assemblage played no small part in this aural triumph. The amp, surprise, was an early model Levinson, probably no. 20s. The real magic of the day lay in the Apogee Scintilla full range ribbon speakers.

I have been chasing that experience ever since, with no small matter of success. I think I am lucky to have heard such convincing trickery.

Sorry about the off topic stuff.

Detlof & ISTT, so do I on straight SS and CD, IF the recording is done right, i.e. recording the subtle phase information. Vinyl playback does a good job of introducing random phase information, thereby giving a good impression of live music.

Bob P.

Wow, Muralman1! am I that lucky? I am the proud owner of those early model ML.No-20s. :-)

Regards

ISTT

ISTT, the ML20 is cool looking, huh.

Hehehe, of course Muralman1, cool looking is first in my department. ;-) Tubes sucks, SS sucks. LOL

Rather than just reacting with "What a load" after reading Asa's post (no offense intended, Asa, but I do not buy your premises, inductions, or conclusions - sorry!), I thought, "I should instead try to think of something within it, or suggested by it (to me), that I can agree with."

As it relates to the header of this post, that is. And this is what I came up with:

It's not tubes - or transistors - that 'Do It'; It's your brain.

:-)

Pity I cannot meet you all in person. We'd have great discussions over much beer until we were so out of our brains, that in listening to 6chac's beautyfull ML -20 from Mark the Man, we suddenly would find, that ASA has been right all along! Cheers to all!

No Asa, my apologies. I was reading your discussion here at work and was taken aback if not a little envious of the stream of consciousness dissertation you laid out.
Thanks

Just read Tubegroover's response above. Excellent point. Moved my system recently to a new room - more acoustically dead. The FIRST thing I noticed when I turned on my SS amp is that the sound of individual instruments was decaying too rapidly to be satisfying. My more live listening room had concealed this with its high level of reverberation.

If you accept this premise, it raises an interesting question: It seems to me that a tube pre should not be able to compensate for shortened decay times determined by a downstream component.

You know, I know that I can shoot the wind with the best of them, but having dialogue, at all varying levels of (so-called) cognitive sophistication, is good. I try not to obfuscate, but realize that there are also some people out there who will challenge the ideas because I haven't defined my terms well enough. Its a line, and tough when you try to be as concise as you know how. That said, I know its a mouth-full.

On relevance. In the hiend, you have (so-called) Romantic Idealists on one side arguing that anything "scientific" is rigid denial and wanting "warm" music and on the other side those attached to scientific/technological explanations, each arguing from an absolutist position. This creates a "negative feedback" dialogue loop where the discussion has nothing to do with the merits and is propelled by intellectual territoriality (rationality defaulting to prey/predator instincts). Interestingly, this is the same situation in general culture: science has been shown to be great at manipulating matter and finding all kinds of truth that we can use to make all kinds of gadgets, but now we find that it can't tell us everything that is "human" (it provides functional knowledge that can lead to pleasure OR meaning, but doesn't, inherently, gaurantee the latter). Yet, we can't go back to mytho-magical medieval thinking either. The result of this is science arguing with anyone who wants to move beyond it on one side of the fence with people who want to move beyond science on the other side arguing that science is flawed (it isn't, only our use of that power is misguided). So you have people attached to form on one side arguing with people who define themselves as people-who-are-against-people-who-are-attached-to-form on the other (which is their own attachment, ie they define themselves not by whast they go towards, but by what they are not). This is a "negative feedback loop" of ego.

There is a third alternative: that science is not negated but fully integrated into a next sight, one that is not attached to being active (science vs. nature, pulling from the "what is", etc.) nor is attached to not being that (attached to their limited exposure to receptiveness, ie so-called "New Agers"). The mind that sees beyond both these attachments is the mind that transcends both and integrates both.

The hiend is interesting, at least to me, because unlike any other microcosm I can think of, you have the Romantic Idealists and scientific empiricists in such close proximity AND both engagaing in an activity together - essentially, a parallel run experiment on the mind, ie listening to music through technology devices. In other words, in the hiend, the matter-attached and the attached-to-against-matter-attached are both conducting the same experiment, something that can't be escaped by either in dialogue.

But what is truly interesting is that the people attached to active thinking to derive truth actually are listening to stereo and reaching states of listening (where they derive perceptive information, or truth)that are without thought; they are conducting an experiment on their own mind where they disprove their own assumptions. This can not be escaped by the materially attached: the mind moves from active thinking to a silence-absent-thought that itself reveals to them other information. Their denial of it, and their argument that only thinking and/or technology produces listening (truth), is symptomatic of their attachment.

OK, enough. I know I've tried everyone's patience.

Muralman: I love off the topic, which as I've said above, it really isn't. I don't think, however, that anything I said would regress to "traditional myth." In addition to categorizing any idea outside their own matrix of ideas as unknowable or non-existent, science also - in fact, its oldest recoil - claims that you are nothing but the mythological past, ie. all ideas not ours are regressions to mytho-magical worldviews, characteristic of the medieval Catholic Church that we've just moved beyond, says they. This is then used to claim that such ideas are inherently irrational, ie regressions, which, not surprisingly, we then don't need to consider because they are irrational. Nice irrational circularity, eh? You have to be more careful with these types of characterizations in this context; you've gotten it from a worldview that, I know looking at the rest of what you say, you don't identify with. You are too smart for that, truly. Apart from that, I think we see things about the same. You are a good writer to, BTW.

Zaikes: I agree its your brain - but again, not simply material: its your MIND. And not simply subjective - its your mind and "what is" out there, stereo or not. Subject/object, mind/matter are integral, participatory. The "what is" is SUSCEPTIBLE to your mind - and the scientific active thoughts it produces. "It" is not inert with your mind the only God.

Barefooted and naked of breast, I mingle with the people of the world.
My clothes are ragged and dust-laden, and I am ever blissful.
I use no magic to extend my life;
Now, before me, the dead trees become alive.

Ten Bulls

:-)

Fire, fire, run...

I don't want to get too deep into this...The the point of science is the endeavor to understand nature empericaly. The very nature of science requires one to let go of the whole in order to grasp the particulars. The mystical appraoach requires one to let go of the particulars in order to grasp the whole. I think both approaches lead to the understanding that the more we learn the more we learn how little we have learned. A balanced appraoach using both approaches will probably serve us best. This ever so elusive philosphy is called common sense.

6chac: Run, but not before you too, say something? Maybe I just didn't get it (although I liked it). Were you refering to the fact that this thread seems to be highjacked and there is no hope and, God, please, no more, and...Whatever the reference - you can tell us, or just me - it was a nice quote, one I wasn't aware of.

Mytho-magical shamanism aside, its true, you know. Did you intend that?

Well, Asa, I guess there's no denying that some of our brains 'Do It' more than others...

(Geez, this is beginning to resemble a Nike ad!)

To paraphrase the late Dr. Bronner (one of the only lunatic philosophers I actually have a *practical* use for, if you know what I mean - no need, I'm sure, to remind audiophiles what cleanliness is next to), Mind-Brain = All-One!

(No, this doesn't mean I don't think that there's actually an objective reality out there [or in here]; if I believe anything, I believe that. It's just that we can't know but an infitesimal fraction of it.)

Oh, and FWIW, I always do my level best to have no God(s) at all.

The fool in the last card of the Tarot, 6chac,is another image for this. Got nothing to do with God or mysticism, Zaike, it is just one who does not let science devour nature empireously always and all the time, to paraphrase Unsound...hence he's a fool of course, like tubelovers..and ASA speaking in the wilderness....

Detlof, this Tarrot card character appears analogus to the foolish child who said "the Emperor has no clothes".

Zaike, yes, kill the Buddha if you see him on the road, to Damascus or anywhere else, so to speak. Objectively, with the active mind, you can only know a fraction of it, one fraction at a time (or through putting the fractions back together). Subjectively, the very filtering lens of subjectivity ensures that you only see partially at any given time. But, seeing trans-objectively, trans-subjectively, both at once, neither separate, you can "know" the All.

Unsound: yes, science up til this point has been reductionist - break it into parts, watch the parts - but empiric method does not mean that integral conclusions can not be drawn. It depends on your orientation; the method is nuetral and discloses truth through breaking up or putting back together. I disagree on your definition of "mystical": it is not only concerned with the whole, because seeing the parts is also seeing the whole. You can look and see parts (reductionist-orientated scientist), you can look to see the whole (going up to a mountain and not coming down), or you can come down from the mountain, realize that the only "Zen" up there is the "Zen" you brought with you, that "it" is everywhere, and see parts and the whole at the same time - they are not exclusive perceptions. Transcending that belief is part of their integration.

My main point was that an active mind directed at sound/music only discloses certain truths, albeit important ones; to "see" more musical meaning, you must let go of that active urge/instinct and become receptive to the music. And, that these perceptions exist on a deepening contiuum of perception and that a belief in one over the other is a function of egoic attachment to an "idea", not what the experience/experiment itself discloses. The active mind is characterized by objectifying external reality as a series of "things-out-there" and derives from our predatory evolution, that has served us quite well. This mental faculty, because of its focus, focuses the experience of music through that cognitive lens, producing a mind that seeks to control the soundfield through the imposition of "accuracy". But there are deeper levels to listen from, and which require a receptive orientation to the external music. We can call this state "receptive" only to give it a label opposite from "active", but, in fact, it is not opposite from the thinking mind, but before it. The place where receptivity occurs is the ground of thinking, and is prior to it. Denial of the ground of receptivity is a denial of the source of thinking; the thinking mind denying its source, which is not separate from itself. That is irrationality, and the causal source of alienation, from a deeper experience of music, and the Music.

Asa, your well-spoken comments on "SPACE" are helping us get closer to defining some very important tube / transistor differences.

When you say the Pass amp will make "leading transients possess a certain dryness", I interpret this as follows: When a SS amp initiates the attack, there seems to be a certain sterility in that attack. There is a certain bluntness and deadness when compared to tubes. Yes, the attack is there and it is quick, but it doesn't sound quite right. It lacks the reality of the attack tubes provide. I believe this is what you are trying to convey, but I am afraid others will interpret "dryness" as accuracy and lack of exaggerated bloom or air. I don't believe it's that at all, but rather as I described.

I'm not sure what you mean by, "Air around sources is more pressurized, but dissipates as you move away from sources." The pressurized thing needs explanation. I agree that the air dissipates more quickly on SS -- it doesn't shoot out as far or for as long as tubes. It is truncated or damped out. It dies out.

Again, this observation is based on my limited exposure to the best of SS amps. But I fear that this will be the case with any SS device. I'm sure others will beat me over the head for this comment, but my fear is that this is the nature of transistors, i.e. switching silicon devices.

Asa, your response to what I say above will be valued. But hurry, before Muralman hits me over the head with his X-150.

space has sterility rather than aliveness

By the way, LIQUID does not have to mean colored or smoothed over. LIQUID to me describes a quality in tubes that is a certain form of transparency, where an instrument's attack and sound has a freeness to it, a clarity. A sound that has an aliveness to it, that is often lacking in SS. SS has more of a facsimile-type sound. A reproduced sound. A mechanical sound. Tubes just seem to RING OUT freely. All the many intricacies and components of the sound of an instrument seem more clearly defined and separated, yet they are integrated into the whole much better.

Liquid(ity): nice words; the pleasant, natural flow of transient notes, sounds, without the warning telling lights of a change in course of the music.
That's typical of many tubes, but also of some ss. In these cases, we're happy listening and I don't think we actually notice the paarticulars of the reproduction because the music is too involving.
I'm referring to the usual shortcomings-- tubes' bass, the ss's mid, the tubes high extension vs. the ss, the "ear-friendly" (but usually limited) upper register of tube vs. ss...
I now have ss amps that allow me to forget my old OTL and my little Jadis. However, my ss configuration is in a different class altogether: wide-bandwidth (whereas my tubes were "normal bandwidth", at best). They have enormous driving power in class A topology (a Goliath situation vs my little tubes). And yet, it's only now that my musical ear -- as opposed to the critical ear -- is happy(ier). Morale (mine): a good ss offers precision, control, power, extension, and electricity bills worthy of a seasoned audiophile -- but unless you can spend mega$ on ss, the musicality will always be a little wanting, hidden somewhere... Bottom line is: given a medium budget, select carefully for a good tube. If necessary, tweak it.

Honey, we have 3 trolls for dinner, tonight...Or you want lion meat, instead?

ASA, all that analysis, and still wrong? :-) Z man, wait till I see you! ;-)

Kevziek, I'm glad that we all (er, mostly me...) didn't scare you off your own thread!

On transients, yes, I couldn't say it any better. That's exactly it. I only used "dryness" because I didn't want to go into too much description when I was using up so much space on other things. Breath is the best to look at. It doesn't project the energy, the explosiveness, of, say a hard struck string, but, nevertheless, it has a leading edge transient. Meaning, that all sounds have a beginning as they move out in space. To project this movement, the source (singer/instrument in music)must project with varying force to create a wavefront (and here we see, again, that the sound is not separate from the space because the wavefront in not separate from the air). Transients which possess a disproportionate amount of energy loaded at the transient, relative to the core and decay of the sound, draw the thinking mind to them because they are not "natural"; the transient does not sound "real" because its sound is imbalanced. As the distortion rises in lesser components, the loaded energy carries that increased distortion at the transient and our thinking mind is even more drawn to it (as if it is an object), keeping us from deeper listening levels. Modern SS has done well at reducing distortive remnants, but not all. If you listen to SS breath it lacks a "wetness" that air from the lungs possesses and that effects how the stereo is able to replicate the projection as it moves in space. SS does not capture this "wetness", even though distortive "frission/tension" within the projection is reduced. The SS breath carries a steady "dry" character, while tube breath changes as it moves out, like wind hitting different surfaces differently, but in a subtle way because the energy is low, and carries the "wetness-of-air" even as the breath projection infinitely dissipates.

Second observation: as energy increases, the "dryness" of SS transient energy increases, again creating incongruencies from one time and the next - also not a part of how sound sounds in "reality"

Sound possesses an organic, continuous quality that is fully integrated with the surrounding space, so that it never occurs to us to even think about whether there is a sound separate from space. Tube replicates this existential quality of space/source; it replicates their integral relationship. SS creates dimensional/existential discontinuities that draw our attention, engage the examining thinking mind, and regardless of the distortion issue, causes a deep part of us, the part that instinctively apprehends space/time, or its unnatural absense, to sit up and listen - but not listen to music, but listen for disconsonant reality.

"Pressurized"....tough to find words to describe an existential quality that we live so within that we don't have a vocabulary to encompass a description of its absense. Space is not a thing; it is dimensional vessel that carries within itself all things - you, me, sound, everything. SS creates the impression of dimension (read: existence without motion of wavefront) directly around the projection, but then dissipates at an unnaturally quick pace and into a space that seems to drop off into a void. Since none of us have ever experienced non-existence, or even dissipation of dimension (there is no void in reality; even without things space is a dimensional vacuity, not a void, and even in our atmosphere there is no vacuity), this draws our mind at a very deep level towards identifying this most unusual spatial/void discontinuity.

Tubes, on the other hand, replicate the dimension of the space you are in right now to a greater degree, both in how they replicate space when no sounds are moving through (not a void), when space carries a sound wavefront (how sound symmetrically moves into, moves through and dissipates), and how two sounds intra-act in space (two instruments playing at once).

Tubes may have less "detail" for the identifying mind that wants sound to look like a statue garden "out there", but, I would argue, its rendition is less "real". The ability of a sound simulcrum to catalyze the mind to seep deeper IS the definition of musical; musical-ity is not a quality, but a progression of the listening mind. Tubes catalyze this progression to much greater degree than SS because they present existential qualities in a way that we find congruent, so that we never sit up and think of them (and is why they are so difficult to describe when we finally get around to it, and which is why our present audio vocabulary is insufficient to describe the current state of the hiend).

Greg has made the best point in the old tubes vs ss issue. "unless you can spend mega$ on ss, the musicality will always be a little wanting, hidden". He is saying that tubes offer a dimension to the music that ss partly misses. Thus ss sound may possibily have a tad of boredom (fatigue) after a few months. Tubes give texture, but a slight drawback in the extreme fq's. But have to say the little Jadis delivers a nice bass-punch.

Asa, thanks for the compliment about my writing skills. I accept that under protest because I think visually and writing is something of a disjunct from my real life. Don't presume that I am a duck out of water concerning myth and science, though, by reading my posts in an audio forum. Nuff said.

In your last post, you finally touched ground; something I can set my teeth into. I agree with you on the necessity of tubes. I will also agree that ss (I formally disdainly ID as SS) sounds less real than tubes. I loved my all tube setup. I converted a number of ss users over to tubes.

There was one thing missing though. One thing I knew was in my way of a believable stage image. One I knew was attainable based on my memory of the perfect audio moment fifteen years ago. The problem was the sound stretched from speaker to speaker. I can only think that is what you mean by air, Asa. I don't buy your definition. I want the performance to live on its own, divorced from speakers, sort of like fusion reaction suspended in a magnetic force field.

When I first witnessed Apogee magic fifteen years ago, I literally walked around the speakers - still I did not believe the music was connected to them. None the less, my perception of the piano and it's player was one within space, a room. This was due, no doubt, to the recital recording being made live, with all the natural reverberations, subtle as they are, carving out the confined space of a room.

Mind you, this whole image was due to the marriage of many factors: The live stage recording, a fine amp, glorious dipole speakers, and pristine vinyl.

Most music production is not so innocent. I won't go into that, as I am sure everyone knows studio works are as real as pictures of airbrushed centerfolds, after they get finished working it.

Asa, I don't hear you qualifying your music with air, except to say that it exists even in a noiseless room. You make no distinction between live events and manufactured events. I contend, you are merely perceiving noise floor.

The Pass is the cleanest ss around. That I know from my own wide experience. I can verify that with testimony from dependable sources, not reviewers. The ss difficulties you enumerated are minimized nearly completely. One gains dynamic range, simplicity, bass control and most important to me, very low noise floor. As I have written, placing tubes before the Pass forcefully tunes it's performance. Just the other day, a friend who is familiar with my audio journey, listening to my Sylvania tube substitution, exclaimed all dryness was gone. This particular tube's magic breathed life into voices and made high hats shimmer without loosing body and dynamics.

The cd media necessitates tubes. Vinyl is even better.

Unsound, this child wasn't foolish,only naiv, like a music lover amongst audiophiles and ASA, Buddha on the road to Damascus????--he must have been walking in his sleep---
6chac, how are you going to have the trolls? Broiled or steamed? Cheers,

Roast Detlof, roast...LOL

6chac, don't be a pest. If you have an opinion that is contrary to someone else's, state it with reasons. When you just say someone is wrong, over and over, it just makes me think you don't know why but want to make us think that you do, as if discussing it with us is somehow beneath you. It just makes me feel, in your safe room of anonymity, that you really don't have any reasons.

Mural. We will have to agree to disagree on Pass SS at this point. If you are happy, then I am happy for you. On air, all sound is projected, whether "real" or "manufactured" - which is still "real" ie no phenomena is outside "reality". If you mean studio vs. live, then yes, many studio productions create voids in their presentation between players. I tend heavily towards live recordings myself. Second, when I say "projected" that doesn't mean, implicitly, that any projection must be bound to the speaker plane, thus collapsing and bounding the soundfield while, concurrently, drawing our mind to the speaker face. You can have the simulcrum of a projected soundwave without that aural "image" being stuck on the speaker plane - just like live music, and which, again, is what tubes excel at.

"Noise floor" can impart the sensation of dimension and air (since, assumably, you would want that because sound in our atmosphere always moves within dimension containing "air", which is what atmosphere means, and why I used the term) or you can have a void (the sterile "blackness" that many refer to). "Black", a metaphoric visual term, is used to describe the absesne of sound from a reductionist perspective, ie it is the absense of light. Space is not to be characterized as if the source is "light" and the space is "black". Psychologically speaking, that choice in metaphor is symptomatic of a subtle relegation of sound projection vs. considerations of space - which, um, was what I've been talking about...

On "I can verify this [cleaness of Pass] from various sources, not reviewers", I would humbly suggest that you are the best source for yourself; looking to others is still subtle conformism, just like looking to reviewers for your senses of security. Verifica-tion begins and ends with yourself, that is the widest experience. But again, if you are happy with what you hear and others tell you they hear from Pass, then I am happy for you.

Yesterday, I was playing tennis at high school courts when the marching band started by to the football field for their practice. A blare came out of a trumpet, the boy kidding around. It wasn't musically consonant, but it was existentially so, because, well, it was "real". Tubes mimic this real-ness to a greater degree than SS, but I've never heard a stereo - tube or SS - that even came close to its real-ness.

Time to go listen to some music....