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
Jax2,

I find your sarcasm both annoying and refreshing. An oxymoron I know. But life is an oxymoron, or better still a paradox. Yet I continue in my passion, and also my obssesion to find the truth.

The fact that you choose to use profanity is of course YOUR choice. but it is also the CHOICE of the people around you not to hear IT. This is after all a community site, and you have no right to impose your profanity on people here. No more than you have the right to smoke a cigarette in a public establishment.

But of course I know how you are feeling about me BEING OFFENDED by your profanity. I once employed the use of profanity in my life. And of course I was quite offended when people were offended to my use of it. The same way I was offended when someone was offended by my cigarette smoke. I couldn't understand how someone could be offended by my choice of words, or my cigarette smoke until I decided to stop using vulgar language, and stopped smoking. Then I could easily see how both were offensive.

I'm sure there are things in your life that other people do, that you find offensive? But perhaps if you talk to them, they don't find them offensive, nor can they understand why you find them offensive.

Well, I won't comment any further. If you want to continue this theme, maybe you should read the " forum guide lines "

peace........
I think people who are offended by vulgar language are just thin skinned. Either way, i guess you have every right to be offended.

I think i gained a new insight to your position on why people who dont agree with you are "Lesser people" cause the way you talk you sure seem to have elevated yourself to the pinnacle of existance where non other is your equal.

I think ill stay down here in my shallow existance of vulgar debauchery and drink a couple beers and work on cars with my buddy Marco while we "Enjoy" solid state gear.

Too bad you are so elevated that you cannot appreciate not only the finer things in life, but the lesser ones as well eh?

Hey marco, if yer ever in the denver area, get ahold of me dude.
Tubes su** the big one!
They look like glowing phalluses and I think that is the biggest attraction! I don’t know about you but I don’t need no stinking glowing phallus sticken out of my amp!
Especially the whimpering SET crowd, the biggest bunch of tin-eared, Viagra popping losers on the planet since we had the Julian-Hirsh inspired "objective" audio craze of the 70's... If they aren't deaf their damn good actors! WHY do they insist that since this is all THEIR feeble minds can grasp in audio, that everyone else who disagrees with them is an idiot. Frickin wankers like Hiroyasu Kondo and the rest of the post-modern feudal militants. First we are overrun with their stinken Hondas and now this.

Good day,
I remain
That's hilarious KT88...."Annoying and Refreshing"!! Well, I don't think I'll be selling any widgets or consumables with that logo. Chew Doublemint Gum for an Annoying and Refreshing break from your day! I'm glad at least you find some redeaming virtue to them.

Hey, no worries on my part, and I completely understand that you are offended by my language. I really just use it for humor and emphasis. Some folks actually find it amusing. Some, like yourself, do object to it. My wife finds it rather crass and offensive too...........so I get it, and no, I am not offended nor annoyed that it offends you, and am glad that you speak up about it. It's funny, but I don't speak that way at all, or even remotely like that. I do like to write that way....it is another side of me I guess a repressed side. I really ought to get some analasys for this! I sure think it provides some comic relief from some otherwise stone-serious threads about the importance of the Emperors New System.

I do have this to say about your comparison of this infringement of your personal rules of etiquette (cultivated and refined by, no doubt, wisdom beyond my grasp), to smoking a cigarette in public: There is a world of difference. With a cigarette you'd have the choice to breath in the smoke, or leave the room, and presumably not have the same access to what should be a public place. Here it is completely YOUR choice to click on my post and read it. You may adjust your expecations accordingly, as you might with any other member of this forum to either read my posts, which frequently cross over lines you may find offensive, or skip over them altogether if you are offended by them. Though they may push the boundries of forum guidelines, I think the posts are ultimately utterly benign and only serve to emphasize a point and or bring a smile to some, but certainly NOT to everyone. I also humbly think that there is an underlying message to many of my posts that may have some value to some, and some of my posts are just as grey and dismally to the point many others I read here. But if you want one more of those audiophiles in a grey flannel suit and tie that looks and writes the same as 87% of the rest of them .....look elsewhere. Do not read my posts. They are clearly identified with my user ID "jax2". It's really that simple. I take no offense that you don't appreciate my writing, and I'm sure you are not alone. There are many members here who's posts I avoid for one reason or another. If I don't know someone, and start reading a post, and something rubs me the wrong way about it, I doubt very much I'd take the time to read it, much less to look at other posts by the same person.

Peace back atcha' Kt88!

Marco
Clueless - I am deeply offended by your remarks. Yet I'm curiously refreshed as well. In fact, I'm getting a tingling in my loins reading it over again, and yet again! Could you expand on the "glowing phallus" part?!

Marco