Why is solid state more popular when tubes are better?

Atmasphere manufactures Class D amps to so he's invested in the technology (I haven't heard his Class D mono amps but I imagine they sound fine) so there's that, and although he claims they measure like tube amps, I'm not sold.

😀 In the past there have been so many outrageous claims in the audio world that I doubt anyone takes printed claims as gospel in the audio world. We all have to take the equipment home and play it. I think this is because there's been a really big disconnect between the printed specs and what we hear for since the 1970s at least, since solid state began to dominate the market.

BTW, to add to my outrageous claims there is a review published in last month's Hifi+. So you can see what an allegedly independent reviewer thinks.

@mahgister lol

@atmasphere , do you have distortion measurements that you can share with us comparing your tube and class-D amplifiers?

do you have distortion measurements that you can share with us comparing your tube and class-D amplifiers?

In general our class D makes about 1/10th the distortion of our tube amps at full power. At lower power levels its much lower, since the distortion of our tube amps decreases linearly as power is decreased, whereas with our class D the distortion increases dramatically just before clipping.

The distortion spectra of our tube amps favors the 3rd harmonic with the 2nd slightly less- the better matched the tubes are the lower the 2nd becomes. In any event that distortion is plenty to mask the higher orders. Our tube amps are fully balanced and differential so the distortion spectra is based on a cubic non-linearity rather than the quadratic nonlinearity you see in an SET. Conventional tube amps that have a single-ended input and push-pull output have both non-linearities in the design so tend to feature a more prominent 5th harmonic (see Norman Crowhurst). SETs and fully differential push-pull amps like ours avoid this problem.

In our class D the 2nd harmonic is more prominent and in that respect the distortion spectra looks more like that of an SET. Again the lower orders are prominent enough that they mask the higher orders. But the distortion is essentially about an order of magnitude lower and most of that is the 2nd.

More important than the actual distortion values is the fact that in both kinds of amps we make, the distortion does not rise with frequency.

Pretty lame premise for a thread. Just trolling for vitriol, I see.