pmr@drutx.UUCP (06/20/84)
<> With all this talk about square waves, tape decks, and new speakers, it struck me that I never read any discussion on the difference in sound between types of electronics, mainly tubes and solid state. Without question, quality solid state gear sounds superior in the lowest octaves, say under 200 Hz, and the highest octave, say over 14KHz. But why does quality tube gear have that unique ability to resolve low-level detail near the noise floor and ambience that solid state gear cannot? Yours for higher fidelity, Phil Rastocny AT&T-ISL ..!drutx!pmr
ark@rabbit.UUCP (Andrew Koenig) (06/20/84)
Phil Rastocny says: "But why does quality tube gear have that unique ability to resolve low-level detail near the noise floor and ambience that solid state gear cannot?" Gee, do you suppose it could be that the noise floor is higher so there is more detail below it? :-)
crandell@ut-sally.UUCP (Jim Crandell) (06/21/84)
> why does quality tube gear have that unique ability to resolve low-level > detail near the noise floor and ambience that solid state gear cannot? Possibly because the noise floor is higher, elevated by whimsical effects like heater-cathode leakage and microphonics. -- Jim Crandell, C. S. Dept., The University of Texas at Austin {ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!crandell
dep@allegra.UUCP (Dewayne E. Perry) (06/21/84)
chomp :- byte, chew, chomp. A few years ago, I tired a side by side listening test (well, one after the other) of a solid state and a tube amp (a Bozak ss amp and Luxman mono tube amps) for the top half of my bi-amped system. There was a hearable difference between the two: the tubes were "warmer" and the solid was "bighter and more brittle". String quartets, for example, sounded a little more lifelike with the tubes than with the solid state. Cage those sounds of silence - dep ps. a long time ago, i read a great science fiction story about this person (set in the distant future) who restored his hearing to a functional level and found out that there was much more to music that just the waveforms on the test instruments. he unsuccessfully tried to convince people that there ware more to live performances than just the chicken scratchings on the large screen behind the performers. anybody know the title and author?
labelle@hplabsc.UUCP (WB6YZZ La Belle) (06/22/84)
Oh No! Why did you have to ask that? Here we go...
P.S. properly designed solid state amps are superior to
the old xfmr output tube amps!
GEORGEpmr@drutx.UUCP (06/22/84)
Some people have mailed messages to me stating that I should prove my assertion that tubes extract more low-level signal information than transistors. Since I accidentally deleted these messages and I'm not able to quote them exactly, I'll paraphrase their one line defenses: "I don't believe they do." In reply to these overwhelmingly technical defenses, I assert that they're wrong. I base my claims on my own and others subjectivity. For example, when solid state (SS) amps first hit the market they quickly made their way into the professional arena. I remember many musicians loudly complaining that they couldn't handle the way the SS stuff sounded. Being a young technical type and a firm proponent of SS technology, I justified my opinion of SS as a "more analytical and revealing technology" and didn't seriously consider their observations. (Sound familiar?) Today, I hear the same differences that these musicians did over 25 years ago because I now listen to the equipment instead of taking theory and specs at face value. I'm serious about trying to determine why tubes do this, despite the crass remarks that abound on the net. Exactly why does a $300 Conrad Johnson tube preamp kit sound better than a $300 Hafler preamp kit? The Hafler has the spec advantage (0.01% THD, IM, FM, AC, PhD, MOS, BS), but the Hafler sounds flat, dry, unrevealing, and uninterresting. The CJ, despite its noisy front end, sounds open, warm, and accurate. What specs handle the description of these differences that I and others hear? (At least AUDIO is making attempts at finding these specs.) I understand that Spectral Acoustics is making great progress in closing the gap between the tube and transistor sound differences. What does Spectral do that Pioneer, McIntosh, and Levinson don't? Serious comments are welcomed. Please flame /dev/null. Yours for higher fidelity, Phil Rastocny AT&T-ISL ..!drutx!pmr
ron@brl-vgr.UUCP (06/22/84)
No, but there is a similar story on the back of the Switched Off Bach album. -Ron
osd@hou2d.UUCP (Orlando Sotomayor-Diaz) (06/22/84)
> I understand that Spectral Acoustics is making great progress in closing > the gap between the tube and transistor sound differences. What does > Spectral do that Pioneer, McIntosh, and Levinson don't? Serious comments > are welcomed. Please flame /dev/null. Seriously, my personal opinion is that Spectral Acoustics is probably hiring more creative marketeers than the rest. I would like to know how their engineers are measuring this progress. -- Orlando Sotomayor-Diaz /AT&T Bell Laboratories, Crawfords Corner Road /Holmdel, New Jersey, 07733 (Room 3M 325) Tel: 201-949-1532 /UUCP: {{{ucbvax,decvax}!}{ihnp4,harpo}!}hou2d!osd
fish@ihu1g.UUCP (Bob Fishell) (06/22/84)
>Without question, quality solid state gear sounds superior in the lowest >octaves, say under 200 Hz, and the highest octave, say over 14KHz. But >why does quality tube gear have that unique ability to resolve low-level >detail near the noise floor and ambience that solid state gear cannot? Solid state amps sound better in the lowest and highest ranges because it is directly coupled to the loudspeakers. Tube amps, of the high- fidelity variety, are coupled with enormous toroid transformers, whose characteristics at low and high frequencies tend to be nonlinear, attenuating the sound at both ends. Tube amps do yield certain advantages over solid-state ones, particularly when the amp is driven into clipping. Tubes clip softly, which doesn't create all those tweeter-destroying harmonics. However, the pleasing audible characteristics of tube amps is more of an illusion created by nonlinearities in the circuit than by an ability to recover information from the source. Tube circuits tend to have even harmonics as most of the THD, and it has been demonstrated that the even harmonics are not such an unpleasant form of distortion. This is part of the "ambience" you seem to be hearing. As for an ability to resolve detail, that's an illusion, too. In reality, tubes yield less recovery of detail than transistors do, but they have an uncanny ability to get rid of things that you might not *want* to hear. Ask anybody who plays an electric guitar or Fender/Rhodes electric piano what sort of amp they prefer. They'll pick tubes every time, just because they *sound* better, specs notwithstanding. Tubes tend to give a characteristic "warmth" to music that transistors lack. However pleasing this may be, though, it's still a form of distortion, or more aptly, sound coloration. -- Bob Fishell ihnp4!ihu1g!fish