Some people insist that we love tubes for their specific sweet distortions.
Here is a thingy that allows to control such a "Tubiness".
Try and report, how do you like details, soundstage, etc...
A single channel drawn. For stereo 100K audio taper must be dual. Dial it in and find the sweet spot you prefer.
Very cheap 6J6 tubes were used (1 tube per channel), very simple schematic with few components.
It may be used as a preamp as well, voltage amplification factor is about 20.
Enjoy!
Here is a thingy that allows to control such a "Tubiness".
Try and report, how do you like details, soundstage, etc...
A single channel drawn. For stereo 100K audio taper must be dual. Dial it in and find the sweet spot you prefer.
Very cheap 6J6 tubes were used (1 tube per channel), very simple schematic with few components.
It may be used as a preamp as well, voltage amplification factor is about 20.
Enjoy!
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Why build a cheap circuit like this? That won't impress anyone. Much better to pay good money for a badly-designed prettily-packaged tube buffer built to Chinese safety standards. Then you can impress yourself and your friends with how fine is the discrimination of your ears and the rest of your system when you hear the 'improvement' it brings to the sound.
Yeah, that's the problem- it hurts to admit that you're after a signal processing device rather than "musical truth." Wavebourn has committed the cardinal sin of actually saying out loud that his circuit is specifically meant to distort in order to please the ear. I predict that his design will not find use outside of MI, since he gave away the game right up front.
What a novel idea, "tubeness squared"
The really cool part is that by adding just one more stage (one tube conencted like the right one in schematic) you get the tubeness cubed and each successive stage increases tubeness output exponentially ! Tubeness doesn't merely add up as it happens in most cases with to audio devices.
However if it was marketed as a "hyperspace sound clarifier" with a slick marketing campaign and a couple of well greased magazine reviews, he could sell them for $2000 each. After all you need to capture all of those cosmic rays that snuck into your $1500 interconnects and return them to hyperspace where they belong!
Cool!
I'm kinda with keantoken on this. The signal chain from microphone to your speakers is a long one. Every circuit along the way is going to mess with the harmonics of the signal. Mostly suppressing even order harmonics. If you could "dial them back in" it might go a long way toward a cleaner sounding signal.
How about "Harmonic Balancer"?
I'm kinda with keantoken on this. The signal chain from microphone to your speakers is a long one. Every circuit along the way is going to mess with the harmonics of the signal. Mostly suppressing even order harmonics. If you could "dial them back in" it might go a long way toward a cleaner sounding signal.
How about "Harmonic Balancer"?
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I say leave the harmonic manipulations to SS amps. In those cases they are trying to emulate tube amps. It's simply perverse to apply this back to a tube amp.
There are plenty of tubes that can provide the kind of tubiness being sought - almost any triode with enough 'leaning curves' will do the trick.
And I don't think the harmonic profile is a sufficient condition. Having build a SS amp with control over the even harmonics [http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/solid-state/168503-tgm-amp-goes-tubey.html] and having listened to my Cellini tube amp I can say with some conviction that for my ears, the harmonic profile is not at all sufficient to produce a tube sound. By itself, the harmonic profile is a blind alley.
There are plenty of tubes that can provide the kind of tubiness being sought - almost any triode with enough 'leaning curves' will do the trick.
And I don't think the harmonic profile is a sufficient condition. Having build a SS amp with control over the even harmonics [http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/solid-state/168503-tgm-amp-goes-tubey.html] and having listened to my Cellini tube amp I can say with some conviction that for my ears, the harmonic profile is not at all sufficient to produce a tube sound. By itself, the harmonic profile is a blind alley.
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Thank you Bigun, you have made it clear I will have to build or buy some kind of tube device...
It is possible that if you connect two SE devices of opposite polarity, the 2nd harmonics may cancel and leave thirds. I don't know how often this occurs, but it is worth considering. It could be corrected by using a coupling transformer to reverse ground and signal wires...
- keantoken
It is possible that if you connect two SE devices of opposite polarity, the 2nd harmonics may cancel and leave thirds. I don't know how often this occurs, but it is worth considering. It could be corrected by using a coupling transformer to reverse ground and signal wires...
- keantoken
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Or, let a couple of patients in the clinic develop room temperature, as the result an average temperature would change from 41 degrees C to 36.6 and you may dismiss all of them...
I think you should go all the way and market it as the Shamanic Harmonic Recovery Device -- it uses the magic of vacuum tubes to perform spectrum-regression to restore the harmonic information that was sucked out of the music by the cold dead digital solid state recording chain. You have a control to dial in just the right amount to your ears... Brilliant!
The Soviet Union may be gone, but Homo Sovietcus is alive and well. Too funny for me!
That's called pushpull..
Oh, you're right...
Sorry, I must clarify, I meant to connect two different amps, say an SE preamp to an amplifier of the opposite polarity SE, IE producing 2nd harmonics of the opposite phase. These harmonics then cancel out.
Wavebourn, I'm having trouble understanding what you mean.
- keantoken
I think you should go all the way and market it as the Shamanic Harmonic Recovery Device -- it uses the magic of vacuum tubes to perform spectrum-regression to restore the harmonic information that was sucked out of the music by the cold dead digital solid state recording chain. You have a control to dial in just the right amount to your ears... Brilliant!
You may be right!
Software that smooths sharp pixels makes a picture to look better
I mean, if a couple of patients die the average result of temperature measurement may be better. THD is like an average temperature of patients in the clinic. It can be related to sound quality, but can be faked.
The same way, compensation of the 2'nd harmonic that is less audible than other harmonics results in better average measurements, but does not improve sound quality. Without 2'nd harmonic the 3'rd one is more audible then when the 2'nd one present.
As I said before, for audio linearity matters less than smoothness. It was a fair game when all SE amps were compared by linearity VS power. But it is wrong to compare such a way SE vs PP, or tube PP to SE PP.
I used a similar thingy for a guitar amp, but it consisted of one BJT phase splitter and one JFet.
For Hi-fi it really may be used to restore spectral dynamic damaged by too many opamps used. I don't like the name SHRED Michael Koster gave to it, I will think of something different.
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