Class-A tube amps deprecated in the light of global warming?

[wakibaki]

I was watching a guy rebuilding a classic car on satellite TV the other day, and I really wanted that car, and then he let it drop that the fuel consumption was 22mpg, and all of a sudden I didn't want the car so much.

I was thinking about designing and building a class-A tube amp for a bit of fun. Then I thought, is this really a cool thing to do? Unleash another one of these? They're really wasteful. Only on a small scale, but wasteful all the same.

Probably not, actually.

w

[hitsware]

what the world needs is a passive xtal am reciever
(piezo on a horn with attendant cat hair)
GreenGroove all the way

[rcavictim]

The powers that be seem to have set the prices pretty constant energy wise between propane, electricity, natural gas and oil for heat. If you have a powerful class-A tube amp running in your living room in the winter, this will add needed heat to the house the same as the same watts being used up in a radiant space heater and is a lot more enjoyable at the same time.

In the summer if you are running a high heat producing tube amp in your home and also running air conditioning to cancel out the heat produced, then you are in a situation of inefficient energy consumption. For hot summer use get a sand amp if you are on a budget.

[abzug]

Originally posted by wakibaki
I was watching a guy rebuilding a classic car on satellite TV the other day, and I really wanted that car, and then he let it drop that the fuel consumption was 22mpg, and all of a sudden I didn't want the car so much.

Since when is 22 mpg bad? I'm going to get an RX-7 which does 17 mpg in the city.

They're really wasteful. Only on a small scale, but wasteful all the same.

But dude! Scale is exactly what matters. Consider even an efficient car--it still burns a gallon in not that much distance. And the energy in that gallon is about 40 kW/h--you'd have to run two class A amplifier drawing each 200 W from the mains for 1000 hours to use comparable energy. Now what's worth it to you more--go once 60 miles in an efficient car, or listen to a cumulative time of 1000 hours of quality musical reproduction?

[el`Ol]

And if good music prevents you from driving around to fight against the tristesse of your every day life....

[Nordic]

My 1.1litre Fiat Uno offsets my amplifiers...

[SY]

You're also contributing to the heat death of the Universe. Conversion of coal to electricity, then the electricity to heat, increases entropy.

We're not good Citizens of the Galaxy.

[abzug]

Accelerating expansion means overall there won't be a heat death of maximal entropy, and the universe will end up inhomogeneous (after all, any smoothing effects are limited by c, whereas expansion is not).
On the other hand, one does not get to see this benefit in one's local Hubble volume.

[SY]

OK then, we're not good citizens of our Hubble volume.

[rcavictim]

I just got a variable focal length eyepiece for my telescope so I could have a Hubble volume control.