Valves and musical instruments

[MrCurwen]

Ever since I lost my mind with this valve HIFI thing, I've been listening and pondering which instruments benefit the most from (mostly single ended, since that's my thing) valve amplification.

Obviously all acoustic recordings seem to benefit the most; especially the strings. Piano I find quite challenging to sound really excellent, but valves seem to make it work more than SS.

The female voice is of course one of the classic examples of valve beneficients.

What kind of test tracks do you have that really brings out the differences? Which sounds are the most challenging to reproduce?

[DigitalJunkie]

I've found that there's something about a track with some good electric guitar,that only tubes can reproduce. Something like some Stevie Ray Vaughan,or Heart,or ZZ-Top.. It's gotta be played on tubes,or it's just not the same.
Anybody else notice that?

[DF96]

Single-ended has second-order distortion. This will add harmonisation an exact octave up from the original sound. Some people call this "tube warmth".

Many musical instruments will also have a strong signal an octave up, but this will be an overtone which is not exactly twice the frequency of the fundamental. The exact harmonic from the amp and the overtone from the instrument may beat together. Whether this is noticeable as "richness" or distortion depends on all sorts of things. My guess is that single-ended will sound best with instruments that have dominant third-order i.e. symmetric waveforms, while push-pull may be best with dominant second-order (asymmetric waves).

[kavermei]

I find that speaker types have much more influence than amps, when it comes down to 'doing X right and Y not quite right.'

But that's just my imho-ymmv-2c

[SGregory]

I find the SS amps go much better with music from groups like Motley Crew, Motor Head etc. Tubes do better on just about anything else.;-) Just my $0.02.

To me SE tubes sound more realistic on acoustic pieces that don't have alot of Low Frequency Energy. In general I find tubes to be more revealing, i.e. To my ears, valves have more detail, dynamics, clarity, and spatial clues. I personally don't like overly warm sounding amps.

P.S. That is for a given set of speakers, mine. I agree with Kavermei that speakers do have the most influential part with music types.