Metal film resistors or carbon film in a tube amp?

[Brett]

Originally posted by Joel
Let me reiterate:
My point with using the 70's as a beginning point is that this is when all the professional enginneers and commercial designers dropped out of tube work. What you have left are a bunch of amateurs. Bam! All of a sudden (it's a miracle?), capacitors develop individual sounds, and "sonic" properties. Hmmm, how strange.

You mean amatuers like Walt Jung, Richard Marsh, Ben Duncan, Dr Malcolm Hawkesford? I'm sure they would all benefit from your vast experience.

Even today, some truly pro, quality companies do not play this bs game. Sprague Orange drops, which for 10 years were touted as the savior of mankind by "gurus", are described in their literature this way: "Type 715P capacitors are ideal for applications where high AC current flow is found as in certain solid-state TV vertical circuits, RF generators...", etc. They could very easily say "and they sound GREAT!", but they don't print this. Why?

Because even if every audiophile manufacturer used 715P's it would still only account for a tiny fraction of Sprague's business which is largely selling to industrial and military suppliers, and I doubt they are interested in pursuing that particular market.

[Brett]

Originally posted by jh6you
If the price of a new component is nothing or very low, you could propose it and insist that it make different and better sound. But, if the component price is high, I would call you be careful in saying so. I think you know well why many stupid commercial advertisements are blamed and they lose their values.

JH, that's exactly my point. For a DIYer it is easy to make a change in an amp say between different brands of resistor or capacitors, and for a small cost. With little outlay, except for time and less than the cost of a pizza, it is possible for people to experiment and discover for themselves whether the changes are audible and / or significant. Whatever the finding, the experimenter has gained something from the experience that is all the more valuable for having done it.

Whilst I've mentioned resitors and caps above, it equally applies (wrt experimental process) for different topologies. After DIYing for a while many people have lots in their parts bins that allow for easy experimentation. I could probably make 50 different line stages, and half that many poweramps (all at once) with what I have laying around , ie zero cost but some time. New amps are built and tested at chez Brett periodically just to see what they're like.

[Brett]

Originally posted by Joel
Do you ever read High Fidelity? I have almost every issue from the the early 60's up to '71 or so. In each issue they carry out quite extensive reviews of amps & speakers, etc, in which they included scope displays, THD measurements, ratings, and listening test results. Very thorough. In over 100 issues, covering thousands of amps, tape decks, preamps, etc, they do not once mention the choice of a capacitor or resistor type, or brand. They do not discuss wire. They do not discuss "interconnects". They do not talk about "power conditioning". They don't think to cover the topic of tube brands. So, maybe that doesn't say anything to you, but it speaks volumes to me.

If HF is so much of a bible to you, why do you use an amp that has very poor performance by all objective measurements? Wouldn't you be better off with a Sansui AU505? After all it measures better, so it must sound better to you, right?

Is something burning, or is that just the smell of flaming hypocrisy?

The Jung / Marsh article on caps was published in Audio (hardly a subjectivist magazine) in 1980. It has been replicated and expanded upon a number of times in the interim.

Put a spec-an across the mains and have a look at all the crap that comes into a house (or is generated by components inside) due to the proliferation if digital consumer electronics of all varieties, light dimmers, commercial switchers etc which all generate in combination a level of broadband hash that was unheard of in the 60's, even if you lived in an industrial area. Many consumer audio items have marginal PSUs and little or no filtering (built to a price), so in some instances, filtering and / or regeneration may be beneficial. There are ways for a DIYer to do it quite cheaply too.

[pedroskova]

OK, reading this thread got me to register here...which is kind of depressing.

A couple of observations -

- Russian PIO output caps in my 6sn7 foreplay sound immensely different than the Solens they replaced.

- Looking at their data sheets, a 6sn7 and a 12au7 should share many basic sonic attributes, but they don't - if my experiences are of any relevance.

- If you don't like even-order harmonics, cut off your ears and burn every acoustic instrument you come across.

- My lowly line stage beats up on my Spectral DMC10 in a big way - even though the Spectral was designed by someone with more knowledge and insight than 99% of the designers alive today(exaggerating about the 99%, not the fact that my foreplay is musically superior).

- Some people are just plain bitter.

- My legs are grey. My ears are gnarled. My eyes are old and bent.

[Joel]

Originally posted by Brett
You really do love to rant don't you?

Haha. Brett, look in the mirror - you just spent about 6 hours typing all that.

[Brett]

Originally posted by Joel


Haha. Brett, look in the mirror - you just spent about 6 hours typing all that.

Nah. I was babysitting my sick nephew, and I wanted to be quiet so I did some typing as I didn't have a book with me. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered. Took me about an hour.

I am impressed by your on point responses.

[Joel]

On a more serious note, I just want to add that although Brett thinks I've never picked up a soldering iron - nothing could be further from the truth. Everything I've said is based on my own experience, not theory - just as what you all believe is based on your's. End result = no one is going to convince either side.
I've used oil caps, expensive wire, carbon comps, and NOS tubes... end result, for me, was I realized I was making the suppliers rich.

And while people are calling me bitter, argumentative, close-minded, etc - they better go back and read the posts of all the other people in this thread. Some pretty insulting stuff.

[Gabevee]

QUOTE]And while people are calling me bitter, argumentative, close-minded, etc - they better go back and read the posts of all the other people in this thread. Some pretty insulting stuff.[/QUOTE]

On that point I agree 100%.

But when presented with facts... it is as I said to my son last night while helping him with math. I helped him figure out the answer and told him how it was arrived at. He then said "but...", to which I promptly replied "there are no "buts" in math. The answer is 30. Period. No buts." The evidence was there but he had an argument.

Was I being closed minded, ignorant or full of hype crap? Should I have allowed him the grey area to choose a different answer? Would he have been correct?

http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/...ol8/node3.html
http://www.tdk.co.jp/tebch02/
http://www.e-insite.net/ednmag/archi...fs/19m4022.pdf
http://nina.ecse.rpi.edu/shur/advanc...ap8/sld014.htm

I guess most of us are wrong. All capacitors are the same. All transformers are the same. All tubes are the same. (Is the sarcasm thick enough yet?)

Later!
Gabe

[Joel]

Gabe,
6x5=30 cannot be argued. But the "sound" of two capacitors, both measuring exactly .1MF can most certainly be argued about.

It just so happens that my opinion is in the minority here - but there are circles where it would be in the majority.

[Brett]

Originally posted by Joel
On a more serious note, I just want to add that although Brett thinks I've never picked up a soldering iron - nothing could be further from the truth.

No. You made claims that what you were presenting was based on sound engineering principles, and therefore superior to what other people had posted, and I challenged that.

And while people are calling me bitter, argumentative, close-minded, etc - they better go back and read the posts of all the other people in this thread. Some pretty insulting stuff.

You hurl insults all over the place, post "technical" stuff in a condescending manner (which was easily rebutted), are rude and ignorant and <i>then</i> want to play victim?
bwahahahahahahahahaha Stop it, my sides are hurting.