Thanks for doing this, LineSource. I'll have to learn more about the parameters and effects used in the program in order to read it better and to try using it myself. The room diagram in the lefthand image doesn't quite represent the location of the speakers and listening position. They are shifted to the right because there is an opening in the back wall, next to the speakers, that leads into another room. Not sure how that would affect the measurements or if it's possible to model it with the software.
At any rate, this is really intriguing and I'm going to play around with it once I get my work done for the week.
Re: vinyl vs. hi-def digital -- I'm far more inclined to go with vinyl because I love the sound of it in a decent tube system. When I auditioned speakers last fall, resulting in the purchase of the used Paradigms, the two shops I went to played some high-def FLAC files and, frankly, I thought they were awful.
I don't believe that FLAC is fully lossless; at least it sounded lossy in the systems I heard. Maybe the systems didn't have a good sound card or something (Mac laptops in both cases).
Of course, we have to acknowledge that the state of affairs is trending ever more weightily toward the digital. I'm open to the possibility of wonderful sounding computer files, but my ears have not witnessed them yet.
At any rate, this is really intriguing and I'm going to play around with it once I get my work done for the week.
Re: vinyl vs. hi-def digital -- I'm far more inclined to go with vinyl because I love the sound of it in a decent tube system. When I auditioned speakers last fall, resulting in the purchase of the used Paradigms, the two shops I went to played some high-def FLAC files and, frankly, I thought they were awful.
I don't believe that FLAC is fully lossless; at least it sounded lossy in the systems I heard. Maybe the systems didn't have a good sound card or something (Mac laptops in both cases).
Of course, we have to acknowledge that the state of affairs is trending ever more weightily toward the digital. I'm open to the possibility of wonderful sounding computer files, but my ears have not witnessed them yet.
Most, if not all, sound cards, don't match the noise and distortion possible in dedicated audio equipment.
The parameters of FM radio broadcasting mean that the received signal is also not as good as you can reproduce from standard CD's at home - but better than from most sound cards.
The majority of FM radio stations these days no longer play routinely from vinyl or CD's. They load their playlist into a computer system, and the presenters play from the transcriber digital files. Some (including the station I prefer) still have the capability of playing from CD's and vinyl however - typically so they can play special requests or some rare track teh presenter has his own copy of.
But what radio stations use is not a PC with a sound card. Well, the station I visited recently was actually using duplicated Windows PC's to control and manage it. But the PC's are connected to a dedicated digital storage and playback system with its own duplicated hard disk drives and D/A converters. All because PC's with internal sound cards are not considered good enough (in both sound quality and reliability), even though FM broadcasting involves transmitter feeds and transmitters that themselves degrade sound quality slightly. Also, FM stations "process" their sound to increase "omph".
The parameters of FM radio broadcasting mean that the received signal is also not as good as you can reproduce from standard CD's at home - but better than from most sound cards.
The majority of FM radio stations these days no longer play routinely from vinyl or CD's. They load their playlist into a computer system, and the presenters play from the transcriber digital files. Some (including the station I prefer) still have the capability of playing from CD's and vinyl however - typically so they can play special requests or some rare track teh presenter has his own copy of.
But what radio stations use is not a PC with a sound card. Well, the station I visited recently was actually using duplicated Windows PC's to control and manage it. But the PC's are connected to a dedicated digital storage and playback system with its own duplicated hard disk drives and D/A converters. All because PC's with internal sound cards are not considered good enough (in both sound quality and reliability), even though FM broadcasting involves transmitter feeds and transmitters that themselves degrade sound quality slightly. Also, FM stations "process" their sound to increase "omph".
I have one of these: https://www.oppodigital.com/blu-ray-bdp-105/
I highly recommend it for digital playback. Not only does it have a fantastic DAC it has a multitude of other features. $1199.00
I highly recommend it for digital playback. Not only does it have a fantastic DAC it has a multitude of other features. $1199.00
Pass that specimen by! It has been modified, not refurbished.
So, I was looking for more Citation II's for sale online and came across Jim McShane's site. It appears he sells upgrade and refurbishing kits for Citation II amps, but not complete amp kits? Theoretically you could clone a Citation II from scratch with the diagram, no?
FLAC is lossless with a 144db SNR and dynamic range, ..BUT.. many FLAC files come from 30IPS analog tape masters which have ~80db SNR before HISS compression is used for the digital transfer. The DAC on a laptop is mediocre.
Worth a few calls to friends ... build/borrow a good 24b/96Khz playback chain and listen to a few NEW 24b/96Khz all digital recordings of your favorite jazz & symphony standards.
Controlled directivity high efficiency speakers can bring dynamic-clear-sound to a modest size room. Sketch 90-degree and 60-degree polar speaker patterns on your floorplan to see how many short-delay confusion wall and floor reflections they can remove. A small perfectionist tube amp is happy with 95-96db/watt speakers. 88db/watt Paradigms need Big Iron.
I'm a professional musician and these are pretty much my listening preferences, classical and bebop, and ultimate detail and clarity is one of my two priorities. The other is faithful acoustic timbre on all instruments, and especially voice. I mean spookily faithful "in the room" tonal quality.
I've been looking for this for a good 35 years with many builds, including the usual 300b and 2a3 amps, SET and PP. My conclusions are paradoxical, because two entirely different systems come close.
1. Apogee full-range ribbon speakers. Caliper Sigs or Duettas if you find them. Nothing really comes close for micro details and timbre. Absolutely amazing. But you then need a more chunky amp. My brother uses this system, with Nagra PP 845 amps. He uses a Schitt Gungnir DAC which is wonderful, and Audirvana+ software on his iMac source. Again, state of the art. The sound is magical.
2. My system - full range Mark Audio Alpair 10 units in columns. I've had them a few years so they're well played in, and I use them infinite baffle because the bass is just about there and the mids are better. I'm totally in love with the amp - an all-directly heated PSE 4P1L circuit with Lundahl iron. Schematic attached. The sound is holographic - micro details and really good timbre. Voices are spookily good, but really it's all good. The circuit is about as simple as it gets - two 4P1L stages IT coupled, no coupling caps, no cathode bypass caps since it uses filament bias and small cathode resistors. The power supply is quite complex, especially the filament supplies which are all choke input. I have a large box of 4P1Ls so I'm set up for life - no more tube buying. Source is my Mac Mini with Audirvana+ and a ES9023 DAC, battery powered. No preamp - volume control in software on the Mac.
The two systems are very different but both are satisfying. I have no desire to build another amp. I've found what I want.
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Someone needs to volunteer to be the turd in the punchbowl, and I suppose (once again) it will be me.
For your budget and wants, forget tubes. Forget 'em. They're a social signal and lifestyle choice, not a sonic one, despite the quasi-religious assertions and emotionality surrounding them. Fun for a hobby, but if you're more interested in the music and are constrained by budget, your dollars are best put elsewhere.
I say this as someone who designs and builds tube equipment and (with all due modesty) am pretty good at it. My listening tastes are about 90% acoustic music, with a strong bent toward acoustic jazz and singer/songwriter Americana. For me, music is more important than equipment or status, and if you want to recapture that "magic", you can do it on your budget, but not with tubes. If I were you, I'd build or buy a modest setup of well-engineered solid state amplification for a fraction of that budget (20% or less), then drop the rest on the best Siegfried Linkwitz speakers you can build. The Plutos are great for a small room, the Orions better if your room has any size. You can go even higher end, but that will absolutely bust your budget.
For your budget and wants, forget tubes. Forget 'em. They're a social signal and lifestyle choice, not a sonic one, despite the quasi-religious assertions and emotionality surrounding them. Fun for a hobby, but if you're more interested in the music and are constrained by budget, your dollars are best put elsewhere.
I say this as someone who designs and builds tube equipment and (with all due modesty) am pretty good at it. My listening tastes are about 90% acoustic music, with a strong bent toward acoustic jazz and singer/songwriter Americana. For me, music is more important than equipment or status, and if you want to recapture that "magic", you can do it on your budget, but not with tubes. If I were you, I'd build or buy a modest setup of well-engineered solid state amplification for a fraction of that budget (20% or less), then drop the rest on the best Siegfried Linkwitz speakers you can build. The Plutos are great for a small room, the Orions better if your room has any size. You can go even higher end, but that will absolutely bust your budget.
Well, you're not alone in designing and building tube equipment or in listening to 90% acoustic music with a strong bent toward acoustic jazz and singer/songwriters. That's me and innumerable others on the forum. And you may have a good point about budget and avoiding a complex build.
But tubes as "a social signal and lifestyle choice, not a sonic one"? You're never going to convince professional musicians who use tubes that they're not doing so for purely sonic reasons. And I think all the poetry ever written should convince you that the arts are about truth and beauty rather than lifestyle choices. Musicians, like all artists, search for the truth as they see it, and that very much includes the sonic truth as they see it.
Guitar amps are a different matter- they are deliberately made to distort. The topic here is sound reproduction, not musical instruments.
This hobby's participants must swim in Sy's "punchbowl." It's filled with the self deluded in an anal pursuit of perfection. Folks need to justify their investments and so do in their own mind. Some believe they can find the highest state of the art in "Tube World" and it will carry them close to heaven on earth. They use terms like "reference" as if there really is some set minimum "standard" of hifi quality that you calibrate and qualify all other components against. Ain't one. 20
I'm not talking about guitar amps. I'm talking about sound reproduction. By "musicians" I'm talking about a number of forum members who have a big investment in sound. That would include professional musicians like myself, amateur musicians, frequent concert-goers and others familiar with live music on a day-to-day basis.
The point here is not about the debate over the absolute sound quality of ss vs. tubes, let's not go there. The point I'm dealing with here is about the motivation behind choice. The members of this forum have made the choice to use tubes. Now you say "They're a social signal and lifestyle choice, not a sonic one, despite the quasi-religious assertions and emotionality surrounding them. Fun for a hobby, but if you're more interested in the music…etc". This appears to me to be saying "people who choose to use tubes do so for social signals and lifestyle reasons, not sonic ones". You've made an attribution of "choice" to tube users.
Now the first issue here is how do you establish that tube users are making a social/lifestyle choice not a sonic one? I doubt that you have any evidence of the motivation, either conscious or unconscious, of tube users. A well-conducted survey might establish this by asking tube users the reasons for their choices - if you know of a definitive one that would be a start.
But in the absence of any evidence, we're left with the impression from posts that tube users on this forum spend a lot of time asking each other how equipment sounds. Purely anecdotal, but what else do we have about the actual motivation of tube users?
Since you've voluntarily jumped into this punchbowl of attributing choice to tube users, you're kind of stuck in the amber nectar at present. I'm sure tube users who may worry whether they're delusional in their choices would like to know the way out of this punchbowl.
It's fairly simple to get some idea of the actual motivation of tube users, e.g. the following:
1. Do you use tube equipment for your main critical listening?
a. Yes
b. No
2. If you answered “yes” to question 1, would you say that the reason for your choice was:
a. I think tube equipment sounds better
b. I chose tubes for other reasons, e.g. lifestyle choice, social acceptance.
Or:
1. Please choose whichever of the following reasons applies most closely to yourself:
a. I choose to use tube equipement for purely sonic reasons
b. I choose tube equipment for lifestyle reasons (looks, style, personal image etc)
c. I choose tube equipment for social reasons (e.g. to be part of a tube users community)
You can then make all sorts of critical comments about the choices made, but at least you know the actual motivation. Here's a simple post on a golf forum, for instance:
POLL: Most important thing for you when buying irons?
Looks: 39%
Feel 28%
Performance 32%
Style 0%
What the Pros play 1%
The posts following this naturally went on to say "looks won't help you score better", "I score worse with an iron I don't like the look of" etc. etc. But at least we establish the actual reasons for the choice, however controversial they may be.
So in the case of tubes we might find a larger percentage use them for lifestyle reasons, or a larger percentage use them for sound reasons. In the case of sonic reasons we might then go on to look at the statement "tubes are for most users a choice based on sound quality, but had they had the opportunity to compare tube equipment with equivalent solid state equipment then the majority would switch on purely sonic grounds", and see if this were true. But that is in no way the same as saying "tubes are a lifestyle choice, not a sonic one".
1. Do you use tube equipment for your main critical listening?
a. Yes
b. No
2. If you answered “yes” to question 1, would you say that the reason for your choice was:
a. I think tube equipment sounds better
b. I chose tubes for other reasons, e.g. lifestyle choice, social acceptance.
Or:
1. Please choose whichever of the following reasons applies most closely to yourself:
a. I choose to use tube equipement for purely sonic reasons
b. I choose tube equipment for lifestyle reasons (looks, style, personal image etc)
c. I choose tube equipment for social reasons (e.g. to be part of a tube users community)
You can then make all sorts of critical comments about the choices made, but at least you know the actual motivation. Here's a simple post on a golf forum, for instance:
POLL: Most important thing for you when buying irons?
Looks: 39%
Feel 28%
Performance 32%
Style 0%
What the Pros play 1%
The posts following this naturally went on to say "looks won't help you score better", "I score worse with an iron I don't like the look of" etc. etc. But at least we establish the actual reasons for the choice, however controversial they may be.
So in the case of tubes we might find a larger percentage use them for lifestyle reasons, or a larger percentage use them for sound reasons. In the case of sonic reasons we might then go on to look at the statement "tubes are for most users a choice based on sound quality, but had they had the opportunity to compare tube equipment with equivalent solid state equipment then the majority would switch on purely sonic grounds", and see if this were true. But that is in no way the same as saying "tubes are a lifestyle choice, not a sonic one".
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I think I'll have to agree with Sy, but maybe on a slightly more discriminate basis. There is absolutely no doybt that quite a number of tube "afficionados" chose tubes on a lifestyle or statement basis. One reason for this statement is choice of music, - as users of mostly modern highly electronically processed music, we actually have no clue about the intended 'soundscape'. It is only when we venture into classical, chamber music and mostly or all acoustic music that we have a reference framework to judge from. That is, of course, for those who ar either amateur or pro musicians, or frequent users of various live venues. This is absolutely not intended to discriminate such users, it is just a simple fact. OTOH- we are all free to choose as we please, and so we do.
I know both professional and amateur musicians who more or less don't give a hoot about the system, as long as it plays music. I also know a few true music lovers with very high concert visits, who'll gladly play Mahler on a very mid-Fi system. It'sall about the music, not the system
I know both professional and amateur musicians who more or less don't give a hoot about the system, as long as it plays music. I also know a few true music lovers with very high concert visits, who'll gladly play Mahler on a very mid-Fi system. It'sall about the music, not the system
Hi there! Yes of course this is true, and is absolutely no reason to say musicians have cloth ears. A number of musicians don't feel the need to pay too much attention to reproduction systems because they spend their time actually playing instruments. When they don't they may hear the music better in their heads than they ever do through sound systems. And a few professional musicians on the radio program "Desert Island Discs" choose to take the scores to a desert island, not the recordings. Also musicians are creative people and the brain fills in what the ears don't provide.
Other musicians, however, can be quite perfectionist about their sound systems. It varies.
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This is true of the vast majority of musicians I know. They find my interest in building high quality stereo to be somewhat quaint and puzzling.
One can argue for an effects box that can't be turned off. I'm probably not the one to do that. My advice to the OP stands.
I will also concur the notion that most musicians don't put much thought into a "hi-fi" system, I am the exception. Out of a lot of musician friends I have come to know and love over the years I actually don't know any with a "reference" system........most don't even own a "decent" system, just computer speakers and or box store surround sounds systems. BUT they eat sleep and breathe music. I have always been a believer that the MI amplifier is a large variable in the overall equation of the instrument and musician total sound, to say the least, I am a gear slut, always have been always will be. Most of my guitar buddies don't even know or care what they plug into.
I just chalk it up to we all perceive things differently. An example is my roommates cannot hear the 15.6kHz screaming away from the TV and I pretty much get physically sick hearing it.
For most it's just the music that matters so as long as they can hear it, it's all good. For me the devil is in the details, when people hear me play they usually will remark how nice of a tone I always have. Same thing is true for my stereo, I do not consider it a "reference" system, just a dude on a budget that likes to tinker with glowing bottles and old tech from pre color TV. BUT when people come over for a few drinks, eats and music I usually get a compliment on how nice my stereos always sound. Then again anything sounds better then laptop speakers that they are accustomed to
I just chalk it up to we all perceive things differently. An example is my roommates cannot hear the 15.6kHz screaming away from the TV and I pretty much get physically sick hearing it.
For most it's just the music that matters so as long as they can hear it, it's all good. For me the devil is in the details, when people hear me play they usually will remark how nice of a tone I always have. Same thing is true for my stereo, I do not consider it a "reference" system, just a dude on a budget that likes to tinker with glowing bottles and old tech from pre color TV. BUT when people come over for a few drinks, eats and music I usually get a compliment on how nice my stereos always sound. Then again anything sounds better then laptop speakers that they are accustomed to
Then again anything sounds better then laptop speakers that they are accustomed to
Or after a drink or two. ;-)
Look, Sy's comment is well taken, and I'm sure that, for the money, I can get achieve better detail etc. with a low-budget SS system than I could with an equivalently priced tube one. At one point in this thread I even mentioned the possibility of SS power amps or a new integrated for the higher wattage and current that would control my speakers better. I am still considering this as a possibility.
But, as I said at the beginning, and then again after processing some of the conversation, tubes offer sound qualities that I like, which, I now realize, may or may not be more technically accurate in terms of reproduction than equivalent SS gear. It has nothing to do with lifestyle or status or whatever. I never have people over to listen to music or anything. Maybe I like the way some tube systems look -- Cold War style, etc. -- and why not? I like pretty things. And weird things. And if it can give the sound I like and present a visual object to ponder, so much the better.
At any rate, I'm going to play around with those baffle edge diffraction simulators later today or tomorrow if I can, just to start getting a sense of how these kinds of tools might help design an optimal system for my space. Rare snowfall here in Oklahoma means I've spent most of the weekend sledding with my kids.
The second part is more accurate than the first.
There's nothing "magic" about "tube sound"; in a recent long thread, it was obvious that no-one agreed on what "tube sound" was, much less offer any evidence that it exists, separate from frequency response, noise, and distortion. Your observations on the non-auditory aspect absolutely lines up with mine, certainly a large (maybe the largest) part of the reason my system's electronics are mostly tube based. I just... like them.
But if you're working on a limited budget and music is a priority, I still would leave tubes alone- that eye-candy is NOT cheap to build and have it perform well!
Ye, SY is right,
with tubes it is so easy to miss the boat. Look for a decent speaker like the kef 50, and maybe a used Accuphase like this:
Accuphase E-202 restoration
the sell close to 1k$ and are truly audiophile quality solid state amps
with tubes it is so easy to miss the boat. Look for a decent speaker like the kef 50, and maybe a used Accuphase like this:
Accuphase E-202 restoration
the sell close to 1k$ and are truly audiophile quality solid state amps
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