Are you really interested in 'Hi-Fi'?

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In my youth I did pull some old HUGE tube amps out of old theaters when we upgraded the gear, thinking What the heck is this... junk. Oh the regret that I didn't keep some of them.

Then there were all the old Altec / Lansing horns I put in dumpsters... I'm going to audio heck for that.
 
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ehh, that wouldnt sound even close to 'tubey', would it ?
that is, if I have any idea what it means, tubey

I mean, tubey clipping, and no transistor-like crossover distortions heard. My point is, in order to get soft clipping you can use solid state devices, and get the same result. But cleanness and transparency of tube amps is not the result of soft clipping, like people assume after getting familiar with guitar amps. Guitar amps and hi-fi amps use tubes for totally different purposes.
 
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Do I not? How would you know that then?

17V supply rails will clip, low damping will cause boomy high distortion bass, the clipping probably not so obvious because of this?

Sorry I should of been more precise an average tube amp sitting in an audiophiles front room that they have spent quite a bit of money on, lets say a large amount on.
 
If what you're asking is, "Does IM exist?" then the answer is yes.

But the assertion was that high levels of "THD" were transparent. I was just pointing out to people less omniscient than you, why it couldn't be, unless it really was 'harmonic' for all the sources comprising the input waveform. And mainly pointing out the audible benefits of low distortion, as opposed to the fairly common idea around here that an amplifier can sound 'musical' with the 'right kind' of 'harmonic' distortion.
 
But the assertion was that high levels of "THD" were transparent.

Not at all. Assertion was, average temperature of patients in the clinic can be the same as in another, but that means nothing in terms of health of them, as well as in terms of what kind of illnesses do they have. In one clinic all patients may have 37 degrees, while in another some of them 42. Patients of 1'st clinic may be alive, while in the 2'nd one some of them die.
 
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In my Hifi journey, I decided at the age of 25 I would buy all super high quality 2nd hand gear.
Jeez N-O, that's a wild and crazy story. I can relate only thru desire, as I could never afford the high end stuff having wasted all my money on women and motorcycles.

If the money had been there, I'd have done the same thing, splurged on a huge system. It would have been the Magnapan Tymphani II and Audio Research amps for me. But way out of reach, just too much money. That led me to DIY, which is much cheaper and suits my basically mean nature. 😉 Find it, fix it, mod it or build it. That's the life for me.
 
Isn't it the actual case that 'harmonic' distortion is only harmonic for a single tone, and that for a waveform of multiple non-harmonically related sources, distortion smears them all together so that they cannot again be separated cleanly?

As SY pointed out, that's called IM distortion, and it's real enough. I don't know much about its audible effects, but there must be plenty of good literature on the subject.

As for the structure of harmonic distortion, I understand your point that when the signal gets very dense, there's going to be a lot of harmonics. Lower amounts of distortion are good, noof course, but sometimes even low amounts can sound worse because of the structure. I honestly don't know what happens with circuits when the signal gets very complex, but I do know from my own experience and that of many others that circuits with a "benign" harmonic structure as measured on single tones tend to sound transparent and detailed on complex signals. That's the basic idea behind looking at the harmonic structure.

Also; measuring distortion at 1Khz only gives a small part of the picture. Stepping up to 4 or 5 Khz can often show a much different picture. Ditto testing on different loads and at different powers.
 
More accurately would be to say I don't like how SS amps breakup, or even sound, clean or distorted.

Even from the point of view of a clean channel, or say playing acoustic with levels set not to clip. Tubes seem to impact the sound less, SS will impart a very sterile sound in most situations.

One could say that SS colours the sound. 😉

So it's not very different at all when you look at it.
The goal is to reproduce analog sounds, so the softer attack of tubes lends itself to a more organic sound.

A stereo system is nothing more than an air pump in reality.
What we hear is air pressure waves and how the cone is interacting with it.

IMO SS takes more work to to sound natural, or smooth if you will.

A strong point of SS is bass, where the faster, stronger attack of SS helps to over come the loss in fidelity that a heavy woofer cone makes.

I should add that I don't "hate" SS, obviously there are nice sounding SS amps.
Plus the efficiency, compactness and portability of SS goes a long way.

I'd just like to point out that the guitar amp most famous and popular for clean sounds has for a long time been the Roland Jazz Chorus, as it happens a SS design.

Wiki even has a list of famous users:
James Hetfield
Wes Borland
Andy Summers
Nick McCabe
Robert Fripp
Adrian Belew
Gustavo Cerati
Johnny Marr
Emily Remler
Bradley Nowell
Robert Smith of The Cure
Bireli Lagrène
El Gran Silencio
Michael Gira
Carlos Alomar
Mark Knopfler

although they missed my own favourite: Ali Farka Toure.
 
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