Not being the OP, it's not my place, but I think the whole "amps that measure the same..." and "double blind..." should be in its own thread. This thread is supposed to be "what SET should I build?"
Just my 2cents. Carry on.
Just my 2cents. Carry on.
If I were you (grin) I would build a nice breadboard with some breadboard sockets from eBay (I think you can find them under "tube test sockets") and start experimenting.
Get a flexible power transormer that has more than one set of secondaries for different DC power levels (say, 750 VCT and 600 VCT, or something like that). Buy the best output transformer you can afford with multiple primary impedances (2.5K to 5K) to accomodate different DHTs. Then start playing around with different designs and tubes. I've been building SETs for almost 20 years and there's no single design that is guaranteed to be perfect. It depends on your system and your ears. There's the 2A3, the 300B and then a number of other boutique DHTs from China (I think they even make a new version of the 50, which is a lovely tube). You could really love a pentode driver like the 6SJ7 or a three-stage topology, with a small voltage-amp tube and a triode-wired power tube to drive the output tube. At some point you might want to try transformer coupling with a small high-transconductance triode. A well-made breadboard will let you experiemnt with a lot of different things. The worst thing, IMO, would be to settle on a design you haven't heard, spend a fortune on parts and find you don't like it. Unfortunately this isn't like the Pass, where you've got a very straightforward path to building it. But it can be a lot of fun to experiment, and your speakers give you a lot of options. Just my two cents. 🙂
A good output transformer is one constant you can depend on, will carry you through many projects and is worth the investment.
I would also look at the most highly-regarded SET amps out there, like Wavelength and others, and see what tubes they use. While you wont be privy to their designs, you can get a sense of what the best designers are doing in general.
Oh, and regarding that "first-watt" manual, buy the Sound Practices CD-ROM from Joe and start reading. I don't know if the Bottlehead guys still have their old newsletter available, but that had a lot of very good info about SETs.
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I suspect that don't have the slightest clue what you are talking about, which is why I asked if you have any actual training in the field.
It me it is apparent that you learned your "science" on audio forums, which is like going to Pizza Hut for great Italian food. It is as though Italy and the entire universe of social science do not exist.
The methodology and assumptions of double blind testing have been completely discredited in the human sciences for almost half a century. Only engineers and audioforum sycophants lacking insight into the complexities of the situation buy this stuff.
I'd like to think that actual scholars in the field of audio evaluation make more moderate claims for this research than I often read around here, because there is some seriously distorted thinking going on in audio testing circles.
I propose that the proper test is to use an amp for routine, long term listening, then decide for yourself. There is no universally valid "listening test." There can't be because there is no universal listener and no universal listening situation.
That being said, I'm not trying to sell anything, especially to Evenharmonics! I'm pretty sure the people I work with are way better engineers and have far superior test gear than he does, not to mention vastly more experience in the field.
If you really want to talk knowingly about listening research, I suggest you take the money you wouldn't spend on a pricey SE amp and enroll in night school and study human research design. This is not a quick study. It is very complicated...far more complex than electronics testing amps because people are infinitely more complex than amps.
The only reason I can think of that people are drawn to this "all amps sound the same" nonsense is that they are some cheap-*** bottom trawlers and want the world for $99.
Sure there are a lot of cons in audio, I hate most of the audio business and I'm primarily a DIY advocate, but DBT audioforum-style is a con also. However, I will grant that many advocates don't understand why this is so and act out of sincere ignorance of considerations that are not obvious without extensive background study.
Others, like Evenharmonics, blast in and start beating people on the head with half-formed notions. I don't understand the motivation. Fact is, Evenharmonics, I actually don't know what the hell you are trying to say. I should have simply ignored it but I guess I'll never learn. I can't even bear to go over the old posts in the thread to craft one of those nifty quote/refutation type responses. I really don't care anymore. Go listen to your chip amp.
Yeah, you can measure all sorts of things but not everything. But so what. Interpretation of those results and correlation with listening perceptions is the hard part, and we are not really there yet.
Single ended amps are of particular interest in this discussion because they fly in the face of conventional technical evaluative schemes yet thousands of very experienced listeners prefer them over superior performers. This is an endless discussion but it will not be solved with a sound card test setup or questionable listening experiments.
If nothing else, I think we are pushed by this quandary into a more textured way of thinking where the world is not black and white and we have to think in a more relative and often uncertain way. Some may view this as a threat to science and the Western ethos and others will recognize it as an opportunity to learn a bit more about ourselves and our relation with our audio tools.
@grovergardner
doing a breadboard costs money and I suppose, you don´t save money by choosing the parts then they are significant for the end results.
You are right to say that the design depends on the expectation and therefore you need to listen to many different tube amplifiers before choosing to build one.
The complete audio restitution chain is important and as says @kaputt, the dimensioning element remains the loudspeakers.
If money is not a problem then who will begin to build the house who will accept your built... never ending story.
He wants a few watt tube amplifier, I suppose he has some high efficiency loudspeaker, that is a starting point!
doing a breadboard costs money and I suppose, you don´t save money by choosing the parts then they are significant for the end results.
You are right to say that the design depends on the expectation and therefore you need to listen to many different tube amplifiers before choosing to build one.
The complete audio restitution chain is important and as says @kaputt, the dimensioning element remains the loudspeakers.
If money is not a problem then who will begin to build the house who will accept your built... never ending story.
He wants a few watt tube amplifier, I suppose he has some high efficiency loudspeaker, that is a starting point!
Well that is 'good' advice: let's discredit somebody because he's working in the field that we are talking about.
You shouldn't go to the pharmacy when you have a headache because before you know you'll be addicted to migraine medication.
Surely I won't be going to the dealership for advice on my car: they'll tell me to buy a new one because this one is too old... Well they may be right about that last bit 😀
OT: the best advice I've seen so far is to audition an amp at your own place, with your own speakers and music.
Find an audio shop or a helpful forum member in your region to get an idea about what you want.
Well, as someone who started out building the "perfect" SET amp and 20 years and thousands of dollars later still hasn't found it, I think a $100 breadboard could save you a lot of money. (And I don't think I'm alone in that regard.) That said, for the investment of a handful of breadboard sockets, a cutting board and a couple of good-quality components (like a flexible power tranny, some filament trannies and output transformers) the world is open to trying many of the different output tubes and configurations. The Power trannies and OPTs can eventually be incorporated into a final build.
The problem is that a $30 SE output transformer won't tell you much. And there's such a wide variety of DHT tubes available right now that I'd be heard-pressed to recommend "the best"--a Chinese 2A3 or a PX25? Maybe even a triode-wired 6550 would suit his system? Who knows?
If the OP has plunged into DIY with the Pass amps, why not continuen to experiment? Any, that was my two cents and worth about that much. 🙂
@marsupialx. you are right this isn't the place. Sorry for any divergence I may have added to, but I resent people dive bombing threads about topics they don't like with imperfect understandings and this particular brand of empty pseudo-scientific generic forumspeak attack. It is a waste of time, especially since it has been done a million times before with no benefit.
At least I try to add a few novel and useful twists!
Of course, technical performance vs. listening are the subtext of the discussion on some level. There are a bunch of electronics nerds here after all, myself included.
Hey Grover, you are correct, the experiment never ends. Pays to recognize that at the outset.
I will suggest to allocate funds for very good transformers. You can do a lot of different things with a good 3k or 5k transformer and it can long outlast the original application, and even outlast the buyer.
At least I try to add a few novel and useful twists!
Of course, technical performance vs. listening are the subtext of the discussion on some level. There are a bunch of electronics nerds here after all, myself included.
Hey Grover, you are correct, the experiment never ends. Pays to recognize that at the outset.
I will suggest to allocate funds for very good transformers. You can do a lot of different things with a good 3k or 5k transformer and it can long outlast the original application, and even outlast the buyer.
@grovergardner
Nobody can returns the question of what is the best tube amplifier!
Breadbords is a philosophy, a point of view, without any provocation, good old school: point to point wiring (turret boards or not) is also possible. I´ve built some breadboard (< 10) but I´m faster (experience, good big librairies) with a PCB and cheaper today with manufacturing.
He ask for a finished tube amplifier with manual ready to built. Not to start at zero but still learning by doing. No ones to reply?
French guys says: réponse à 2 balles
Nobody can returns the question of what is the best tube amplifier!
Breadbords is a philosophy, a point of view, without any provocation, good old school: point to point wiring (turret boards or not) is also possible. I´ve built some breadboard (< 10) but I´m faster (experience, good big librairies) with a PCB and cheaper today with manufacturing.
He ask for a finished tube amplifier with manual ready to built. Not to start at zero but still learning by doing. No ones to reply?
French guys says: réponse à 2 balles
Can you give a brief sketch of the gist of how they have been discredited?
I have also found myself on occasions drawn into the great debate about objectivism vs subjectivism, double-blind testing, and all that. As a physical scientist, I find myself fairly firmly on the objectivist side in this debate. I also find myself sympathetic to the idea that double-blind testing should be a valid methedology for settling questions of audibility. In fact, as an objectivist, I don't think I would even know what it would mean to suggest that there could exist audible differences that could not be discriminated between by means of double-blind testing.
The above notwithstanding, I'm actually interested to broaden my horizons and build an SET amplifier, having been largely familiar with solid-state, push-pull and OTL until now. So I'm following this thread with interest, hoping to get some SET building ideas.
Chris
Sorry, but objectivism or subjectivism can not be apply to the human species! The education is prejudice oriented
I´ve read a long time ago (article from Jean Hiraga) that the Toshiba engineers are using double-blind testing with people picking from the street for qualifying audio transistors.
Or MacDo for a new sort of French fries
A lot of people says that women are the best judges.
But sure, you can not be judge and hangman.
Like Susumu Sakuma, starting with an idea (needs knowledge), try and listen until your goal is reached, until your hair on the neck stands up.
I´ve read a long time ago (article from Jean Hiraga) that the Toshiba engineers are using double-blind testing with people picking from the street for qualifying audio transistors.
Or MacDo for a new sort of French fries
A lot of people says that women are the best judges.
But sure, you can not be judge and hangman.
Like Susumu Sakuma, starting with an idea (needs knowledge), try and listen until your goal is reached, until your hair on the neck stands up.
When did you ask that? I didn't see it. Can you quote or link it?
Can you cite any industry experts who agree with your notion on double blind test or AES peer reviewed paper?
Looks like you need to join AES and read what the experts say.
Looks like you need to join AES and read what the experts say.
Who are those people? Can you quote them?
Will you apologize for accusing me of saying what I didn't say as quoted below?
You've got it mixed up. It should be, "Lets be suspicious of somebody who discredits test results of snake oil because he sells snake oil as cure-all miracle."Well that is 'good' advice: let's discredit somebody because he's working in the field that we are talking about.
Everyone expects a specific results. To define this in a specific built is just impossible!
For years ago I was lucky to assist a demonstration in Stuttgart of at that time the best audio products: Ongaku, Puppys and electronic from Burmester. It was a revelation. Till this day I´ve never reach with DIY this level of musicality reproduction/fidelity. The brainers have to read Marcel Proust and remember his "Madeleine" or for guys like me, view the Pixar "Ratatouille" video... You can write down the requirements specification but how to achieve technically?
The Best SET? Ask Nelson Pass!
For years ago I was lucky to assist a demonstration in Stuttgart of at that time the best audio products: Ongaku, Puppys and electronic from Burmester. It was a revelation. Till this day I´ve never reach with DIY this level of musicality reproduction/fidelity. The brainers have to read Marcel Proust and remember his "Madeleine" or for guys like me, view the Pixar "Ratatouille" video... You can write down the requirements specification but how to achieve technically?
The Best SET? Ask Nelson Pass!
Besides Lundahl, who else offers single ended OPTs with multiple primaries? Thanks.
Very briefly. this brand of social science is called behaviorism. It looks at external empirical signs and the mind (in this case) is a black box. The "datum point" is actually the listener raising his hand when he hears a difference. We cant look at mind so we look at behavior. Postwar objectivist fetish.
Since humans are involved, we know that all meaning and perception always depends on context. These studies do not recognize and control for all of the variables that compromise context. I''m talking about things like variability between listeners based on learning, physiology, psychological aspects, culture. Even which music is playing and where in the song the switch is made can have a huge, uncontrolled influence.
And the big one is how does the "test" situation affect perception and the phenomenology of the test "signals." Goals and methods are so different from casual listening. Things that don't matter in casual listening are apparent in concentrated test listening and vice versa. They are totally different ways of being and relating to musical sound.
On this point alone, modern human sciences would laugh DBT out of the room. Too many questionable assumptions are made and too many well-recognized issues go unaddressed.
In short, we end up with a test that has no validity or significance outside of the unique test situation and even that artificial constructed situation has not even been adequately characterized. There are loose variables flying around everywhere, which as you know, limits the "scientific" value of an experiment.
The research design is severely flawed and the underlying paradigm is not taken seriously in any of the human sciences anymore. This sort of research mainly lives on in audio testing and some primitive forms of social psychology, which is largely of the defunct Behavioralist bent mentioned above. Practitioners in these fields really must have a certain tunnel vision or else they can't do their work. They live in a North Korea of the mind, cut off from other ways of thinking and using 1958 tools.
If you have specific questions, PM me. Let's not pollute the thread any further because some people want to build amps.
Ever try to help a novice think about building amps and suddenly you find yourself in a Sarah Palin reality TV show?
Sorry, Evenharmonic.
_I_ am an expert! Or, at least, I can easily pass for one in this situation. I spent 15 years in the best schools in the world studying this material. And I have been in audio professionally for 30 years, most of them in highly public capacities . My work is well known to many on this forum.
I am not gonna defer to an electronics engineer or some random thug stooge from an audio forum on human research methodology, unless I can agree that the argument is well-founded or there is at least some reasonable degree of potential validity to the methods employed.
Now if somebody has not studied a particular subject, that is understandable and forgivable, but if they are being obnoxious, let's talk.
That's from Post 50. Tell us why anybody should believe you have any credibility on this subject? Did you learn all it all on audio forums? Or are you actually a closet social science scholar?
"Join AES" and "Google it"are not intellectually satisfying responses. This is the vile spew of untutored audio forum reptiles.
If you have a degree in philosophy of science from Cambridge University, I apologize.
I
Sorry, Evenharmonic.
_I_ am an expert! Or, at least, I can easily pass for one in this situation. I spent 15 years in the best schools in the world studying this material. And I have been in audio professionally for 30 years, most of them in highly public capacities . My work is well known to many on this forum.
I am not gonna defer to an electronics engineer or some random thug stooge from an audio forum on human research methodology, unless I can agree that the argument is well-founded or there is at least some reasonable degree of potential validity to the methods employed.
Now if somebody has not studied a particular subject, that is understandable and forgivable, but if they are being obnoxious, let's talk.
That's from Post 50. Tell us why anybody should believe you have any credibility on this subject? Did you learn all it all on audio forums? Or are you actually a closet social science scholar?
"Join AES" and "Google it"are not intellectually satisfying responses. This is the vile spew of untutored audio forum reptiles.
If you have a degree in philosophy of science from Cambridge University, I apologize.
I
I really believe that the OP would be happiest to begin (and maybe end!) with a 2A3 amplifier, and just forget about the (linear scale, so very misleading) power output number. John Atwood makes some excellent output transformers for not too much money - the 3 KOhm model is appropriate - and so do several other folks. Be very generous with drive signal and you will not be disappointed.
But I also believe that future experimentation with the large cathode sweep tubes and with an active power supply (which, after all, is in series with the signal pass devices) might be worthwhile. Their relatively low max voltage ratings and big cathodes encourage the builder to operate in the best part of their (often *excellent*) curves. The current low cost isn't important, but future availability should not be expected. Need to buy enough now for your intended interest lifetime, if you decide to experiment.
I built an amplifier with type 845 finals in 1994, largely because of the corrupting influence of a certain _Sound Practices_ magazine. Still use it.
Thanks, as always,
Chris
But I also believe that future experimentation with the large cathode sweep tubes and with an active power supply (which, after all, is in series with the signal pass devices) might be worthwhile. Their relatively low max voltage ratings and big cathodes encourage the builder to operate in the best part of their (often *excellent*) curves. The current low cost isn't important, but future availability should not be expected. Need to buy enough now for your intended interest lifetime, if you decide to experiment.
I built an amplifier with type 845 finals in 1994, largely because of the corrupting influence of a certain _Sound Practices_ magazine. Still use it.
Thanks, as always,
Chris
@grovergardner
Nobody can returns the question of what is the best tube amplifier!
Breadbords is a philosophy, a point of view, without any provocation, good old school: point to point wiring (turret boards or not) is also possible. I´ve built some breadboard (< 10) but I´m faster (experience, good big librairies) with a PCB and cheaper today with manufacturing.
He ask for a finished tube amplifier with manual ready to built. Not to start at zero but still learning by doing. No ones to reply?
French guys says: réponse à 2 balles
Jeez. 🙂 Okay, for the best kits I would probably look at AudioNote KitOne or the Asano kits if they're still available. Tried-and-true designs coupled with excellent components.
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