• WARNING: Tube/Valve amplifiers use potentially LETHAL HIGH VOLTAGES.
    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
    performed by someone who is thoroughly familiar with
    the safety precautions around high voltages.

Flat screen t.v. and tube amps?

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I have for movie sound with the RCA's out of the SAT rec. which is much better than out of the TV. Sounded fantastic with just EL84 PP amps!

I turned off Compression for max sonics in audio settings also which was a great improvement even with stock TV speakers! TV was lowest setting and even HiFi was noticeably poorer.

Maybe you can do the same with a cable box. I think the default setting is for low bandwidth use which the provider prefers.

Best to use the component audio RCA's out of the TV if you have to. Then check for compression or low res setting on the TV audio setup also!
 
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Another thing I found on my older HD TV's 24/22"" from 2005/ 2008 is that using 3 RCA cables for the component video to my SAT rec. gave a noticeably better picture than the HDMI cable. Maybe newer TV's are better that way, but if you can give that a try also!

Does anyone know how long you can run RCA cables for audio?
 
The TV antenna goes into a HD Homerun ethernet tuner which is plugged into the router. All computers in the house and the laptops get TV through the router. The TV in the living room has it's own computer. The computer has a 24/96 sound card that feeds a 125 WPC tube amp which goes into 15 inch OB speakers with 96 db sensitivity.

The only application that requires anything above a Core i3 is Overlouds TH2, a guitar amp processor and simulator. Plug the guitar into the PC, dial up your favorite vintage amp and stack, and really annoy the neighbors with 250 watts. Any mid range video card can run two TV's in 1080 HD via HDMI.

The PC can DVR the usual crud that flows from network TV. It can also play the HD videos on Youtube. The tube amp can reproduce the live Metallica concert in HD with realistic volume levels....except for the pyro.

The audio and video from the cable box is heavilly compressed by Comcast and doesn't compare to OTA quality. Ditto the audio outs from a 5 year old Sony TV.
 
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My Tube amp is the center of my entertainment system.
My Blu ray and Xbox go to My Marantz SS for a pre amp then to my ST-35 tube amp. Smooths out the digital. When I had cable, I ran it to my SS vintage receivers.
My current system sounds best when I use the DIY tube pre amps I'm trying to create- done on a solderless breadboard....so I can only imagine what a complete one would sound like.

Tubes love to eat up and iron out digital.
 
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