It wasn't old technology back then.
Have you compared the performance measurements of tube amp vs SS amp of these days per price point?
A lot, on consumer market. You can get a cheap SS amp with audibly transparent performance. Can you get that with cheap tube amp?
I apologize if I stir up any controversial topic here. My intention is to find out if I am investing my money in the correct way. I am not an audiophile but am a musician. It brothers me when I hear something nowhere near the original, like sound coming out of a pair of PC speakers. I have been listening to sub par $500 av receivers, ignore the speakers setup for now, and none of them can recreate the original sound of the vocal and musical instruments. Vocals sounded thin, and bass were not tight. Things generally sounded scattered. Even with eyes closed I couldn't imagine myself being in front of the music performers.
So I looked into valve amplifiers and most say they are warming and sound more natural. The ms-10d mk ii is for me to get an idea with spending the minimum.
I don't have $10000 or two for a SS monoblock amplifier.
If the valve amp is the right path I am seeking I will probably spend around up to $700 for a true valve amplifier. I assume the different between a $5000 Macintosh and a $700 Chinese built is not a night and day diff? SQ 99/100 vs 95/100?
If speakers is a major concern to complete my question, I am looking at a pair of bookshelfs like the KEF R300 or that LS50 or some B&W.
Yes I took it apart and I also did research on this little cheap unit before I bought it. So a true valve amp is just having the audio signal feed to powerful tube amplifiers and straight to the speakers?
So I looked into valve amplifiers and most say they are warming and sound more natural. The ms-10d mk ii is for me to get an idea with spending the minimum.
I don't have $10000 or two for a SS monoblock amplifier.
If the valve amp is the right path I am seeking I will probably spend around up to $700 for a true valve amplifier. I assume the different between a $5000 Macintosh and a $700 Chinese built is not a night and day diff? SQ 99/100 vs 95/100?
If speakers is a major concern to complete my question, I am looking at a pair of bookshelfs like the KEF R300 or that LS50 or some B&W.
Yes I took it apart and I also did research on this little cheap unit before I bought it. So a true valve amp is just having the audio signal feed to powerful tube amplifiers and straight to the speakers?
From your standpoint could you tell us the difference in sound of floorstanders and bookshelves ( freestanders) and what is this so called "image" ?
From my experience and blogs I read most people prefer a set of bookshelves over floorstanding. They said they have better sound image. I assumer that mean sound stage.
They tend to be more euphonic. They can be horrible and tubby. Some people like this.
The unit you bought is an electrical fraud. Its a chip amp pretending to be a tube amp.
aaaah, no. The difference is reliability, power, speaker drive and control capability - quite a bit actually.
All of your choices appear to be a poor match to a low power tube amp. They either have very low sensitivity, or peaky impedance curves.
With tubes, the speaker is not just a place for the noise to fall out. Tube amps typically have less ability to control the movement of the speaker. Its very important to get a speaker that is as sensitive as possible with as flat as possible impedance curve. These tend to be comparatively expensive and not on the shelf of your local electronics goods store.
No. There are typically transformers that electrically sit between the tube and the speaker. They convert the high impedance signal of the tube to a relatively low impedance of the speaker.
Precis - your budget is insufficient for your goal. You may actually get a better overall result within your budget by just getting a set of reasonable quality speakers, or optimising the placement of the ones you have. Its near impossible these days to buy a totally incompetent SS amp, and speaker design and placement play a significant role in the perceived sound.
I have found that driving most modern speakers, bookshelf or floorstanders, with a valve amp will generally sound fairly horrible. Why ? because they are tuned for SS amps with super high damping factors. Valves amps will sound bloated and sloppy matched to many modern speakers.
The best way to get excellent performance out of a valve amp is to buy vintage drivers and place them in an open baffle. This is a perfect match since this is exactly what the drivers were designed for. I have found that German 1940's era speakers are the absolute best sounding speakers in this application.
Buying a valve amp and plugging in modern midpriced speakers is fairly much guaranteed to disappoint.
------
I repeat a statement I have made many times before - if the design philosophy of super high gain transistor circuits with masses of feedback were the way to get HI-FI, then we would all be listening to chip-amp designs since that represents the pinnacle of that philosophy. When someone can explain why a highly optimized opamp based power amp cannot match even a mid-priced SS HI-FI amp I will start to take statements about the benefits of SS a bit more seriously. So far no one has taken up the challenge.
After a long period of building excxlusively valve amps, I went back and built both a JLH and a Le Monstre. The Le Monstre came out a nose ahead and I used some of the big chunky Sanken premium Audio quality transistors. The Le Monstre is about as close to a valve amp as you can get in terms of design philosphy and comparable application of feedback principles. It sounds really nice and almost the same as my best valve design, but after an extended listening test of weeks I have eventually gone back to my best valve amp because it still has the edge in all the departments that matter to me.
Shoog
Last edited:
Would you able to point me to a set of more appropriate speakers and I will see if I can work my budget around that.
Here is what the engineers at IEEE really say regarding the differences, and it becomes obvious that higher transconductance is but a bit player in the whole equation:
How much difference does that make :
Vacuum Tubes versus Solid-State Transistors
Here is the important take home message, if you never enter clipping you are unlikely to hear much difference (unless the SS amp has enhanced the higher harmonic distortion as the cost of lower overall distortion - as they often do when large amounts of feedback are applied). I think its also important to note the implication that a KISS approach is generally better and there valves will generally always come out ahead.
Shoog
How much difference does that make :
Vacuum Tubes versus Solid-State Transistors
Here is the important take home message, if you never enter clipping you are unlikely to hear much difference (unless the SS amp has enhanced the higher harmonic distortion as the cost of lower overall distortion - as they often do when large amounts of feedback are applied). I think its also important to note the implication that a KISS approach is generally better and there valves will generally always come out ahead.
Shoog
Last edited:
For what you listen to 45wpc is over the top. I would shoot for something in the 10-20w range which should increase your options a bit. I would guess that the Yaquin is a all pentode with copious feedback design - which is really something of a dead end in terms of getting the best from valves (IMO).
The only ESL speakers i ever heard were the Quads and I wasn't at all impressed. A very good Fullrange or wide range speaker would make a better match in my opinion. Something along the lines of a Fostex based system.
Shoog
Last edited:
Better designed speakers will sound better than lesser design quality regardless of bookshelves over floorstanders.
To see if we are on the same page, I want to ask you, what is hi-fi in audio electronics?
What kind of listening test was it?
I wouldn't base my decision of what is better based on a structured listening test vs. electronic characteristics. In the real world what most everyone prefers is based on what a person finds to be emotionally satisfying.
There are of course exceptions and those that insist that what sounds better is what is technically electronically 'better'. Personally I think people like that are insecure. I do remember the THD hype from the '70's. One brand would say their receiver had 0.1 % THD. Another would claim 0.09 % and yet another would claim 0.05 % as if that truly made their receiver better sounding. As if one could actually hear the difference. And of course there also were the audiophile snobs that claimed they could.
And yet on one more hand there are the EE's that attempt to quantify why an amp sounds appealing and why another doesn't.
To bring cost into the equation is not the factor that makes something sound better.
There are of course exceptions and those that insist that what sounds better is what is technically electronically 'better'. Personally I think people like that are insecure. I do remember the THD hype from the '70's. One brand would say their receiver had 0.1 % THD. Another would claim 0.09 % and yet another would claim 0.05 % as if that truly made their receiver better sounding. As if one could actually hear the difference. And of course there also were the audiophile snobs that claimed they could.
And yet on one more hand there are the EE's that attempt to quantify why an amp sounds appealing and why another doesn't.
To bring cost into the equation is not the factor that makes something sound better.
What is structured listening test? Also, please cite an example or two of electronic characteristics. I would like to be clear on what it is that you are talking about instead of just assuming (like some forum members do).
Yes. But what you are seeing is what takes place on internet forums, some post claims and others debate about it.
I think you are confused between what happens during people's face to face exchange vs. internet forum debates.
Are you talking about measuring what we can hear?
In the real world, materials cost, labor costs, transporting costs...etc. And I wasn't talking about what sounds better. If you aren't sure what I was talking about, either reread my posts or ask for clarification.
EvenHarmonics,
Again, I have to say that your talking points show that you do not know what you do not know. In my own life I am usually aware when I know little or nothing about a subject. I then choose to be quiet and listen to others if it is an interesting subject to me. Shoog said a lot of interesting things that also happen to be true. He also seems very unbiased in that he has also built high quality SS amps and can compare them to VT amps he has built. If I was in a similar position to you with little actual experience with both sides of the game I would sit up and take notice. I would listen more and repeat my talking points less.
Again, I have to say that your talking points show that you do not know what you do not know. In my own life I am usually aware when I know little or nothing about a subject. I then choose to be quiet and listen to others if it is an interesting subject to me. Shoog said a lot of interesting things that also happen to be true. He also seems very unbiased in that he has also built high quality SS amps and can compare them to VT amps he has built. If I was in a similar position to you with little actual experience with both sides of the game I would sit up and take notice. I would listen more and repeat my talking points less.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.