All you said was very true and informative. This bit is important though, if you have a valve amp and you want good performance then you need to make specific decisions about your choice of speakers. For me that drove me towards OB which is the best match to low powered valve amps. I use vintage low compliance drivers which were built when valves were the only option around and so they are a perfect match in a way that most modern drivers can never be. However I have aperiodic box subswoofer to take care of frequencies below 400hz and here I use a chip amp to drive them. I make this specific choice to take advantage of the areas in which valves and SS each excel.
The point is that blanket statement about whether tubes are better than valves are meaningless outside of the discussion of the whole system they are been used in. Its another opportunity for gorilla style chest beating about your own particular choices. Such an approach is far from informative or helpful in informing someone who has little or no understanding of the bigger complexities of system synergy.
Shoog
Solid state vs. tube amp ??? what a subjective farce considering current (nearly)
zero distortion solid state amps and a "tame" loudspeaker with a flat impedance curve.
I run several of these amps for both subs and full range - no closer can i get to the
"truth" than to add nothing to the sound (electronically). Driving a speaker with
a large paralleled BJT triple output stage leaves the speaker and source ... that's it.
No subjective "voiced" power stage to even consider.
Devote your time and energy to the impedance curve and loudspeaker quality ,
it is what you really are hearing .... eliminate any error in the electronics.
what enters my speakers is <20PPM short of 100 watts , why would I want
to "voice" this with any harmonics (even or odd) ?? The speaker will surely
totally overwhelm this by many magnitudes.
I can't believe all the snake-oil out there that people fall for. Worst case , if
one wants valve sound ... run a valve preamp into a perfect zero distortion
power stage (like my 250W slewmaster). You would just hear the valve with
32db gain - nothing added (or subtracted).
I can't clip the slewmaster , so I would never be graced with this type "voicing".
For a guitar amp ... clip them tubes - here you DO want "voicing".
(distortion by design - and usefulness).
OS
zero distortion solid state amps and a "tame" loudspeaker with a flat impedance curve.
I run several of these amps for both subs and full range - no closer can i get to the
"truth" than to add nothing to the sound (electronically). Driving a speaker with
a large paralleled BJT triple output stage leaves the speaker and source ... that's it.
No subjective "voiced" power stage to even consider.
Devote your time and energy to the impedance curve and loudspeaker quality ,
it is what you really are hearing .... eliminate any error in the electronics.
what enters my speakers is <20PPM short of 100 watts , why would I want
to "voice" this with any harmonics (even or odd) ?? The speaker will surely
totally overwhelm this by many magnitudes.
I can't believe all the snake-oil out there that people fall for. Worst case , if
one wants valve sound ... run a valve preamp into a perfect zero distortion
power stage (like my 250W slewmaster). You would just hear the valve with
32db gain - nothing added (or subtracted).
I can't clip the slewmaster , so I would never be graced with this type "voicing".
For a guitar amp ... clip them tubes - here you DO want "voicing".
(distortion by design - and usefulness).
OS
Fully agree!Overall I think you have it. But I still think you may have drank too much of the Kool Aid. I think millions of individuals have read too many reviews with the term "euphonic" referring to tubes. My personal opinion is that this just may be a carry over from years of individuals being conditioned by high feedback SS designs being a bit sterile. That sterility is caused by what you described as an unnatural distortion spectrum. But it's not just that. The high feedback designs shift the distortion products to the higher harmonics. It happens even when it's not clipping. But when a high global feedback design clips it's particularly nasty. This is what's fundamentally just better about tubes over SS above the low frequency part of the spectrum. It's not euphony. Its the tube amplification not requiring near as much feedback to have fairly low levels of distortion for a given amplification scheme.
As far as the underdamping in the low frequencies with VTs. Agreed. Completely. I'm not very sure I would call that sound part of what most people would call euphonic. I'd just call that under damped and flabby. I think hardly anyone would call the underdamped sound unnatural but also pleasing, as in "euphonic". I think people have slowly been trained to think that if something sounds too good then it must be unnatural. The only thing I would apply that to is excessive 2nd harmonics, like in single ended. That really is too much of a good thing in terms of adding pleasing distortion. But then, who am I to object if it sounds good.
My first valve amp was a Leak Stereo 20 and it had that classic euphonic syrupy sound. Notes would seem to reverberate for long after the sound stopped with a rich glow. It was nice and what many people would expect from a valve amp.
However every valve amp I have ever built since then has sounded completely neutral and with none of those euphonic tones. The Leak was a bad valve amp, but there is absolutely no reason why any well designed valve amplifier should ever perform as badly as the Leak.
Shoog
However every valve amp I have ever built since then has sounded completely neutral and with none of those euphonic tones. The Leak was a bad valve amp, but there is absolutely no reason why any well designed valve amplifier should ever perform as badly as the Leak.
Shoog
About distortions
- Second harmonic is not "euphonic". There is not such thing as euphonic distortion in music playback. Some distortions are only less irritating than some other. However, 2nd harmonic could be used to cancel some of the 2nd harmonic distortion produced by the dynamic speaker. That is not about euphonic distortion but distortion reduction. Ref: Eduardo de Lima: Why single-ended tube amplifiers? About distortion behavior between SE amplifiers and speakers
- Low output impedance is good at suppressing bass resonance. Otherwise high impedance would be better at reduction of 3rd harmonics and higher produced by the speaker. There are certain limitations to this technique in multi-way speakers, but in active speakers and single driver full-range speakers it is most easy to implement. The question about bass resonance may be solved with acoustical damping or filtering (or both). So much about the output impedance. Ref: Esa Meriläinen: The Serious Flaws of Voltage Drive
- Some amplifying components are naturally more linear than others, thus requiring less negative feedback. Less feedback also means less amplifying stages and this helps at reduction of higher harmonics. Reduction of higher harmonics is good because they add fuzziness to the signal. Ref: IEEE Spectrum: The Cool Sound of Tubes
If you meant to say "transistors are better than valves", I for one, was talking about hi-fi in audio replay electronics. Speaking of hi-fi, what is your definition of it? It's important to know if we are on the same page or not. So your answer is...?
How was the listening comparison performed? Was it level matched?
Based on your repeated tendencies to hide info, my guess is that it wasn't level matched. Please feel free to correct me if my guess is wrong.
Come on, boys. I think there's some things that everyone would agree upon:
• Highly accurate amplifiers all sound alike when not overdriven
• Tube amplifiers rarely are “highly accurate”, so they sound different.
• Speakers are hugely different, make-to-make compared to nominal amp differences
• The nature of triodes, pentodes, FETs, BJTs, MOSFETs … are nonlinear.
• Every amplifier design attempts to overcome the raw nonlinearities …
• … with varying success … or “artistic license”
And it should be noted that the very same nonlinearities of ALL amplifying devices (perhaps with the exception of high performance op-amps!) makes for audio power delivery which can be nearly identical at low levels, but largely or hugely different near clipping.
Where most tube-aficionados will say “tubes are better”, and most sand-state advocates say, “that's right: sand is definitely more linear and clean up to clipping.”
Just saying,
GoatGuy
• Highly accurate amplifiers all sound alike when not overdriven
• Tube amplifiers rarely are “highly accurate”, so they sound different.
• Speakers are hugely different, make-to-make compared to nominal amp differences
• The nature of triodes, pentodes, FETs, BJTs, MOSFETs … are nonlinear.
• Every amplifier design attempts to overcome the raw nonlinearities …
• … with varying success … or “artistic license”
And it should be noted that the very same nonlinearities of ALL amplifying devices (perhaps with the exception of high performance op-amps!) makes for audio power delivery which can be nearly identical at low levels, but largely or hugely different near clipping.
Where most tube-aficionados will say “tubes are better”, and most sand-state advocates say, “that's right: sand is definitely more linear and clean up to clipping.”
Just saying,
GoatGuy
I am differently minded. Not different tube - transe I would. I would different:
Analog: se - pp - complementer-pp. Balanced - unbalanced. One - any - many stage/s. Different - indifferent components. Active - passive psu. Choke - resistor psu. Many - any - one stage psu. Freewired - pcb ... and so on.
There is sooo much to regard. Sooo much that does influence the sound very very much more than "tube or transe". That is not constitutive.
In my mind,-)
Analog: se - pp - complementer-pp. Balanced - unbalanced. One - any - many stage/s. Different - indifferent components. Active - passive psu. Choke - resistor psu. Many - any - one stage psu. Freewired - pcb ... and so on.
There is sooo much to regard. Sooo much that does influence the sound very very much more than "tube or transe". That is not constitutive.
In my mind,-)
I would call 2nd harmonic distortion "Euphonic", since it's the same note as the fundamental, but one octave higher. It's always pleasantly musically related to the fundamental. All other harmonic distortion products can cause dissonance depending on what chord is played with the fundamental. The first, second and third harmonic form a major chord, but what if the chord in the music is a minor chord? Above that, the harmonics are hit and miss, as to whether they are pleasantly musically related to the music, and more often miss, which gives any instrument it's unique sound. The problem with trying to increase the amount of 2nd harmonic, is that it comes with more I.M., which past a small amount is rarely a good thing in a Hi-Fi system.
I personally verified everything I said in my previous post with a very nice lab full of test equipment, including a $30,000 HP spectrum analyzer, but one thing I never looked at is one SE transistor vs one SE tube, no feedback, distortion. Many tube fans have told me that tubes are inherently more linear than transistors, but I found a guy on the web who actually did the legitimate comparison, and he claims that the transistor actually had less distortion. He showed the circuits and everything (can't remember the link or the part numbers - but it seemed pretty legit).
Perhaps it's not only clipping that transistors do poorly, but in the case of variations of push-pull circuits, the crossover distortion may be a main contributor to "transistor sound". Cranking up the feedback may seem to improve the crossover distortion number on the bench, but then with real world music maybe it's not quite that simple. Especially as the amp heats up and the bias for the transistor output stage effectively shifts. Or especially with low level signals that barely turn on the output devices, so much of the waveform is done in the non-linear part of the transistor curves. That could cause the drivers to have highly distorted waveshapes, and possibly clip prematurely, in trying to force the output devices to be distortion free, in a high feedback circuit.
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I would have to be a cat with something to prove.
Not going to rise to the bait.
Shoog
Good points, especially the second point in bold. Now, what do we call an amp that sounds different? Lets see..., the word "coloration" comes to mind.
Could that be considered a hi-fi amp?Well, I'd like to make an equally intellectually cogent response to your arguments: GO TEAM!!! Rah, Rah
Euphonic or Least Irritating – depends on the context
I would call 2nd harmonic distortion "Least Irritating", in the context of playback devices, since these should not add any kind of distortion to the signal the listener hears.
In the context of music instruments and instrument amplifiers, 2nd harmonic may be truly "Euphonic".
I would call 2nd harmonic distortion "Least Irritating", in the context of playback devices, since these should not add any kind of distortion to the signal the listener hears.
In the context of music instruments and instrument amplifiers, 2nd harmonic may be truly "Euphonic".
It should never be the intention of anyone to add second harmonic distortion to their designs and it is in no way inevitable when using valves. Its a big red herring and a false stick used to misrepresent the nature of valve amplifiers.
valve amplifiers can be low distortion if you make the effort and keep them within their linear range, which would always be my intention.
Shoog
valve amplifiers can be low distortion if you make the effort and keep them within their linear range, which would always be my intention.
Shoog
They can be. Got any actual examples of those and how low of distortion do they show?
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