Thats OK with me. You don't have to. But you and me, we both won't turn the clock backwarts, stop internet and let the good old times roll again. This is all over. Those days are gone and will never come back.
We simply have lost the infrastructure here in germany. All what was there until 20 years ago ist lost and gone. Of course, someone will find a shop for tube amps in a radius of, say, 100 Km. But as I said earlier, the amps that are displayed there are of two kinds. Either cheap asian made or ultra expensive high end gear which will have the same building style as the cheap asians but thicker front panels with silver or gold plating so that it looks more fancy.
Even your excellent tube amp companies are all gone, it has become a niche boutique market in which only small companies can survive.
We had good companies here and an electronics store in nearly every bigger city or some of them. Nearly all of them have been closed. The stores that sell retails are in a very hard competition with internet. People have consultation in the local stores and then buy on internet. They will be all closed soon. Amazon will run the whole business. When someone here in germany in an audio forum tell people that he have purchased gear XY for the amount of XY, not 10 minutes later some other folks have displayed a source directly from the wholesale market where to fetch it for some bucks less. Thats the reality today and nobody will change this because its all about price transparency in markets worldwide and everybody can search the whole markets within a minute with the mobile phone in the shops. And thats what people are doing and no local store can compete with Aliexpress store in china where tube amps are being sold for nearly nothing.
Today’s dearth of bricks and mortar audio retailers with decent demo facilities certainly makes any new purchase a leap of faith -“ will what I hear sync with the conclusions /expectations my research leads me to?”
I’d suggest that if the amp cited above is within close driving distance that the cost of “shoe leather” for a taste-test audition could be the cheapest way to answer the question of whether “tube sound” is right for you. Keep in mind that you could be enrolling in a lifestyle -DIY Audio in general - with ongoing cost of upgrade / maintenance .
'getting to and from work on public transportation'
Yes, this is so much the case with gov. teach jobs, I know people who can relate.
- Death of brick and mortar audio retailers? nah, I see more audio shops than ever with better showrooms, in Montreal and Ottawa. Perhaps it depends of want you want to buy?
Yes, this is so much the case with gov. teach jobs, I know people who can relate.
- Death of brick and mortar audio retailers? nah, I see more audio shops than ever with better showrooms, in Montreal and Ottawa. Perhaps it depends of want you want to buy?
gabdx - the word I used was actually dearth, and was qualified with “with decent demo facilities”. This is a phenomena that may perhaps only regional - but in our fair city, I’m pretty sure there is only one salon with tube gear on their shelves.
Fsatsil, the particular Cayin amp cited is nominally rated at 45wpc, and having owned an EL34 P/P (Jolida 302) I’d opine that while individual models might vary in subtleties of sonic signature, the genus would not be underpowered for at least a taste test with the Mirages.
Fsatsil, the particular Cayin amp cited is nominally rated at 45wpc, and having owned an EL34 P/P (Jolida 302) I’d opine that while individual models might vary in subtleties of sonic signature, the genus would not be underpowered for at least a taste test with the Mirages.
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Joe,
as you are new here, have you checked out the class D and chip amp forums?
As being an owner of a number of mothballed tube amps, I would not recommend them at this stage of the game, or any stage, come to that. One needs a really good imagination to hear any advantage in tubes and vinyl.
For the last several years I have been using a very inexpensive Chinese board recommended by forum members. I had no knowledge of this technology before joining the group.
as you are new here, have you checked out the class D and chip amp forums?
As being an owner of a number of mothballed tube amps, I would not recommend them at this stage of the game, or any stage, come to that. One needs a really good imagination to hear any advantage in tubes and vinyl.
For the last several years I have been using a very inexpensive Chinese board recommended by forum members. I had no knowledge of this technology before joining the group.
Typically, tube sound is either rolled off high frequency (tube is old technology) or harmonics sound character from SET amp. There are some other categories but the two mentioned are the typical reason, with the former being more common.
harleyujoe, you can get a taste of tube sound with average transistor audio gear by using equalizer to taper off the high frequency. If you want to get into SET (single-ended triode) amp, there are many threads on this forum.
As the OP specifically expressed the curiosity I think he owes it to himself to explore the option, even if his ultimate conclusion agrees with yours, and it behooves us to assist him in finding a way to answer that question with the minimal amount of expense. An audition to the locally advertised used piece could do that in a single afternoon - certainly less time than has elapsed since his initial post.
Like many long time forum members, I had probably 35 yrs of experience with an extensive range of range of mainstream commercial audio products before falling down the DIY rabbit hole, sometimes with miss matches between speaker sensitivities and amp power - NAD 3020 was a sweet little piece with outstanding bang for the buck value, but not quite up to doing justice to full dynamic range of symphonic music with the likes of Dahlquist DQ10 and passive woofer, Quad ESL57, or KEF 101. Soft-clipping is still running out of juice.
I came to vacuum tubed gear later in the arc of my audio journey, and have owned built at least half a dozen types in the past 20yrs, in fact still have a home brew 6CA7 SE piece sitting on a shelf, and the original Jolida EL34 P/P in abandoned state of rebuild. The reasons I changed direction and have nothing to do with the musicality of these devices - it was primarily their size, cost of tube replacement /rolling, number of source components/ interconnects, and let’s face it, the form factor and convenience now afforded by integrated network receivers, etc - many of which will employ class D amp stages.
On a strictly dollar per watt basis, there’s no argument that something like the cheap Chinese boards have incredible appeal - I built a 4 channel amp for bi-amping using a Sure board a couple of years ago. Even fully assembled products like Topping, SMSL, Lepai, Dayton, etc still offer great value, but my experience with several of them has lead me to some conclusions:
- not all class D / T amps sound the same;
- a well executed discrete component SS amp such as ACA, or chip amp such as 3886 will eat them for breakfast sonically;
- a tube amp can still be very musically satisfying.
Like many long time forum members, I had probably 35 yrs of experience with an extensive range of range of mainstream commercial audio products before falling down the DIY rabbit hole, sometimes with miss matches between speaker sensitivities and amp power - NAD 3020 was a sweet little piece with outstanding bang for the buck value, but not quite up to doing justice to full dynamic range of symphonic music with the likes of Dahlquist DQ10 and passive woofer, Quad ESL57, or KEF 101. Soft-clipping is still running out of juice.
I came to vacuum tubed gear later in the arc of my audio journey, and have owned built at least half a dozen types in the past 20yrs, in fact still have a home brew 6CA7 SE piece sitting on a shelf, and the original Jolida EL34 P/P in abandoned state of rebuild. The reasons I changed direction and have nothing to do with the musicality of these devices - it was primarily their size, cost of tube replacement /rolling, number of source components/ interconnects, and let’s face it, the form factor and convenience now afforded by integrated network receivers, etc - many of which will employ class D amp stages.
On a strictly dollar per watt basis, there’s no argument that something like the cheap Chinese boards have incredible appeal - I built a 4 channel amp for bi-amping using a Sure board a couple of years ago. Even fully assembled products like Topping, SMSL, Lepai, Dayton, etc still offer great value, but my experience with several of them has lead me to some conclusions:
- not all class D / T amps sound the same;
- a well executed discrete component SS amp such as ACA, or chip amp such as 3886 will eat them for breakfast sonically;
- a tube amp can still be very musically satisfying.
Lots of good info at our friend ASR....
Audio Science Review: Articles, Reviews and Measurements of Audio Products | Audio Science Review (ASR) Forum
Audio Science Review: Articles, Reviews and Measurements of Audio Products | Audio Science Review (ASR) Forum
More like "lots of good measurements". That site is doing similar thing to what Stereophile magazine does, reviews accompanied by measurements. But one has to be very wary of the underlying intent because just like Stereophile magazine, the owner of that forum has things (AV electronics) to sell. He isn't spending all that time and effort without anything in return.
You can find new and rather good PP tube amps for that price like the Prima Luna Prologue Classic Integrated (that sells for 1800$). They are not the overly colloured tube amps, but not trying to sound like SS amps neighter. Second hand you can find older versions of this amp for sometimes less than halve that price.
I use an older version (the Prologue 4 power amp) as my main amp and i love it. It's an amp that stays here untill the end i think.
But your speakers are not efficient enough to live with 35w on each side, they need more watt. So you will have to find speakers that go above 85dB to really enjoy such an amp. And most tube amps that are not too expensive have even less watt, push pull or single ended.
I use an older version (the Prologue 4 power amp) as my main amp and i love it. It's an amp that stays here untill the end i think.
But your speakers are not efficient enough to live with 35w on each side, they need more watt. So you will have to find speakers that go above 85dB to really enjoy such an amp. And most tube amps that are not too expensive have even less watt, push pull or single ended.
That's the critical skill needed for just about every info out there. Sadly, it requires good bit of learning and practicing. Until then, people are vulnerable.
We are not dealing with live music performance. When it comes to something as technical as sound reproducing electronics, effective bias alert / filter can be had.
I was alluding to the “filters” that I inferred from you just have to subtract / understand the inbuilt biases. Firstly, shouldn’t the order be reversed, but more to the point, just exactly how do we achieve the second part without our own biases entering into the calculus?
The reference to Paul Simon’s “The Boxer” was an attempt to bolster that supposition, but clearly failed.
The reference to Paul Simon’s “The Boxer” was an attempt to bolster that supposition, but clearly failed.
Someone pointed out that "It's the Music Entertainment Business, not the Music Science Business".
As 'consumers' of audio technology, haven't we have pretty much proven that, to our minds, music is reproduced better by amplifiers with husky faceplates and chassis, no tone controls, and visible glowing tubes?
I don't know how we can 'filter' out our biases.
Actually, I don't even know how I can evaluate how accurately my equipment is reproducing the ideas of the recording engineer and producer. A lot of us have the idea that the performers in a recording studio are arranged as they are on stage, but it often isn't so. Talk about 'soundstage' and 'positioning' makes a lot of assumptions.
"It sounds good to me" is about as far as I'm prepared to go!
Measuring devices have no bias. For example, we can figure out how faithfully an amp can amplify the input signal to output signal by comparing the measurements of "in" vs "out" signals, be it sine wave, square wave, frequency response, FFT (Fast Fourier Time Domain). With hi-fi (high fidelity) equipment, those comparisons will be very close to each other which we call "transparent". Generally, DACs and amps are very transparent even at low price point these days so there is no need to be concerned with. It's the speakers and room acoustics that are low-fi in comparison and those need to be concerned with when purchasing, setting up or upgrading.Someone pointed out that "It's the Music Entertainment Business, not the Music Science Business".
As 'consumers' of audio technology, haven't we have pretty much proven that, to our minds, music is reproduced better by amplifiers with husky faceplates and chassis, no tone controls, and visible glowing tubes?
I don't know how we can 'filter' out our biases.
Actually, I don't even know how I can evaluate how accurately my equipment is reproducing the ideas of the recording engineer and producer. A lot of us have the idea that the performers in a recording studio are arranged as they are on stage, but it often isn't so. Talk about 'soundstage' and 'positioning' makes a lot of assumptions.
"It sounds good to me" is about as far as I'm prepared to go!
You do realize that you are saying that 75% of everything that goes on here at diyaudio is pretty much useless?
You mean that putting a femtosecond clock in my DAC isn't necessary?
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