 
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
|
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
50.150.232.230
In Reply to: RE: The very "best" tube amps - or, the ones I'd most like to own... posted by morricab on October 23, 2014 at 09:22:07
MCab,
Cant agree, Both are equal in their deficiency against real live reference. SS captures power, speed and immediacy of live music better than toob amplfiers , by a long shot, toobs tend to capture the size or due to a lack of a better phrase, the "meat" on instruments, vocals, space, better than SS, but slow and limp by comparision.
Where I do find tooobs can excell over SS is in the pre-amp stage , Toob pre's can match or better their SS counterparts, so I'm for Hybrids as the way forward if choosing one topology.
Regards..
Follow Ups:
Generally I agree that both are on opposite sides of "true" sound but I don't agree that they are equal in their deficiency and this is because of human tolerance to different kinds of distortions is not equal. I would argue that the kinds of high order higher frequency distortion one encounters regularly with SS is more damaging to realism and long term listening pleasure. The biggest effect that the tube distortions seem to cause is a lack of apparent transparency and some tonal sameness that leads to somewhat boring sound.
The best of both minimize these traits but not to inexistence; however, I find that the best tube gear gets far closer to what I hear live with the right recordings than any SS. The colorations from SS are too damaging IMO.
For preamps, I have heard only one competitive SS preamp to the best tube designs...the Lyra Connisseur preamp. That is a good one. Otherwise, only tubes deliver SOTA preamp sound IMO. I haven't heard the SS preamp from Robert Koda though...
I wonder how many people get the wrong impression of an amp after hearing a sub-optimal matchup? Those of us who own amps with variable impedance switching or multiple impedance taps know what can happen in a sub-optimal matchup.
Its pretty easy to determine impedance tap to use once you know z-min.
My experience is that this doesn't seem to matter very much. One amp I had sounded best on the 8 ohm tap regardless of the speaker impedance. Another one seems to work better on the 4 ohm tap for one speaker even though that speaker doesn't drop below 6 ohms. That same amp works best at 8 ohms on a similar speaker and 8 ohms on my horns.
When I had Acoustats, despite dropping to 2 ohms in the bass and 2 ohms in the highs, the 8 ohm tap sounded always the best with that speaker regardless of the amp.
Go figure. Matchin is a great place to start but I would advocate simply trying an listening to determine the right tap.
Post a Followup:
| FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]