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Just set up my new Yaqin 13s amplifier and I have to say that I am impressed. I cannot image any solid state amplifier producing this level of listening enjoyment for $600 or even $2500. It really has me questioning the whole tube .vs SS debate all over again. Proponents of solid state technology are still saying what they have been saying all along. All other things being equal a SS and tube amplifier will produce exactly the same sound until they are are driven into distortion. Early in the morning while my wife was still sleeping I listened at very low volumes and could hear details in the music that I had never noticed before and heard everything being presented in a more pleasing way. Are we all just crazy or is there really something to this? Being a skeptic, I'm leaning towards crazy. Virtually every positive tube experience, including mine, is purely anecdotal with the hard evidence saying that there is no difference except in distortion levels. There has to be something more going on here, but what?
Edits: 03/07/16Follow Ups:
The highish output resistance of the tube amplifier modifies the frequency response in a sometimes pleasing way.. add some low level euphonc 2order distortion and it makes many peaople happy,
here is a model of what my amplifier does..This is the effect of the 1.8 ohm output resistance into a 2 way speaker
That is a wonderful curve, within 2 dB !
Second order distortion is a valve amp charasteristic, higher orders are ss charasteritics and very nasty.
Avoid valve amps with more than 10 dB overall feedback, then 2-nd order distrotion is very low.
I get the impression that your music collection is made of very bad compressed CD's or vinyl.
If the curve is your amp it looks very good. Do not call your amp "euphonic" just because you miss the ultarbright artificial ss crossoverdistortion/TIM you're probably got used to.
So here is the actual mesaured frequency reponse in Voltage dB at speaker terminals, Nice for a 300B I think,I love the sound but one cannot deny the frequency drop off of 1dB that must be audible.. the secondd figure is the inroom measurement with Tranistor(green) vs 300B (Blue) tube amplifier using a calibrated Umik microphone..
Edits: 03/26/16 03/26/16 03/26/16 03/26/16 03/26/16
Thanks for your information.
Indeed the source impedance matters, heavy feedback compensates for a non linear curve. Nevertheless measurements do nothing for me, loudspeaker amplitude curves, room influences are bigger issues.
My Magnepan MG1-c with a little tweak on the filter has an impedance of 5 Ohm on every frequencie. As there is no EMF feedback to the amplifier Valves or Solid State work almost or entirely the same, yet I prefer my valve amplifier, in my case without feedback. Natural sound, various Solid State amp in the past all had their own sound, from good to very bad. Even a single ended 6BQ5 amp at low volume sound musical and natural versus Solid State amp's.
I wish for a solid state amp with good sound, cheaper, easyer, no expensive valves to replace, etc. but never found one.
Ears like a mouse !
Valve amplifiers have no cross over distortion/transient inter modulation distortion. The lower the volume, the lower the distortion, benign kind.
Solid state: the lower the volume , the higher the distortions, and a very nasty kind.
You are one of the few who heard this, in the morning at low level, when the ears are fresh ! Congrat's. Another statement that you must not believe all the techtalk, advertisement etc. just believe your own ears.
'Valve amplifiers have no cross over distortion/transient inter modulation distortion'...wrong.
Of course you're right: in Class B but we do not use that in HiFi applications. And no heavy feedback either. Or no feedback at all.
My measuring instruments are my ears therefore I am allway's right.
Happy listening to your favorite music !
and ist is not only SS that can have crossover distorion..it is only confusing to the poor readers if you spread this kind of misinformation....
After high end hobby for more than 50 years I am not wrong.
What do you mean by "poor people", the non audiophile casual listener ? They don't visit Audio Asylum.
So, if you don't agree that quality aware people don't use: crappy Class B solidstate, crappy Class B opamps, valve amps in Class B or AB2 (for PA), loudness CD's and loudness vinyl then dream on.
In Class AB valveamps crossoverdistortion/TIM is virtually non existant, only when overdriving the amp and that is only done with guitar amps for the effect. Furthermore crossover from tube to tube goes gently when driven loud and is still benigne. SS amp's sound bad at low volume because there crossoverdistortion is greatest, something manufacturers never talk about and revieuwers ignore this because payola still exist.
I don't need measuring instruments, revieuws, comments like your's, fancy looking gear because I have ears like a bat. If something is spioling musical pleasure I hear immediately what's wrong, not in my home you know by now, but when visiting someone or listening in a shop, amplified concert or whatever.
as another factor.
Good SETs using linear triodes such as DHT typically run no GNFB and these are the most musical, (3D etc) IMHO. Most PP tube amps run modest GNFB, partly because many use Tetrodes or Pentodes in Ultralinear config and these are generally less musical to my ears. OTOH SS amps are inherently nonlinear and typically use far more GNFB to reduce distortion.
I'm certainly not saying that GNFB is the sole reason for the difference in sound but is definitely a factor. How much? Well, I once tried a relatively non linear transmitting triodes in a SET using only a modest amount of GNFB and hated it compared to 845. The more I reduced GNFB the better the sound until I eliminated it altogether and musicality improved dramatically. Still nowhere near my 845s but decent despite the distortion disadvantage compared to using GNFB.
Naz
Naz
I'm a musician (like a few others on the site) and have done years of serious listening to tubes and ss amps. I want to hear a system that truly reproduces the timbre of acoustic instruments without any added thickness or lack of transparency.
I get this with DHTs, and to me they are a different beast from indirectly heated tubes.
As for ss amps, a single ended SIT amp is better than indirectly heated tubes. Maybe not quite as good as an all-DHT amp but it's a toss-up.
+1
i play drums .
The best sound i've heard was by Dht 211 monoblocks ,interstage
x-formers ;it was not a commercial product.
Best commercial amplifiers :Fishers from the 60's,mostly with
7591 outputs tubes (or 7868 ,basically the same tube)
Best ss to me :old Nelson Pass class A (you can always fix them ;
no strange components with erased codes )
Maybe you just never hear a very good SS amp? I have both tube and SS units and I'm happy with each of them.
Genp - what's your SS secret? Nothing on your profile to indicate your system.
I'm still looking for a SS replacement that will offer as musically enjoyable a sound as my 845-based monoblocks. Tried Red Wine, Sugden, Benchmark, Quad, etc and now Accuphase - the best so far.
My SS amp? DIY of course...The guy who first built it took years to improve his baby. I upgraded it after a while. My two other units are tube amps.
but it just ain't gonna happen ... not if your 845 monos are as good as they can be:)
Naz
One number is worth ten-thousand adjectives. You can't make meaningful comparisons between pieces of electronic gear without venturing into the world of numbers at some point. Otherwise, everything is "loved" by someone somewhere and gets a Spiderman juice box and a participation medal. (See: The Absolute Sound)Tubes regulate the flow of electrons. So do transistors. The main thing that distinguishes a tube amp from its SS equivalent is the inefficiency of the tube amp.
If you're driving your equipment to the point of distortion, the circuit technology being employed isn't a meaningful issue.
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It's amazing that hipsters who insist they can hear sampling remnants in interpolated 24/96 digital waveforms can somehow fail to detect surface noise from their own vinyl LPs.
Edits: 03/08/16
Efficiency depends as much on topology as the amplifying elements. Compare a Mark Levinson class A SS to a Dynaco 70, and it's no contest. :)
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Buy Chinese. Bury freedom.
Really?
You're going to compare a $5000 SS amp to a $500 tube amp. I hope that would be a no contest.
That being said I think some people would still prefer the ST70 depending on which incarnation we are talking about. The early ones were pretty awful from what I hear, but there are heavily modified versions that could give even a $5000-$7000 SS amp a run for its money......and still cost under $1500.
Did you read the post directly above? I was referring to efficiency. The Levinson SS consumes megawatts compared to the Dynaco. As for sound, I heard the Levinson in the mid-70s. I wasn't impressed. Smoother than a ST-70, but nothing to write home about. There have been numerous tube amps that do better.
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Buy Chinese. Bury freedom.
But, there is another distinguishing 'thing.'
If a modern - or modernised - valve amp has maximised its storage, which they can do to an extent which SS amps would have real difficulty getting even close to, then that amplifier can IME outdo most SS amps, even in the bass.
Large storage PSU's consistently sound better.
I used to own a rebuilt and rethought STAX DA80 pure class-A SS amp, new and higher uf PSU caps, SR diodes, and with its slightly cloudy OEM driver stage replaced. 45WPC into 8 ohms and very nice.
Compared with two rebuilt max-storage LEAK St20s with a teeny bit (1 to 2 dbw) less total power 20 watts plus maybe 6? watts. Passive bi-amped.
Guess what all experienced listeners preferred? The passive bi-amped set-up.
Guess which technology was happiest playing real loud?
Warmest
Tim Bailey
Skeptical Measurer & Audio Scrounger
Nor gravity (we can measure the effect of it but don't know what it is. Yet). But I'm pretty sure most find both essential for making life bearable. I find tubes essential, too.Sometimes we measure the wrong things, when exploring music and audio, and make wrong assumptions. You're not crazy. And you're not alone!
Big J
"... only a very few individuals understand as yet that personal salvation is a contradiction in terms."
Edits: 03/08/16
nt
And remember... this is a family forum. :)
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Buy Chinese. Bury freedom.
nt
Blah blah blah sand amps are great and I love those 7th order odd harmonics built in as I do like finger nails scratching on a blackboard in my music! Not!
Early on I did have a number of tube stereos. As this hobby goes you try new sounds and systems. So I sold off the tubes and started trying to put together a SS system - for decades!!!! Spending some very serious cash and years in the process.
I mean some systems were good for some things but in the end they were never very musical. Accurate, bla bla bla but just not musical.
As fate would step in a Sherwood S-5000 amp came my way for FREE!!!!!
Plugged it in and realized THAT'S MUSIC!!!!
Now I use my Sherwood S-5000 for one system and a VTA ST-70/Conrad Johnson preamp for the other. I'm done searching.
Enjoy the music.
Naz
I wonder how many SS proponents know the Transient Intermodulation Distortion of their amplifiers. Amplifiers clearly possess characteristics such as this below saturation that are generally unpublished, if they are even known at all.
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Buy Chinese. Bury freedom.
One factor almost always forgotten about the convergence of solid state and tube sound i output impedance. Almost all solid state gear has very low output impedance. Tube gear has high output impedance. The lowest I know is the old Melos gear with a value about 0.4 ohms. And that has an affect on frequency response coloration since there is an interaction with the impedance curves of speakers resulting in speaker response which is different between solid state and tube amps.
Just look at Stereophile tests where the amps frequency response is tested into a simulated speaker load and note the easily seen differences of solid state to tube gear.
"One factor almost always forgotten about the convergence of solid state and tube sound i output impedance."
I'm sure that has an effect, but it doesn't really explain the typical tube/SS sonic differences very well. I still hear those differences if I run amplifiers into dummy loads and headphones. Damping factor has virtually on effect under those conditions.
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Buy Chinese. Bury freedom.
Stereophile's roller coaster impedance test curve forces my VTL amps to vary response by a whopping +- 0.5 db. Such is utterly swamped by other factors.
I don't buy the source impedance excuse either. :)
I didn't mean it to explain the all differences between tubes and solid state, just that significant differences in frequency response are very possible which would be at least one significant variation. And I'll add that it is known that small differences in frequency response at the right places are perceived as differences in detail, transparency, etc.The story is rarely so simple that real world differences come down to a single factor. And also my comments were only meant to point out differences. I said nothing about which format was better to any listener.
Edits: 03/09/16
Nobody is criticizing what you said. SS aficionados are always quick to point out that the ultra-low output Z of transistor circuitry provides better control of speakers, and they're right. IMO, achieving the best synergy between speakers and amps is indeed more difficult and more critical in vacuum tube systems. However, most of the "in your face" differences I hear are in the bass region, and that stands to reason, because woofers respond to damping factor more readily than smaller drivers. In this context, the more beautifully detailed mids and upper registers common to vacuum tube amps aren't explained by this particular characteristic.
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Buy Chinese. Bury freedom.
My main problem with the tube -vs- solid state argument, has to do with the availability of higher efficiency (> 90db) speakers.
Higher wattage tube amps....generally....tend to be MUCH more expensive, than higher wattage solid state amps.
Affordable (i.e.: NOT a mortgage payment) tube amplifiers tend to be SE or lower power PP.
There is NOT a whole lot of speakers out there that can deal with the reduced power output, especially smaller speakers.
Steve
I think the focus on tube gear has increased quite a bit. Who would ever think to see it on Amazon.
Good times.
Cheers!
Jonesy
"I know just enough to get into trouble. But not enough to get out of it."
My experience has always been that tubes have higher resolution of low level information. Very good solid state can come close but not quite there. This has nothing to do with distortion.
Alan
Big J
"... only a very few individuals understand as yet that personal salvation is a contradiction in terms."
Your ears are much more sensitive than mere numbers. Like any other skill your ability to listen critically can be trained and enhanced. I think
owning a piece of tube audio equipment is a step in the right direction to becoming a better and more appreciative listener. Enjoy the glow, Dak
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