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Amp/Preamp Asylum Looking for a new Amp or Preamp? If you're after tubes, post over here. |
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In Reply to: RE: At best Cheever defines the euphonic, not the accurate posted by Disbeliever on April 3, 2014 at 09:12:25:
"How can any amp with antique tubes continual deteriroration 3% THD sound close to the original Live sound ?"
Although I use SS gear I grew up in the tube era. I suspect that the THD that you mention may be actually be used as the threshold defining the "maximum power". Tubes, especially when running single-ended, have their worst distortion at the loud-end where your ears are the least sensitive to it due to their own distortion while most transistor circuits have their worst distortion at the soft-end where your ears are running at full gain with low self-distortion. Even when you run transistors single ended they tend to have significantly more higher-order distortion than tubes do, it's just an artifact of their transfer functions.
But, on the other hand, transformers suck and it's expensive to build good ones so most solid state designs eschew them as their lower impedances make that a viable option. The result is a semi-general rule (from my experience) that SS amps have more accurate and 'tighter' bass while tubes have a more open and natural sounding treble. The engineering says that and my ears agree.
HOWEVER, either can provide excellent performance, or not. It's just that different topologies have different things that they sort-of do well just by default and their weaknesses have to be addressed by good design and added expense.
The future looks rosy, I predict that "chip-amps" and "class D" used within active speakers will drive up performance and drive down costs. Our system topology is archaic garbage and audiophiles try to work around it by careful matching and spending money. This too shall pass...
Rick
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Follow Ups
- RE: At best Cheever defines the euphonic, not the accurate - rick_m 10:11:22 04/03/14 (1)
- RE: At best Cheever defines the euphonic, not the accurate - morricab 05:15:42 04/04/14 (0)
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