Home SET Asylum

Single Ended Triodes (SETs), the ultimate tube lovers dream.

RE: There you go again..........



One should be able to understand the following:

(1) Conventional tube amplifier technique chooses cathode bypass caps by their Micro-Farad values. I choose them according to measured and listened performance under actual musically driven conditions.

(2) A high impedance driver is not a problem in this design because the HI-MU driver chosen is far more than capable of driving any good 2A3 vacuum tube way beyond the levels that this design requires.

The high-gain/fast response capability of a good HI-MU driver is exactly what I want-- fast, ultra-dynamic response to signal change. I also want the gain factor designed into TWO amplification stages, not three or more.

The reasons for this are self-evident-- there are too many parts involved in any 3-stage amplifier. The musical information losses in all 3-stage tube amplifiers renders their performance musically boring to me.

If you doubt this, simply compare the best 3-stage tube amp you can find out there to a good Solid-State amp. If you want pace, rhythm, and musical timing to come out correctly, the difference will at once be obvious.

A tube amp CAN be designed to perform with the best Solid-State. It requires a MAXIMUM of TWO amplification stages that are directly connected together, and are powered in such a way so that the two tubes operate as a SINGLE gain device.

Ideally, the "gain architecture"-- that is, overall amplifier gain-- will be in the 18-to-21 db area.

Such a gain figure will ideally match up to industry standard source outputs which ideally range from about 3.3 volts to about 5.6 volts single-ended, or double those figures for balanced.

A Digital source such as a good D/A converter, or a good CD player, etc., will have those output levels, and will prefer to see a constant load across its output of about 10K ohms-- in that range-- allowing proper output loading for the source.

These signal voltage levels (above) allow the inclusion in the system of a
passive preamp of about 10K loading continuously (A Ladder or L-Pad type attenuator), which eliminates the need for any musical-signal losing un-needed preamp amplification stages.

A further advantage of this kind of system is that interconnect cables are DRIVEN at voltages that actually allow such interconnects to work properly.

The amplifier's HI-MU driver stage is a necessary part of this overall "best possible" system approach-- it is very sensitive to interconnect cable output, and picks up musical details that lower-mu stages cannot respond to as well.

(3) The ENTIRE AMPLIFIER is designed as a modulated, distributed audio signal power supply.

To single out SOME OF the individual parts in that system and then claim that only those parts are the "power supply"-- and to further claim that it can't work is an incomplete assessment.

If one can envision an ENTIRE AMPLIFIER as a TOTAL ENTITY-- as I must do in order to get the performance that I require-- then it could be discussed intelligently by people who can see that it is an ENTIRE OPERATING SYSTEM.

I don't think that one can selectively pull parts out of an operating system, ASSUME that they're the only parts involved, and then make claims as to what one ASSUMES will happen in that SYSTEM.

In any case, it's easy to check out-- simply use the system and observe what it actually IS doing! What could be simpler than that?

---Dennis---











This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  Schiit Audio  


Follow Ups Full Thread
Follow Ups

FAQ

Post a Message!

Forgot Password?
Moniker (Username):
Password (Optional):
  Remember my Moniker & Password  (What's this?)    Eat Me
E-Mail (Optional):
Subject:
Message:   (Posts are subject to Content Rules)
Optional Link URL:
Optional Link Title:
Optional Image URL:
Upload Image:
E-mail Replies:  Automagically notify you when someone responds.