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SET Asylum Single Ended Triodes (SETs), the ultimate tube lovers dream. |
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In Reply to: RE: Principles and compromises.... posted by tube wrangler on August 6, 2012 at 20:00:44:
Very interesting discussion. Yes, money, money, money......
Talking about compromises, money comes into speaker choice. Think about all the audiophiles who live in appartments in big cities. I'm one - I'm in central London UK. Real estate prices are such that renting out a single small room is worth in one year the value of a ridiculously expensive HiFi system. So what do you want - space or money? Space costs money. So I rent a room out. I don't have a listening room as such - I have an "everything" room where I work on the computer (I write books), listen to the radio and watch TV through my sound system and just generally spend most of my time. In my keen days I had stacked Quads and then later Maggies and Apogee ribbons. I'd still have panels if I could live with not looking out of the window. I got rid of them and I could walk about again and all the available light came streaming back through the big window. Panels were just not doing enough for the space they occupied. I now have Alpair 10 full-range speakers in tall columns on either side of the window. Footprint is less than one square foot. Perfect.
So tell me what horn I can fit into a footprint of one square foot? I really don't know how space-limited Japanese audiophiles find the room for their horns. Plus in my case I mostly want ambient sound because I could be anywhere in the room. I don't want directionality.
I agree that most of the quality of sound is in the amplifier. I read that it's all in the speakers, but once you have a good basic speaker - panel, full-range, horn, whatever - the amplifier is where the action is. But you do need to make a choice regarding speakers, and in the end footprint won for me. So that meant 8 watts of amplification. Not a worry for me. I can live with 300b outputs.
For me all the action is in the input stages and the coupling between stages. My latest amp just has the 300b SE outputs and power supply on one chassis. That's the predictable part and once it's built I don't need to bother too much about it. All the input section goes on another chassis and this is where the action is - playing about with different configurations and interstages. This section ends in a 1:1 interstage with a short cable to the power stage. The two stages are both filament bias - no need for cathode bypasses as explained.
I'd love to hear the Loftin-White configuration you talk about and build, Dennis. I never had the opportunity to do so. Not the sort of thing that turns up at hi-fi shows! I'm just as hooked into the esoteric as you are. How many commercial amps have ever used all DHT tubes and filament bias? I don't think you'd find one even though there are some very good reasons to build this way. All this esoteric stuff will carry on in the audiophile underworld while the big corporations disappear up their own crooked tails in a cloud of spin and persuasion. This is a world for cynics who don't buy into what's rammed down their throats by the media. No wonder this is called the Asylum, except that give or take a bit of paranoia ("they're all trying to persuade us...") I think we're the sane ones.
andy
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Follow Ups
- RE: Principles and compromises.... - andy evans 01:29:41 08/07/12 (1)
- RE: Principles and compromises.... - tube wrangler 04:29:55 08/07/12 (0)
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