Tube DIY Asylum

Do It Yourself (DIY) paradise for tube and SET project builders.

Use this form to submit comments directly to the Asylum moderators for this forum. We're particularly interested in truly outstanding posts that might be added to our FAQs.
You may also use this form to provide feedback or to call attention to messages that may be in violation of our content rules.

You must login to use this feature.

Inmate Login

By default, logging in will set a session cookie that disappears when you close your browser. Clicking on the 'Remember my Moniker & Password' below will cause a permanent 'Login Cookie' to be set.

Moniker/Username: The Name that you picked or by default, your email. Forgot Moniker?	Examples "Rapper", "Bob W", "joe@aol.com".
Password:	Forgot Password?
	Remember my Moniker & Password ( What's this?)

If you don't have an Asylum Account, you can create one by clicking Here.

Our privacy policy can be reviewed by clicking Here.

Inmate Comments

From:
Your Email:
Subject:

Message Comments

Original Message

RE: Listen for yourself

Posted by cpotl on July 7, 2017 at 12:18:47:
"I believe it's not the (relatively) high amounts of 2nd HD that make them "sound so good", it's the lack of 5th, 7th and 9th.
I believe (but can not prove) that the smallest amount (maybe even an amount that can't be measured) of 7th and it's game over. The electronics sound like electronics instead of music."
You may be right that it is a lack of higher odd-harmonic distortions that is responsible. (Is this actually a property of an SET, by the way? I can see why it would tend to have more even-harmonic distortion than a PP amplifier, but is there a reason why it would have less higher odd-harmonic distortion? I'm not doubting, just asking.)
However, what about the suggestion that the higher odd-harmonics below the threshold of measurability, could be responsible? A modern state-of-the-art spectrum analyser is amazingly sensitive. Is there really any reason to suspect that amounts below the threshold could have audible effects? Or is this an example of the very human desire (in some humans at least) to believe that there are things that lie beyond our understanding? If it could be demonstrated in convincing experiments that such effects were occurring, I would be only too happy to accept them. But I wonder what evidence there might be?
As a matter of practicality, I would have thought that any real-world amplifier in existence today would have 5, 7 and 9th order distortions that are actually within the range of measurability by present-day spectrum analysers, and so speculation about the possibility of such distortions below the measurable threshold would be, at this stage at least, academic. (Again, if I am wrong about this, I would be happy to be corrected.)
Chris