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Wavelength Crimson

I have received questions about the 71A tubes used in the Crimson USB DAC. Why does this DAC present a soundstage and three dimensionality of sound not found in many other DACs?

This interesting piece written by Lynn Olson may provide some of the explanation. A Tiny History of High Fidelity. I provided a link to the complete article. An excerpt below:

"In 1926, '71A direct-heated power triode was introduced, followed by the '50 in 1928, the '45 and PX4 in 1929, the PX25 in 1930, the 2A3 in 1932, the 300A in 1936, and the 300B in 1938. The power race started in earnest with the 6L6 and KT66 pentode in 1936, followed by the ubiquitous EL34 in 1951, the EL84 in 1953, the 6550 and KT88 in 1954, and last in the series, the 7591 in 1959 and the 8417 in 1963. (The 6L6 has been in continuous production since 1936, a record unmatched by any other electronic device - we all owe the electric-guitar players a big thank you for keeping the tube factories open.)

Seventy years later, vacuum tubes, and especially triodes, continue to be the lowest distortion amplifying elements ever made. No germanium or silicon transistor, JFET, or MOSFET has ever approached the distortion performance of the direct-heated triodes, with indirect-heated triodes following closely behind. In addition to low distortion in the absolute sense, the distortion spectra of triodes is favorable, with a rapid fall-off of the upper harmonics. (This is less true for beam tetrodes, pentodes, or solid-state devices, which are intrinsically less linear and have higher-order distortion curves.)"




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Topic - Wavelength Crimson - Mercman 15:54:17 05/22/10 (75)
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