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Original Message

RE: The road ahead

Posted by tube wrangler on June 24, 2012 at 19:11:16:

All tube amps have some rolloff.

Tubes themselves have a lot of it. Just broken-in tubes often greatly outperform tubes with more hours on them.

A good question would be "why do we bother with tubes at all?".

I think we like the transparency INTO the musical layers of a soundscape that tubes are better at, than are more mathematically flat-curved components.

No one here would argue that DHTs have perfect, flat powerbands. We all realize that pentode operation or BiPolar S/S devices, or even Mosfets can cream all DHTs for bandwidth.

The arguments will go on for millenia. Some even think that DHTs should be "corrected" by circuitry to deliver more "flat" response. NO! ALL devices sound BEST when NOT pushed, molested, or tinkered with in any way!

My own experience is that once a certain threshold of information that the human hearing system needs to form a certain sonic picture is reached-- then adding more bandwidth to that threshold produces nothing more of value.

All of us have experienced what happens when you make a tape recording of a tape recording. The amount of complete sonic information that the human hearing system needs is not met in the second copy, so the result is a drastic drop in fidelity in the second copy.

Then, also-- we know what happened with the older CD players. Although these had plenty of bandwidth and low distortion specs, they fell VERY short on usable sonic information that the Human Body can use--and simply sounded like trash when compared to vinyl systems.

At this time, we are also experiencing this same phenomenon in a sort of reversed way-- in Digital computer audio.

On LESSER systems (ones that, like the tape recorders of old, lose too much information THAT THE HUMAN BODY CAN USE)-- sound better when High-Resolution material is played, rather than the old Redbook CD standard-- 16 bits @ 44.1 KHZ.

YET-- when really excellent equipment is used to play a well-recorded CD that is only 16/44.1-- it sounds OUTSTANDING! AND, higher resolution material may very well NOT sound any better at all-- in fact some of it is MUCH WORSE!

Well, what is going on here? It's simpler than it appears: once the Human Body gets what it actually needs to form a sonic impression completely, then THINGS WORK, and NOTHING MORE IS NEEDED, and in fact, SHOULD NOT BE PROVIDED..

Take things BELOW that level, and things rapidly fall apart musically, regardless of specs or bandwidth.

SATISFY that level, and anything that you do BEYOND that level will produce very little-- if any-- improvement.

The moral of the story is just like life itself: DO WHAT ACTUALLY WORKS.

---Dennis---