Which one is the most innovative technology and which one is most likely to carry us to nirvana, i.e. amplification with the most extreme accuracy (preamp or amplifier)
You didn't vote John; scared?
BTW, addressing the entire audience, this is not a thread about headphones
I voted Hybrid but for amplification. If we were talking only about preamps, it would certainly be tubes for me.
But then again......im biased!
Its pretty darn good stuff for sure.
I don't know a single audiophile who uses digital amps, or if they try them, uses them for very long these days. So if that's the most innovative technology, empirically it hasn't followed suit.
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Well let's ask this question: what type of innovation would advance the art? Is it new semiconductors? New tubes manufactured? Both? Why are there so few innovations on the tube-manufacturing side? Besides the KT-120 and -150 lately, what other innovations have been made in that respect? And then there are circuits and topologies: are we still innovating, or have all circuits been explored? What about topologies? How are we pushing the art in that respect? And what amplification technology does most (if not all) of the above better, or is the most promising
Because there are so few manufacturers making vacuum tubes and the best tube engineers are all on the other side.
Yes, I am mostly interested in the engineering domain, so that, as I mentioned in the original post, we can get "amplification with the most extreme accuracy" to get to nirvana - basically, how do we push the limits of vanishing distortion of all kinds, ultimate slew rates/rise times while keeping musicality, lowering noise, and all other engineering parameters.
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