Tube vs Solid State Is the War

Phelonious Ponk · Sep 25, 2011

MylesBAstor said:
And as a musician, yo're telling me that listening to headphones or for that matter near-field headphones, sounds like anything you've ever heard live. I don't know what your friends systems sound like but there certainly sounds like there's something amiss.

Headphones fundamentally change the image, Myles. Near-field listening does not. Except for the pretty easily addressable issue of deep bass, small speakers in a small room in a near-field configuration will reproduce recordings as credibly as large speakers in a large room from a greater distance. Not that any of that has anything at all to do with tubes sounding more like "real music."

Tim

Ron Party · Sep 25, 2011

audioguy said:
My wife surprised me with a live three-piece jazz combo for my birthday (in our home)

Chuck, can I borrow your wife?

DaveyF · Sep 25, 2011

I would say that the 'war' is only in the beginning salvos

. The tube amps that i have listened to, generally bring a more 'complete' picture of the sound of real musicians on a stage than the ss amps I have listened to, however, the ss amps are generally more able to plumb the depths and control the speaker's more completely, IMHO

.
OTOH,IMO neither is within a country mile of the 'real thing'....despite the protestations of Frank and maybe a few others.

Luckily, I don't have to choose between the two

....tubes vs ss, In my system I have both a ss amp and a tube amp....BOTH very valid approaches , again IMHO

MylesBAstor · Sep 25, 2011

tomelex said:
Ahh, tubes vs transistors. Have we all forgot Bob Carvers challenge, in making his solid state unit sound like a tube unit? He did. Its all in the transfer function and the output impedance (as Mark mep mentioned).

Preferences are another story, who can resist the sing song of a SET amp on certain kinds of low complexity music. Or, deny that a fine solid state amp can hold toghether during serious complex orchestral pieces. In between, these two amps can sound close, depending on music and speaker load.

Accuracy to the recorded source, well, as I have said before, plain old stereo (POS) is severly lacking in the believability department compared to live unamplified sound. It depends a lot on your expectations when you listen I think. Sometimes I want to hear details and sometimes I want to be hearing something akin to what I consider great sound, neither is accurate to live unamplified music (due to POS effect), but both are meeting my needs at the moment.

Yes, you can put together a system with a flat speaker impedance, and with say a push pull feedback tube amp and a solid state conventional voltage feedback amp and be damn hard pressed to tell them apart operated within their capabilities.

But, to say that any "competent" tube amp and solid state amp will sound the same, no. Can you make them sound the same by design, I say yes, if you specifically do want to do that. In that respect, the tube vs ss war was over when Bob Carver did his challenge, what, twenty years ago atleast?

Preferences will go on forever. And the real deal is the source and the output (anything that flaps about in the air)

Tom

Yeah years ago my friend and I heard a rather bad sounding tube amplifier; his comment was, "this designer has succeeded where no one else has. He's managed to make a tube amplifier sound like a solid-state amplifier." And that wasn't a compliment.

While many audiophiles seem to like the euphonic colorations of tubes (and I think a lot of that is that these tube colorations balance out the electronic sound of digital), the best tube products IMHO have moved far away from this tubey sound and are extremely neutral, to wit products from cj, LAMM, ARC.

MylesBAstor · Sep 25, 2011

DaveyF said:
OTOH,IMO neither is within a country mile of the 'real thing'....despite the protestations of Frank and maybe a few others.

I think 99 pct would agree with you here

But the best systems should give the listener that occasional glimpse of the live event!

fas42 · Sep 26, 2011

MylesBAstor said:
I think 99 pct would agree with you here

But the best systems should give the listener that occasional glimpse of the live event!

Only a glimpse? Why stop there? It would be rather nice to have it around a bit more than that: of course, most people have experienced an intense, quite overwhelming and convincing performance from an audio system, but have then retreated back into assuming it was just a fluke, a once off, that can't be summoned on command. I, and others though, have realised that if it can be done once then it can done many, many times and have decided it's worthwhile pursuing the goal of having that capability on tap always. It requires gritted teeth and grim determination, but it's pretty damn satisfying when you get it happening ...

Frank

RogerD · Sep 26, 2011

The one thing that a good tubed device can produce is a more realistic time and space rendering of the recording. It might not be as crisp as the SS counterpart but I have yet to hear SS that can equal the tubed device. Solid state comes close but when talking sound stage realism tubes are better. The king of tubes are octal and 300B's in my experience.

mauidan · Sep 26, 2011

MylesBAstor said:
But the best systems should give the listener that occasional glimpse of the live event!

+1

BTW, IMO headphone and near-field listening doesn't provides this.

PS, as much as I love live Jazz, I'd rather have my wife surprise me with something she got at Victoria's Secret.

fas42 · Sep 26, 2011

RogerD said:
The one thing that a good tubed device can produce is a more realistic time and space rendering of the recording. It might not be as crisp as the SS counterpart but I have yet to hear SS that can equal the tubed device. Solid state comes close but when talking sound stage realism tubes are better. The king of tubes are octal and 300B's in my experience.

Of course, Roger, what the tubes are doing are rounding the sharp edges of the sound, the "crispness" that the SS conveys. If you had live performers in the room and you hung 2 kinds of fine cloth between you and them, one a very open weave and the other much tighter, closer spacing between the threads, you would change the presentation of the sound, the emphasis on various aspects of space and tone would alter. But in both cases you should have absolutely no problem in perceiving that there were real performers on the other side of the "barrier", which ultimately is barely there. Just like trying different versions of speaker grille material, in fact ...

Frank

JackD201 · Sep 26, 2011

devert said:
+1

BTW, IMO headphone and near-field listening doesn't provides this.

PS, as much as I love live Jazz, I'd rather have my wife surprise me with something she got at Victoria's Secret.

Hmmm. Jazz Trio or model with wings. That's a tough one.

Phelonious Ponk · Sep 26, 2011

BTW, IMO headphone and near-field listening doesn't provides this.

So it is the size of the room and the placement of the speakers within them that is solely responsible for the illusion of a glimpse at the live event?

Tim

MylesBAstor · Sep 26, 2011

fas42 said:
Of course, Roger, what the tubes are doing are rounding the sharp edges of the sound, the "crispness" that the SS conveys. If you had live performers in the room and you hung 2 kinds of fine cloth between you and them, one a very open weave and the other much tighter, closer spacing between the threads, you would change the presentation of the sound, the emphasis on various aspects of space and tone would alter. But in both cases you should have absolutely no problem in perceiving that there were real performers on the other side of the "barrier", which ultimately is barely there. Just like trying different versions of speaker grille material, in fact ...

Frank

No, not even close.

Frank, listen to a master tape or early gen 15 or 30 ips tape and you'll hear why.

No CD or LP comes close to capturing the sense of unrestrained dynamics, esp. in the lower octaves, of say a 15 ips tape (and by the way you really hear that constriction because the mastering engineers purposely did things in the mastering process so that in most cases, the LP could be played on a $100 turntable). In fact, the vast majority of LPs sound truncated in the lower octaves compared to the master tape. No CD or LP comes close to a tape's unfettered sense of ease eg. lack of distortion, esp. at the frequency extremes. No LP or CD has enough tonal or spatial information compared to the tape. I'll put on a jazz recording that I have for you and you'll swear the musicians are in the room with you. You have never heard this type of instrumental tone and body on any CD or LP. Shall we stop there?

And the tape is only a facsimile of the real thing. So we've already degraded the source considerably. And the degradation in the signal begins with the mikes (estimates are that we lose 20% of the information right off the top) and continues throughout the recording and mastering chain. Nor are we taking account the musician's and producer's fingerprints on the sound. So at best, the reference is to the tape or disc, not to the original recording, esp. today; how can you expect anything to be close then?

Phelonious Ponk · Sep 26, 2011

And the tape is only a facsimile of the real thing. So we've already degraded the source considerably. And the degradation in the signal begins with the mikes (estimates are that we lose 20% of the information right off the top) and continues throughout the recording and mastering chain. Nor are we taking account the musician's and producer's fingerprints on the sound. So at best, the reference is to the tape or disc, not to the original recording, esp. today; how can you expect anything to be close then?

We agree on this, paragraph 2. Everything in the paragraph that preceded it is opinion, unsupported by data. Please show me something to substantiate that:

-- 15 or 30 ips has greater dynamic range than digital recording
-- Tape has lower distortion than digital recording
-- Tape's extra tonal or spatial information

It is fine to believe what you believe. To present it as unqualified fact when the facts that we have are in opposition to what you believe is something other than fine.

And the only thing I can think of that this has to do with Tubes vs SS is that the strengths you've attributed to tape are often attributed, with even more evidence to the contrary, to tubes.

Tim

PS: Frank will be back soon with the ear/brain continuum. It doesn't matter what happens in recording and reproduction. He tweaks, and it stimulates his psycho-acoustic reaction; he hears his own reality.

Orb · Sep 26, 2011

Heh Tim most of what is in this thread is based on opinion, assumptions and anecdotal experience IMO

To be able to discuss potential differences of ideal pre-power for both tube and solid state requires more data that looks at both the time domain and frequency domain of an actual instrument and actual note down to 1ms that shows the amplitude in the time domain (gives us the performance behaviour of the attack-sustain-decay) of the note's fundamental and critically the partials-harmonics, what instrument and note-chord to be played would then need to be considered against various factors -simple example is that performance differences may happen throught the frequency range, and one may also want to consider the supposed ideal of a tube is in the midrange.

This would be one of the ways to look at if there is time domain distortion, whether a subtle difference in attack-decay contributes to the timbre-richness,etc difference between solid state and tube.
The caveat is the products as mentioned earlier in this post would need to be ideal in terms of core measurements; distortion,FR,etc, and acknowledged to be excellent-SOTA in terms of sound and performance.
There will be products that fit this for both tubes and solid state.

Just my take anyway, and without this additional info these threads will continue repeating the same points that are not conclusive either way.
Although it is fair to say the gap is closing when considering those rare and exceptionally well engineered audio gear for both tube and solid state.
But the above test will not be done or agreed by those in a position to do so because it would be impossible to define it as a standard applicable to manufacturers in audio, unlike tones (simple sinewaves) that provides an easy structured way of testing.
Cheers
Orb

Gregadd · Sep 26, 2011

Actually I think Harry Pearson declared that the ASR Emitter II a solid state integrated the best. He also stated that in the right system it could imitate real music.

Phelonious Ponk · Sep 26, 2011

Heh Tim most of what is in this thread is based on opinion, assumptions and anecdotal experience IMO

Yeah, I get that Orb, I just think it's useful, in any good discussion, to frame opinions as opinions, instead of throwing them out there with all of the authority and semantics of factual statements.

To be able to discuss potential differences of ideal pre-power for both tube and solid state requires more data that looks at both the time domain and frequency domain of an actual instrument

I actually don't think that would do much good. To judge the ability of the system, or any component within it, the data you require is from the recording, not the actual instrument. The recording is the only thing the system knows; that's its entire universe. It has no knowledge of the actual instrument and no chance of reproducing anything of that instrument that's not on the recording. If, for example, the instrument was recorded with a different mic on the record you're listening to vs the measurement of the instrument you mentioned above, all bets are off at the very first step. And there are many, many more to follow.

Tim

FrantzM · Sep 26, 2011

Orb

When the opinion is presented as such not a problem.. I will not even discuss it only provide my own, sometimes opposite point of view... The point is the use of scientific language to describe the perception is to me a problem as it is an artifice to present an opinion as fact, e.g I am yet ot get a reply from the notion of "Harmonic envelope" or "time domain" reproduction superiority of tubes with respect to SS and that is a problem. Same with the tape thing. I can't see how tape can have better dynamics than digital , especially in the bass !! I would sometimes grant a person that the highs from Cd and from some DAC are pretty far from what one gets from the better LPs or tapes .. I stil am thinking that tapes gets the high better than most CD but not Hi-Rez .. An opinion ... I can't begin to see where tapes will get the almost bottomless bass power of digital ...
Back to SS and tubes .. Aren't they getting closer? If indeed electronics are getting better (I am not so sure about that myself) as some have posted shouldn't they converge in sound? Haven't they? One more thing do we still believe that the closest we can get to live sound is our old 2-channels stereo? I don't think that is where progres is. MC is what can bring us closer to the live event .. Not 2-channel and repeating myself. Better Speakers , Room correction and multi-channel Digital processing will bring us closer ...

For the record I have had a more than decent HT only system (Krell Pre/Pro and amp, Dynaudio Speakers). I rarely listened to music on it, aside from the occasional concert on DVD or Blu-Ray, preferring the sound of my separate (in a different room) music system.

MylesBAstor · Sep 26, 2011

Phelonious Ponk said:
We agree on this, paragraph 2. Everything in the paragraph that preceded it is opinion, unsupported by data. Please show me something to substantiate that:

-- 15 or 30 ips has greater dynamic range than digital recording
-- Tape has lower distortion than digital recording
-- Tape's extra tonal or spatial information

It is fine to believe what you believe. To present it as unqualified fact when the facts that we have are in opposition to what you believe is something other than fine.

And the only thing I can think of that this has to do with Tubes vs SS is that the strengths you've attributed to tape are often attributed, with even more evidence to the contrary, to tubes.

Tim

PS: Frank will be back soon with the ear/brain continuum. It doesn't matter what happens in recording and reproduction. He tweaks, and it stimulates his psycho-acoustic reaction; he hears his own reality.

Reread my post and don't put words in my mouth Tim. I was comparing a master tape with a CD. And by the way, I've heard and compared the master tape to a high rez copy thru a darn good system using the Playback designs DAC. Sadly, the digital copy is far from a mirror image of the tape. In fact, it's a poor facsimile in many respects, not the least of which is the upper octaves. Cymbals don't sound like any cymbals that I've heard. And digital just flattens the images not to mention, loses the overtones of the instruments.

If you think that in reality, CDs have greater dynamic range, then I want what you're smoking. CDs have never come close to their "theoretical" dynamic range for many reasons. And you can look up the evidence as everyone from John Atkinson to recording engineers have published data showing what CDs actually contain. And I've posted a link to this info a while back.

And please spare me on the measurements. As a moderator, you should know why as it's even been recently reposted. But as long as you bring it up, please enlighten us on what measurements you think have any correlation to anything, much less tonality and acoustic space. And please look up and read KOJ's measurement work before answering this question. And as far as distortions go, please own up to each medium has its own, unique set of distortions. To my ears, analog is easier to listen to than digital esp. with complex orchestral music.

And while many say the simpler the music, the better digital performs, that's not the case in my experience. I've heard a live guitar recorded on SACD and DVD audio and then played back immediately. The recorded guitar sounded nothing like the original guitar; it was missing delicacy, overtones, body, rhythm, etc. I'll leave it to you to figure out the measurments; I know what my ears heard.

fas42 · Sep 26, 2011

Phelonious Ponk said:
I actually don't think that would do much good. To judge the ability of the system, or any component within it, the data you require is from the recording, not the actual instrument. The recording is the only thing the system knows; that's its entire universe. It has no knowledge of the actual instrument and no chance of reproducing anything of that instrument that's not on the recording. If, for example, the instrument was recorded with a different mic on the record you're listening to vs the measurement of the instrument you mentioned above, all bets are off at the very first step. And there are many, many more to follow.

Tim

Tim, I agree with you regarding the universe being that of the recording but disagree your implication that the information captured is limited to the degree that makes realistic reproduction largely impossible. I can certainly understand you saying that, having listened to many ambitious systems playing difficult recordings, where it appears all is lost in terms of recovering a decent representation of the event. But it only takes a single instance of playback of that recording where all the fine detail is retrieved sufficiently accurately for your mind to be able to hold all the elements of the event clearly distinct in space, for all the threads to be clearly distinguishable, to appreciate what's possible. The fact that one may have little faith in the value of tweaking and psychoacoustics at that moment matters not one iota ...

Myles believes that CD can't do dynamics, tone, sense of ease, space, etc, etc. But he gets that from tape and I'm sure that he does in spades. I am also sure I would be quite disappointed with his CD sound, because I know that digital is capable of all the qualities he ascribes to tape, except it is typically harder to make happen. With tape you can be sloppy, and get away with it, with CD you can't. It's as simple as that. Because you are using a music server arrangement you've made life a lot easier for yourself, as many others have also discovered: rearranging how the electronic bits and pieces work together to get the sound out makes a big difference to digital.

Frank

amirm · Sep 26, 2011

MylesBAstor said:
And please spare me on the measurements.

Taking this and combining it with the original point of that started this thread, what do we think the measurements show of a tube amp that doesn't sound like SS and one that does? Is there nothing revealing in there?

Tube vs Solid State Is the War

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