Solid-State vs. Tube Amplifier

[MylesBAstor]

All things being equal eg. speakers, what's your experience.

This 250# Audia Flight Strumento No 4 went back this weekend and the 275 wpc cj ARTs went back into the system. And the sonic differences between the two amplifiers were as clear night and day. Not that one was necessarily better but each had its own set of strengths and weaknesses on the Magicos. The Audia Flight exhibited a little better grip on the Magicos, better low frequency dynamics and a better fleshed out cellos and basses. The cj on the other hand excelled at midrange resolution and palpability, resolving the smallest nuances and microdynamics and aliveness. Surprisingly of the two amplifiers, the cj appeared to have greater silence between the notes and allowed for greater appreciation of melody and rhythm on some jazz tapes I played this weekend. So it appears to me that the two technologies are proceeding in parallel paths improving their strengths and minimizing their weaknesses.

[mep]

This topic is one that is fraught with the possibilities of arguments and general disagreement. Let's just say tube amps and SS amps are fundamentally different and they sound different. I think tubes sound more holographic/3D with therefore better dimensionality and overall realism.This is probably going to boil down to what you are used to as I don't think either technology is ever going to mimic the other. There are plenty of people in the high-end who own SS amps and would never consider a tube amp. There are plenty of people who have previously owned tube amps and moved to SS and never looked back. Of course the inverse is true as well. For those with long experience with tube amps, there is something there that borders on the magical with the right set of speakers for a given tube amp. Switching over from a tube amp to a SS amp will normally result in some improvements in the bottom two octaves that is readily apparent but can leave you wanting at the end of the day. I think Myles said he had the Audia Flight SS amp in his system for around 9 months. Since Myles is a dyed in the wool tube guy, that should tell us all something about how good that amp was if Myles left his ART amps unplugged all of that time. Returning the ART amps back into his system has made clear some of the things Myles gave up during the switch.

I continue to be impressed with the improvements that are being made with regards to the bottom octaves of tube amps. The power supplies for really good tube amps have become massive in terms of energy storage rated in joules. Output transformers have continued to improve and now we have a new King of the Hill in the KT family of output tubes with the KT-150. There really is no right or wrong/I win you lose issue here. Everyone has to make a decision on which technology pleases them and works best with their speakers in their rooms. Again, there is no right or wrong solution.

[MylesBAstor]

This topic is one that is fraught with the possibilities of arguments and general disagreement. Let's just say tube amps and SS amps are fundamentally different and they sound different. I think tubes sound more holographic/3D with therefore better dimensionality and overall realism.This is probably going to boil down to what you are used to as I don't think either technology is ever going to mimic the other. There are plenty of people in the high-end who own SS amps and would never consider a tube amp. There are plenty of people who have previously owned tube amps and moved to SS and never looked back. Of course the inverse is true as well. For those with long experience with tube amps, there is something there that borders on the magical with the right set of speakers for a given tube amp. Switching over from a tube amp to a SS amp will normally result in some improvements in the bottom two octaves that is readily apparent but can leave you wanting at the end of the day. I think Myles said he had the Audia Flight SS amp in his system for around 9 months. Since Myles is a dyed in the wool tube guy, that should tell us all something about how good that amp was if Myles left his ART amps unplugged all of that time. Returning the ART amps back into his system has made clear some of the things Myles gave up during the switch.

I continue to be impressed with the improvements that are being made with regards to the bottom octaves of tube amps. The power supplies for really good tube amps have become massive in terms of energy storage rated in joules. Output transformers have continued to improve and now we have a new King of the Hill in the KT family of output tubes with the KT-150. There really is no right or wrong/I win you lose issue here. Everyone has to make a decision on which technology pleases them and works best with their speakers in their rooms. Again, there is no right or wrong solution.

Fact is too, that some people, no matter how good a tube amplifier sounds, would never buy one. Heat, changing tubes.

One area that tube amplifiers have made huge strides in has been reliability!

It's funny. Alon didn't know if my ART amps would drive the S5. Drive the Magicos they did. I'm listening tonight to Portrait of Art Farmer on Contemporary and the sound of his trumpet is like he's he's playing in the room. When he adds the mute, it's eerie sounding. Absolutely magical combo!

[1morerecord2clean]

[QUOTE=MylesBAstor;n657]

Yes Myles and Mark. I use tube preamp and a SS amp pure class A. The result is very neutral in terms of tubes and SS. I had a friend here once who uses only tubes and remarked how much more bottom end grip my system had than his. I think I would have more with an a/b amp. Anyway I heard my Revels a few years ago at RMAF with an all analog front end and an all Rogue tube set up in a Robin Wyatt room. I thought it was the best I had ever heard my Revels. Just more meat on the bone with tubes I think.

[MylesBAstor]

[QUOTE=1morerecord2clean;n1022]

Yes Myles and Mark. I use tube preamp and a SS amp pure class A. The result is very neutral in terms of tubes and SS. I had a friend here once who uses only tubes and remarked how much more bottom end grip my system had than his. I think I would have more with an a/b amp. Anyway I heard my Revels a few years ago at RMAF with an all analog front end and an all Rogue tube set up in a Robin Wyatt room. I thought it was the best I had ever heard my Revels. Just more meat on the bone with tubes I think.

I think the best of triode tube amplifiers, for instance a Sonic Frontiers 211 based P-P amplifier that I had for review back in the '90s, have an incredible wrap around quality of any amplifier. I don't think manufacturers who configure a tetrode based tube in triode though get the same effect. IIRC, Cary also had a low powered 211 based tube amplifier years ago that was magical on quad 63s.

[TubeMan]

Until recently, I've been an avowed solid state man--mainly due to concerns about tube life and the hassles/expense of changing them. But after attending a few audio shows where tubes seemed the amp of choice, I took the plunge and bought a PrimaLuna Premium Dialogue HP after trading in my former Pass Labs INT-150. I can't get over how much more life-like the sound is--the instruments have more body and texture, plus it seems to be far more dynamic--all without losing details or clarity. I'm a confirmed tube lover, now!

[MylesBAstor]

Ha! Sounds like what I experienced in the early '80s when a good friend brought over his POOGED Dyna PAS 3 and its huge outboard power supply and we compared it to my van Alstine modded Hafler 101 preamplifier. After one minute, I exclaimed where is all that music coming from? Next day went down to Stereo Exchange and traded in my Hafler and bought a used cj PV5 preamplifier. That was shortly followed by a Premier 3 and I've never looked back.

And that Prima Luna amp has gotten very good word of mouth and reviews.

[david k]

Some of us build systems around speakers and some around amps, some of those decisions are directly influenced by the choice of speakers. I know that while my preference was always for tube amps I ended up with mostly ss when I owned Apogees. I changed course later when I came across the Lamm ML2s in 1999, choice of speakers is dictated by the amps since then.

[JackD201]

Some of us build systems around speakers and some around amps, some of those decisions are directly influenced by the choice of speakers. I know that while my preference was always for tube amps I ended up with mostly ss when I owned Apogees. I changed course later when I came across the Lamm ML2s in 1999, choice of speakers is dictated by the amps since then.

I totally agree that determination of amplification should not be done in vacuum (pun intended). I've always thought of it as engine/drivetrain vis a vis the rest of the car and vice versa. Many tube bashers assume tube amps can not be both linear and have more than adequate damping, I believe, because they are used to hearing tube amps with speakers that aren't ideal matches.

That said, our situations are reversed. I went for my favorite speaker and chose accordingly. At one point, so smittten by the ML3 that you use, I actually had a conversation with my favorite speaker designer about building a loudspeaker for the ML3s. Alas, life intervened and the project never got off the ground. The resulting loudspeaker would have been very large, too large to keep my space aesthetically pleasing. Regardless of what most people who know me think, my wife does have her limits! She's a saint but I won't push my luck.

[TubeMan]

How can solid state compete with the glow of tubes?

[Johnny Vinyl]

How can solid state compete with the glow of tubes?

By adding Lava Lamps?

[Garth]

The green ones make the sound to bright
The red ones the sound is to fat
you really need the blue ones to be just right.

[Johnny Vinyl]

Blue it is! Will match the blue lights on my IA and R2R!

snort
cackle

[JCOConnell]

At line level, (preamps) tubes rule. But at phono levels and power amp levels, SS does have some competitiveness.

[MylesBAstor]

At line level, (preamps) tubes rule. But at phono levels and power amp levels, SS does have some competitiveness.

Of course the determining factor is cartridge output, speaker efficiency, even amplifier sensitivity. You could get away and use an all tube phonostage with a 0.5 mV output and an efficient speaker and have a quiet background (the most important quality for me). But you just can't get a quiet background with tubes, low output MC, inefficient speakers, etc. We could also interject that statement from David Wilson that we just need tubes somewhere in the recording chain or system.

[JCOConnell]

Of course the determining factor is cartridge output, speaker efficiency, even amplifier sensitivity. You could get away and use an all tube phonostage with a 0.5 mV output and an efficient speaker and have a quiet background (the most important quality for me). But you just can't get a quiet background with tubes, low output MC, inefficient speakers, etc. We could also interject that statement from David Wilson that we just need tubes somewhere in the recording chain or system.

I was just trying to say that for line stages, tubes are the best and there is no compromising with tubes, but with MC phono stages and High power amps, tubes do have some caveats/compromises compared to SS. This is not to say that SS is overall better, just different or better in some ways.

[MylesBAstor]

I was discussing with an audiobuddy tonight ss vs. tubes (after my Vitus comments) and he was sharing his observations that ss amplifiers seem to get one frequency extreme or the other right but not both at the same time. Tubes on the other hand, get the mids right and one or the other (usually the upper octaves) right.