[franzdom]

Ancipital, 
 
I hear what you are saying and it is fairly well put.
 
I have fallen down the rabbit hole though and to me it sounds better with valves.

 

[Argyris]

   
No. You like distortion. End of story.
 
Please, anyone have the right to like whatever they like. It's not because you like or not something that you have to put value judgment on it.

 
He's a troll. End of story.
 
I considered posting something in response about how he dragged up a month-old thread just to peddle his snark, but there's no sense in feeding a troll.

 

[41Venom14]

I rather enjoyed this quick read.
 
As for your take on tubes, I am with all the others when they say, you do what you like. 
 
As for my experience. I have both a SS amp (Schiit Jotenheim) and a Tube Amp (DarkVoice 336SE). I know that SS amps are used for accuracy, hearing exactly how the song is suppose to hear and hearing how exactly the HEADPHONES are suppose to sound.
 
The purpose that I bought a tube amp is because they glow. They make sound through a vacuum. They make music warm (but not accurate). I did not get a tube amp expecting it to be accurate and exact. I got a tube amp to alter the songs I have already listened too. 
 
As for tube rolling, again all part of the same concept. Now being able to use the HD650s and get different sounds. Like right now I am using the Fostex TH-X00s on my solid state to let my tubes cool down so I can swap out the Kenrad VT-231 to the Sylvania VT-231 because I felt like it had more magic, it had this ear tickling low end that I can't even put into words. Is it bloated? Is it distorted? I dunno, but I liked it. 
 
What I love most about being a music lover or audiophile, in my experience, is being able to hear the same song you've heard a thousand times again and its new and its exciting and its different. 
 
As with everything you do it how you like it, just know your way is neither better nor worse than others, its just your way. Your desire for absolute accuracy and my desire for glowy tubes is neither wrong nor right, just your way or mine. In the end we can all sit back and enjoy our music. 

 

[castleofargh]

from the start, fighting over taste is silly. people with no knowledge or lack of self confidence have been trying to impose some social righteousness on pretty much everything, tubes, discrete components, no feedback, SS hard drive... if there is 2 of something, an audiophile somewhere will act like a bigot and tell others that they are wrong for not doing what he does.
we just have to be the better men/women/attack helicopter and do like we do for food, get what we want and stop worrying about what's in the other guy's plate.
 
now on the bit about SS amp for the fixed accurate sound, it's a possibility, not a fatality. you find colored and transparent everything. for the anecdote, I will probably never buy a tube amp ever again in my life, but I'm making such a mess with DSPs(because I enjoy it) that most tube amps sound transparent in comparison ^_^.

 

[StanD]

  from the start, fighting over taste is silly. people with no knowledge or lack of self confidence have been trying to impose some social righteousness on pretty much everything, tubes, discrete components, no feedback, SS hard drive... if there is 2 of something, an audiophile somewhere will act like a bigot and tell others that they are wrong for not doing what he does.
we just have to be the better men/women/attack helicopter and do like we do for food, get what we want and stop worrying about what's in the other guy's plate.
 
now on the bit about SS amp for the fixed accurate sound, it's a possibility, not a fatality. you find colored and transparent everything. for the anecdote, I will probably never buy a tube amp ever again in my life, but I'm making such a mess with DSPs(because I enjoy it) that most tube amps sound transparent in comparison ^_^.

Yes but you are having a blast and you have no illusions as what you are up to. In the classic sense, you make a terrible audiophile.
I have a Marshall SS guitar amp where they claim it sounds like tubes. It's a nice amp, but they failed to deliver. Maybe they got that right on a newer model, I'm not buying. I have other gadget that get most of the sounds I want.

 

[pctazhp]

Regardless of what equipment we use, we are still listening to electronically reproduced music. The chance that the waveforms hitting the microphone(s) at the recording venue will be identical, or even close, to the waveforms hitting our ears is probably zero. To the extent we expect electronically reproduced music to approximate our experiences with live music, we must suspend disbelief. I think most of us choose our systems based on what brings us the greatest enjoyment of music in our homes or offices.

 

[Argyris]

  Regardless of what equipment we use, we are still listening to electronically reproduced music. The chance that the waveforms hitting the microphone(s) at the recording venue will be identical, or even close, to the waveforms hitting our ears is probably zero. To the extent we expect electronically reproduced music to approximate our experiences with live music, we must suspend disbelief. I think most of us choose our systems based on what brings us the greatest enjoyment of music in our homes or offices.

 
Not to mention, a lot of what we listen to doesn't even have a counterpart in reality. Close-mic'ed, multi-tracked studio recordings are in no sense natural. Technically, somebody mixed them in a studio, so the complete performance existed in some form at the time it was mixed, using the exact equipment on which it was processed, but since none of us are that person and none of us are in that room with that equipment, we're never going to hear the music the way the engineer did. And does it really matter even if we could? Would it really add anything to the experience?

I would argue that it really wouldn't. At that point, which gear one prefers simply becomes a matter of what one enjoys, since there's no truly "correct" reproduction. We can be more objective in selecting our gear, but it won't make the experience any more "genuine", any more than spending tons of extra money on ultra high end kit.

 

[watchnerd]

I like tubes in my vinyl chain because they're old-timey, distorted, cool looking, and representative of what would have been used in the playback and mastering chain in the 1950s-1960s when all my LPs were recorded.
 
I don't like tubes in my digital chain, for the opposite reason.

 

[watchnerd]

 
The chance that the waveforms hitting the microphone(s) at the recording venue will be identical, or even close, to the waveforms hitting our ears is probably zero. 

 
I do a lot of recording.
 
The chance they're identical is exactly zero.
 
Microphones are transducers, just like speakers.  They introduce color.  That color is different from the colors introduced at playback because they're electro-acoustically different.