[Asavage]

Hello Head-Fi Community my name is Andrew I have recently discovered that I have something called synesthesia or more specifically chromesthesia. Chromesthesia is a neurological condition where senses you perceive is crossed. For example when I hear something I also perceive a color or texture. I have recently gotten into high end headphones and speakers and tried a tube amp yesterday for the first time and I surprised to find that it changed the color dramatically that I see while I can't tell nearly as strong of a change audio wise. What exactly does a tube amp change in the sound? For me it made the color seem heavier and like the color was lit by a halogen light as opposed to fluorescent is there anything that would explain this?

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  Hello Head-Fi Community my name is Andrew I have recently discovered that I have something called synesthesia or more specifically chromesthesia. Chromesthesia is a neurological condition where senses you perceive is crossed. For example when I hear something I also perceive a color or texture. I have recently gotten into high end headphones and speakers and tried a tube amp yesterday for the first time and I surprised to find that it changed the color dramatically that I see while I can't tell nearly as strong of a change audio wise. What exactly does a tube amp change in the sound? For me it made the color seem heavier and like the color was lit by a halogen light as opposed to fluorescent is there anything that would explain this?

 

Many tube amps have a lot of distortion - you can see how the tube amps that are known for sounding "very tubey" have very high THD ratings. An OTL tube amp for example can typically be rated for 4% THD, while most solid state amps usually stay at 1% max (note these don't tell the whole story - some SS amps may even clip before the tube amp does). This is because they aren't just "amplifying" the input signal, but making it sound warmer. In effect, they're not just doing the job of an amplifier, which is to amplify the input signal into one that can drive a transducer, but they're basically "warmifying colorifiers."

As to halogen vs florescent, think of how you do white balance in a camera - what is perceived as "warm" in both sound and vision are basically similar.