[Tyll Hertsens]

Quote:

So what is the mechanical reason that tubes favour even while SS favours odd?

It's not really mechanical, it's electrical.
 
Tube amps are generally Class A biased and essentially run on a single very high voltage power supply. when operating the audio signal is amplified and suffers loss of gain as it aproaches the supply rail.  So that comprssion only happens in the positive going direction of the audio signal.
 
SS amps are typically push/pull topologies and have both a positive and a negative supply rail. Though significantly more linear, the SS also looses a little gain near the rails and therefore suffers both at the positive and negative going portions of the audio signal.
 
So tube amps typically only compress at the top --- the gain curve or load line of the amp only curves in one direction --- which gives even order distortion; and  typical A/B SS amps compress both at the top and bottome --- have an "S" shaped gain curve and therefor yield odd order distortions.
 
Prolly also worth mentioning that the total harmonic distortion of tube amps is usually about an order of magnitude more than an SS amp. So even though there is a higher ratio of odd to even distortion products in SS amps, they typically have less odd harmonic distortion than tube amps.

 

[xnor]

^ That makes a lot of sense, thanks.
 
And the last paragraph = SS win. 

 

[UrbisRomae]

So, ignore the time of this post, but I came to the realization that triangle waves are in fact also composed of only the odd order harmonics, according to both http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_wave and http://mathworld.wolfram.com/TriangleWave.html .
 
So, that kind of kills your argument of why odd order harmonics sound more 'offensive'. And, I'm not sure what is meant by having only even order harmonics, because I assume you would like to hear the first harmonic, i.e. the fundamental. So, I guess if you had the fundamental (1st harmonic) and then all the even harmonics after that, the 2nd harmonic would be one octave above the first, and the fourth would be one octave above the second, so maybe those lower harmonics would 'harmonize' well. Or something.

 

[xnor]

^ Or something, yes.

 

[dBs]

In light of new evidence, I believe I will have to modify a few things, lol. My mistake there. The things I had read indicated that the triangle was a result of summing of the even order harmonics. I will have to revise this a bit then. I will try to get to that after my dad leaves from his visit.