Quote:
| why do you love tubes in your amplifiers and source components? |
Even with my limited experience of tubed devices (5 amps), my feeling is it's hard to make a generalization about how individual tube gear will sound, just as it's hard to make generalizations about how solid state gear will sound. It's impossible to conclude that "all tube gear is better (or I will prefer it) than solid state", or vice-versa. After I experienced my first piece of tubed gear, I though I'd never go back to solid state. then I heard the Samuels HR-2, and it changed my mind about the ss state sound. That said, IME, tubes can exhibit greater "musicality" (an almost useless term, I know) than some solid state. Music is more lush, more romantic, more involving, more natural, and more inviting with a more flowing, less jagged and etched sound-- it's more "analog-y". Some will argue that tubes impose false colorations, or "euphony" to the sound where ss designs are somehow magically "neutral". IMO, ss devices are every bit as "colored" as a tube gear; the audio signal is passing through as many or more devices/components in a solid state design than it does in a tube design, and all that stuff has a "sound" and a signature that is imposed on the music. We won't really know what "neutral" is until the day comes when audio signals can be beamed directly into our brains through the thin air.
I think people today come from the perspective of people raised on solid state, so that sounds normal and neutral to them. People raised on tubes find the tube sound more real and true, that's the filter they've viewed their music through over the years. Same holds true with vinyl-- to them, the argument that "CD digital is inherently more neutral than vinyl" is untrue, they will cite digital's brittle, metallic, gariny, etched sound and say it's not natural or realistic to them. Quote:
| Why has the fascination / passion endured till 2004? |
Because most audiophiles are older people (in general, I'm talking about Stereophile-type readers) who were raised on tube gear. Also because tubes offer some things that ss can't, it's own distinct fingerprint that can be very appealing. But tubes generally are only useful in certain applications due to their power restrictions, they can't be made into mega-watt 7-channel systems at anywhere near a reasonable cost level. Some speaker loads just demand so much power that tube amps need not apply. many of the speaker systems designed for tube gear are specially made to be driven by flea-powered tubes. In an application like a headphone amp, tube's limited power output can be a non-issue.
Quote:
| Why are there so many varieties and why do people pay big bucks for tubes? These things will eventually wear out, no? So, why keep re-investing? |
Tubes were used in lots of gear, not just audio and these different kinds of gear had different requirements, hence the need for different tubes with different specs/capabilities. NOS tubes (New Old Stock) are sought after by audiophiles because the older, Western European and American-made tubes were simply superior to what you can buy today from former eastern Bloc countries, Russia and China. Almost all the great Western manufacturers of tubes went the way of the dodo bird after the advent of the transistor. Now, caches of those old tubes (from the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s) stockpiled by the US gov't in case of war, are worth their weight in gold. Obviously, there will never be any more of these great old tubes made, and once the current supply dries up, that's it. Prices have continued to sky-rocket on the best-regarded of the NOS tubes.
Mark
