Jack C
Previously known as Jack-Micca
Member of the Trade: TekFX
- Joined
- May 20, 2010
- Posts
- 573
- Likes
- 62
UE,
That's not a fair assessment you've made there. The discussion here is around electronics as a whole, not individual parts. Faulting an IC for being sensitive to ESD is like faulting vacuum tubes for being easy to break when bumped together.
Out of the three issues you mentioend, ESD and heat are the most common and these are so easily mitigated in modern electronics that they are rarely a concern. Modern solid state electronics are designed to deal with ESD and a heat environment that fits within a practical range. A piece of gear that is prone to damage from ESD and heat from normal use is simply poorly designed - not a fault of the solid state technology. For applications where radiation is an issue, there are solid state parts designed specifically for such applications.
Your Kon-Tiki example does not prove what you are using it to prove - it's an anecdote that doesn't indicate a general trend. A few months ago I poured a cup of coffee into my notebook while it was turned on. I completely disassembled the computer, washed all the parts in hot water, blew most of the water off with compressed air, and baked the electronics it in a convection oven at 150 degrees for 2 hours. The computer then booted up just fine and I've been using it ever since. What does that prove? That I am lucky? I am sure that's the initial urge here.
Your personal experience is also anecdotal. While there are tube gear that has held up well for decades, there are also solid state electronics gear that has held up well for decades.
In some ways, tube-vs-solid-state is not really a fair comparison anymore. Some of the reliability limitations of solid state gear comes from complexity rather than the use of solid state components. Tube amps are by nature very simple, whereas solid state amps are typically built with many additional features - even relatively simple monoblocks are built with additional features such as balanced inputs, advanced fault detection and protection, and remote power/standby controls. A purely vacuum tube based amp with the complexity of a modern monoblock amplifier would be exceedingly complex to build. There are of course modern vacuum tube amps that offer similar features but these additional features are implemented with solid state circuitry - so would that be the worst of both worlds in your eyes?
Chips are not impossible to find after a few years, they are hard for consumers to find, because they are not desgined to be consumer replaceable. For the most part, modern electronics are designed in modules. When something on a module goes bad, the entire module is replaced rather than a part, because this often costs less and places less of a demand on the skill of the technician working on the repair.
Jack
That's not a fair assessment you've made there. The discussion here is around electronics as a whole, not individual parts. Faulting an IC for being sensitive to ESD is like faulting vacuum tubes for being easy to break when bumped together.
Out of the three issues you mentioend, ESD and heat are the most common and these are so easily mitigated in modern electronics that they are rarely a concern. Modern solid state electronics are designed to deal with ESD and a heat environment that fits within a practical range. A piece of gear that is prone to damage from ESD and heat from normal use is simply poorly designed - not a fault of the solid state technology. For applications where radiation is an issue, there are solid state parts designed specifically for such applications.
Your Kon-Tiki example does not prove what you are using it to prove - it's an anecdote that doesn't indicate a general trend. A few months ago I poured a cup of coffee into my notebook while it was turned on. I completely disassembled the computer, washed all the parts in hot water, blew most of the water off with compressed air, and baked the electronics it in a convection oven at 150 degrees for 2 hours. The computer then booted up just fine and I've been using it ever since. What does that prove? That I am lucky? I am sure that's the initial urge here.
Your personal experience is also anecdotal. While there are tube gear that has held up well for decades, there are also solid state electronics gear that has held up well for decades.
In some ways, tube-vs-solid-state is not really a fair comparison anymore. Some of the reliability limitations of solid state gear comes from complexity rather than the use of solid state components. Tube amps are by nature very simple, whereas solid state amps are typically built with many additional features - even relatively simple monoblocks are built with additional features such as balanced inputs, advanced fault detection and protection, and remote power/standby controls. A purely vacuum tube based amp with the complexity of a modern monoblock amplifier would be exceedingly complex to build. There are of course modern vacuum tube amps that offer similar features but these additional features are implemented with solid state circuitry - so would that be the worst of both worlds in your eyes?
Chips are not impossible to find after a few years, they are hard for consumers to find, because they are not desgined to be consumer replaceable. For the most part, modern electronics are designed in modules. When something on a module goes bad, the entire module is replaced rather than a part, because this often costs less and places less of a demand on the skill of the technician working on the repair.
Jack