Beginners guide to tube audiio.

Rhanechak, as you might have gleaned from the responses, there may be some confusion as to what you are looking to achieve.

The Sonic Frontiers "A Taste of Tubes" is here. It is a good primer to what tubes are and what they do.

A cool guide to vacuum tubes for amps written from a slightly different perspective is here. It is more easily understood after having read the Taste of Tubes.

One of the reference papers is Hamm's "Tubes vs Transistors".

Finally, if you do some searching on the internet as Ckorody suggests, there is ALL kinds of stuff out there. The most recent reference I have found and am working my way through is here. There are lots more, probably many which are more worthwhile. This just happens to be the latest I came across.

Elevick & T_bone:

Thank you, this is exactly the type of information I have been looking for, and free to boot.
Still looking for suggestions of books on the basics, primers, on tube audio.

RH

A primer for what the terms are or a primer on textbook on circuit design?

The above mentioned books are excellent reads. If you are lloking for something lighter: This book- (http://cgi.ebay.com/The-Complete-Guide-to-High-End-Audio_W0QQitemZ280332119531QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Nonfiction_Book?hash=item280332119531&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50) Contains some good, basic and practical info about tubed pres, amps, DAC's, etc., their circuitry and what to look out for when auditioning. That's besides all the other great info concerning the entire system/listening room acoustics/etc.

The book Rodman links to is by Robert Harley who is the Editor of Absolute Sound. It provides an excellent overview of all things audio. He has published two other books on the subject as well. See them all at:

http://www.hifibooks.com/