Tubes & Digital - Is There A Link?

I have a copy of an article that is about 5-6 pages long that discusses the history of the tube, the current uses of tubes / tube industry, the stopage of the development of the tube and why there is a resurgence in the development of the tube. The article basically states that tube development is becoming mainstream and that it is a micro varient similar to the solid state device that replaced it; but with tube design topology. If anyone is interested, I will see if I still have the article or can get my hands on a copy.

Chuck

GS5, what pro oriented equipment uses an OTL design?

Pendulum Audio and, I think, Mesa. I'm not in the recording biz - the Pendulum gear is something I read about in a guitar mag a while back.

Tubes seem to add "fullness" rather than warmth. They also add depth and soundstage.

My pet theory is that the second harmonics help activate the location reponse of human hearing. A thin sound, such as a high-pitched beep, is often hard to locate. A harmonically rich sound of the same pitch is much easier to locate.

Why a resurgence of tubes when SS is measurably more accurate? My feeling is that digital/SS is losing something that is not being measured. The measurement standard, harmonic distorion of a single sine wave, is missing something.

I know about Fourier Analysis and the Super-Position Theorem but who said these audio systems are guaranteed linear? We're missing something.

Just my 2 cents.

In my experience, tubes can add depth, amazing layering, bloom, body and some add warmth (all of which good SS can also do), but I also think tubes with a digital source make the sound somehow artificial, synthetic, if you will, and am going back to all SS gear on an all digital front end.

On a side note, I recently heard an all McIntosh setup, with tube amp and preamp, McIntoshch cdp and speakers, that sounded so much like solid mid-fi solid state reproduction I had to make sure the speakers where in fact hooked up to the claimed components. It's just about tradeoffs, you pick your compromises. I have found SS gear to sound more real, more believable, less synthetic, but can see where the appeal of tubes come from with a digital setup, especially with a hot tweeter and limited range speaker, where only certain types of music is listened to.