I had a nice Mac 7270 hooked to a Cary SLP98P then went to a Cary V12R big difference, and an even bigger difference when I got a Cary CAD 120's. I like SS too, but to me nothing beats tubes. I've heard SS amps that cost lots more that sounded great, but again not as good. |
Kevziek,
You have put into words the same results I am getting with the AMR DP-777 DAC. |
i always thought that tubes offered a magic in the midrange that solid state couldnt match.i recently picked up a yba passion 2oo.it easily is as good as my tube amp in the midrange and doesnt roll off the top end. bass is a bit deeper, tighter and extended.best of all it offers two outputs to the speakers one for the low end and one for the treble.this really makes a differance.last of all iam still interested in your cd player.if you are interested in selling.let me know what you would like to get for it..just go to my wanted add and leave me a post.i cancelled your last response out.thank you |
An update. My friend who borrowed the X-350 and raved about it, said that it still lacked the naturalness and realness of tubes. He also just installed a dedicated line (10 g.) and is astounded with the improvements. His MC2000 now sounds more dynamic, lowered noise floor, more clarity. He doesn't have the dealer's X-350 now, but is still using a Threshold S-550e, and he says that with the dedicated line, the differences in the amps is more apparent. He is now convinced he doesn't want solid state. I will be going to do some comparing this Sunday, and also bring my VT-100 along. Will post after that........... |
I'm sorry, Asa, I didn't notice your invitation for a private dialogue. I think I might enjoy it, but I'm afraid I will have to decline at this time... Pressing responsibilities and all that, my good chap. Lets say we shake mouses, and move on.
I do want to stay in touch, though. I value your honest opinion. |
Oh, Kevsiak, if you do buy some equipment, I think we would all be interested in your reactions. |
I use no magic to extend my life;
Now, before me, the dead "WORDS" become alive.
Keep the fire burnning, everyone... :-)
I have already done my reading on how to fly and airplane, everyone think that I can fly a Boeing 747, now? ;-) |
Well, I don't know about a spanking - remember, I did invite you both to contact me off this forum, which you chose not to do - so, I'll just leave you to your Apogees. Which, again, I consider nice speakers and am glad that you have found your nirvana, or close to it. As the old philosospher's adage goes, you can't teach the color purple to a blind man. I think the "what is" has it rigged that way. Actually, now that I think of it you and Bolin do have many qualities of perception in common - he loves the ARC VT100 6550-based amp and Nordost SPM too, components that if you haven't listened too, you should because you might like them. I'm going to have to take the good writer part back though; "hands on ivory" is just too much for me this morning. You write well when you are not so juiced up. I re-extend my invitation to a reasoned, mature conversation where their isn't an audience.
Apart from that, be well. |
On a side note: Scintilla. (yrs ago) I remember someone was trying to make his pair play music with a pair of Electro 50. These, while great, couldn't move the Scintillas beyond whispering level... they kept blowing fuses. All we wanted was to LISTEN to them so we looked around for a big tube, thinking that was a safe proposition -- but couldn't find anything on loan bigger than EAR 519 (i.e. mine, at the time). Those couldn't go very far either. Finally, a dealer consented to experiment with us and bring over 300 pds worth of amps (an old Symphonic Line model called Kraft 400A). These did it: we got the Scintilla scintillating, as it were.
For once transistors did it -- but the story is for Muralman1's benefit: not easy to drive Scintillas. Duettas were a piece of cake by comparison! |
Tube Groover and Detlof, thankyou for the civil sanity. I shouldn't have stooped to the needling. I don't write here out of ego. I just get carried away with relating my successes.
It is a bit cruel of me to brag about Apogees, when most visitors here never will see one let alone hear one. It is my curse that I continue to try to recapture "the moment." My belief I can, urges me on.
For my enjoyment, the music my system provides is really without fault given my system and home parameters. Never can I justify the expense I would need to go the next five percent. My room, though very good, is a mortal's room, not the awesome dedicated room I heard the Scintillas. Neither can I afford a great turntable, arm, and cartridge (being frail, the first click or pop breaks my heart). I am looking for a pristine Scintilla.
Tubegroover, you are amazing. Were you a dealer? I owned the Stage too. I went through a lot of components looking for synergy with the Stage. It being the easiest of the Apogees to power, I settled on an able tube amp. When everything is zeroed in, the realism is eerie. You feel you can touch the face of a singer. Unfortunately, the Stage is a difficult brat to live with, it's positioning being so persnickety. The Duetta Sig is far more forgiving. I like it's loving sound. Major reviewer, Paul Bolin still uses one (last I saw) as his reference speaker.
Yes, more than tubes and/or ss, it is the system including room that makes or breaks a personally satisfying musical experience; things aren't black and white. Thankyou for that, tubegroover. I proved that to myself. With my Stage, I found happiness with tubes. With the Duetta it is with the Pass. Both systems are wonderful. As you can see, when it comes to types of ampliphiers, I offer no easy answer.
How things have calmed down.
|
Thank you Detlof for bringing some much needed compromise as well as wisdom to this debate. The overriding factor that I have found in that ever elusive term "musicality" has less to do with tube or ss devices so much as how components work together as a system in a given room.
Muralman's experience with Apogees mirror two separate experiences I had with both the Stages and Scintillas. Although I heard several of the other Apogees models in different systems, there are only two experiences that stand out and are included in those "musical moments" that one never forgets. What was very interesting to me and still baffles me to this day is how the Stage system synergized with a lowly Adcom amp. I didn't try to dissect why it sounded the way it did, like real music, but was just amazed that it did. Why? The room, the recording the set-up, all those things certainly contributed to the magic. I figured out a long while back, after that and a few similar experiences that sometimes a system comes together by luck, sometimes through skill but more often than not, through trial and error. With me the latter since I really don't have the technical skill to get it right the first time.
Things aren't black and white, music isn't tubes vs. ss. A great system is the sum of all its components, not least of all the room it is set-up in. It just is and when one experiences reproduced music as we hear it live, like Muralman did many years ago, nothing else matters other than the means and methods of recreating that magic in the home environment. We need to respect and encourage each other in our individual quest to attain that, this is what it's all about. |
6chac, thanks, don't think I deserve your kind words, there are far better descriptions around here for what we experience, when listening to music.
Unsound, yes of course the child wasn't foolish, all I was trying to do, was to poke some fun at all of us here, me included, about the musiclover falling prey to audiophiles, like David fallen into the lion's den.
Oddly, or rather not oddly enough, no one took this up. Probably too busy bickering away. Possibly Muralman loves his Apogees more than music, Asa perhaps more, what his astute and nimble mind shapes and forms, by reflecting the experience, which music gives him as a catalyst. I love his shaping and forming, I learn from them, more often than not I agree with them, but in a sense they would remain flatus vocis for me until I would have grasped the nucleus of his experience, beyond his thinking and his arguing. Only then, I would be able to say, yes Asa loves or Muralman loves music, beyond all gear, thoughts, beliefs and other narcissisms, which so easily attach themselves to a hobby passionately pursued.
As I tried to state very early in this thread, the entire argument seems a bit outdated. Both formats have advanced and have moved closer to each other. The benchmark here I feel, should be musicality. Musicality is an elusive term, because (ASA is right here, to my mind) musicality is a quality of psyche. (I do not like the term "mind" here, because of its proximity to thinking or consciousness. )Like the sense for rhythm it seems engrained in our essence, in our dna if you will, it is archetypal. The experience of it jumps at us, be it from an interpretation or a composition, which we then call musical. In actual fact, what we hear is not musical per se, but acts as a catalyst on our psyche and moves it, before our thinking about it sets in. Hence, to follow this line of reasoning, a music lover has to be an arch-narcissist, an addict, longing for his next shot of music, tickling his endorphines? Not necessarily, because musicality always hits us by surprise. It is no category of our thinking- conscious mind. It hits us in the same way as would the sudden sight of a strikingly beautiful women striding on the other side of the road, or the unfolding of a rolling countryside, as we approach the summit of a pass-road.
Some amps can surprise us in that way, fairly consistently, with the right kind of music. Many simply cannot, ever. Amongst those, which I have experienced, are tubes as well as SS. I know SS amps which do this to me and I know tube amps which do not. For me the entire argument has become pretty much moot, especially since I have learnt to take and mingle the best of both worlds, in order to have the music get at me at that psychic level where it belongs and does me best. Cheers |
Asa tell me. If your ear/mind were to catch the sound of a player and piano in a nearby room, and searching, you found the two, stopped awhile for a listen, would you spend the remainder of your life searching for a more real musical experience? Seems like you would. I stumbled on just that aural experience, only the ending was different. I knew then very well what a well played piano sounded like. And after countless concerts, I have found no way to improve on my enjoyment of hands on ivory. That I was fully snookered, for a prolonged time, has left me nothing more to do, than to recapture that experience. I'm a lucky guy. So far, my journey has taken me very close. It's comforting to know what I am after.
If there is a better speaker out there than the Apogee, none of the deep pockets Apogee owners I know around the world have found any. It isn't for not looking; there is nothing in audio more important to us than to find a worthy contender to replace our aging Apogees. Obviously you have never heard one in a great setup, or you wouldn't be so cavalier about Apogees. tch tch Mr. World Wise.
As for spirituality, I find the invocation of the material versus spiritual conundrum weaved into a light hearted audio discussion to be trivializing to the latter and inconsequential to the former.
It must be painful for you, a man of professed authority, to get a spanking. That would explain your sand box antics of striking out. 6chac has me thinking more than you'll ever. Certainly he is wiser, and a lot funnier. |
On 6chac: this is what happens when someone reads too many books on "Zen". Actually, glad you are having fun, just clean up after you get out of the sandbox and go home for supper.
On Muralman: what, if I note the materialistic bias in your statements, I'm being derisive? Jeez, a guy who wants "technically clean" sound recoiling against someone noting his materialistic bias, imagine that...
As far as the Scintilla being the end-all in speakers, I think its safe to say that you need to get out more. But, again, I'm glad you had an experience that showed you something more (which, empirically-speaking, may raise the possibility that there is more for you to learn...)
"Spirituality is a pet vein", like a tangential hobby. Hmm, interestingly view.
Two guys who know it all after hearing Scintillas, or reading some Zen. What more can I say, you've perfected a perfect way to immunize your ideas; conclusions without any reasons other than, well, no reasons. You're right, Muralman, the fact that your daughter and son play instruments thoroughly deconstructs my observations. So, now that I have been so thoroughly deconstructed by a duo of zen/sound enlightened beings, I will say, have a nice wkend.
Oh, that's not sarcasm you are hearing; its broken bamboo across your back. |
No Jetter!? Loosing here!!! I'd thrown out Ten Bulls, only get back a few trolls, and a lion! And now, my lady told me that I cannot take trolls, nor lion. Have a nice weekend everyone. :-)
Regards |
Yippers, from deep in the backwoods of the green mountains of Vermont we like the way that 6chac jawbones. |
Wrong again. Jadis matches very well with most Apogees. The Scintilla stands alone as a beast for an amp. It does take lots of current, but not a powerful amp. I have a friend who is very happy with his Scintilla powered by an 80 watt class A amp of his own design.
I have never heard, under any circumstance, a more believable music system than what I had with the Scintilla. Much of my awe was due, no doubt, to being my first listen to a dipole. Any dipole will out stage a dynamic box speaker anyway. I get more air from the back wave from my dipoles than any tube can provide. Room acoustics even play more of a role in musical systems than tubes. I have a great room. Listening initiates always remark about the "ear phone" effect (meaning they are emersed in the music), and that the stage remains cohesive regardless to listener position.
As you pretend not to know, I have legs in both worlds, both valve and ss. I will drop my Pass in an instant when I hear a superior sounding tube amp in the same price range. I've done it before for a smaller system. With my present speakers, I have found listening to tubes in the first gain stage works for me. I'm dying to hear a pair of Margules on my Duettas.
Specs be damned. I am talking real world music reproduction using my ears (and mind, for those who can't make the semantic connection themselves).
I wish you would refrain from using divisive sarcasm. When you do, I can't shake the image I have of you as a hooded figure preaching from top a mountain. Sprinkling terms like "materialistic" into your writing imparts a dogmatic, "My way or the bye way" attitude.
I can't help that it was a Levinson amp, Scintilla, Koetzu, Goldmund, and the perfect room that was so real it fooled me and not the Jadis powering whatever. I'm sorry that it's such a pill for you to swallow. Before you move in and say, "You don't know real," I'll tell you my daughter is a principal string player, my son blows the trumpet, and there is often someone stretching their fingers on our old world piano.
I don't see what tubes and ss have to do with spirituality, so in your pet vein I have no recommendation for you, except this; while I listen to the band play in my house, you can as well listen reverantly to white noise, believing in your heart it is "space." |
Asa,
1. Where one can not say, it is best to remain silent. That seems to have escaped your long response, all the while you claim that one can not say. That is delusiuonal, or if volitional, inauthentic.
- I don't know what the hell you are talking about, you are too high education for me. You can teach me some English if you don't mind? :-)
2. There is a difference between claiming that you are encompassing the Truth in its entirety in words, versus using words to point at the Truth. Granted, pointing at the moon is not the moon, but Jesus and Buddha talked about the "what is" - or Zen, or God, or a higher level of organization, or whatever row you want to hoe - all the time, so I'll go with them, if you don't mind.
- Budda has level? Please don't hoe, I have "nothing" to show.
3. If someone claims they are enlightened, they usually aren't. I'm not, I know that.
- Do you remember what did you do, yesterday ? There you go!
4. What does it mean when someone goes on and on decrying others going on and on?
- Wrong is wrong. Nothing I can say.
5. If one has to look it up from someone else, or decry thinking and dialogue, itself part of the "what is", then he probably doesn't know.
- How do you learn to add: 1+1=2 ?
Lastly, my lady said, she does not wants no trolls, nor lion, so if I offend anyone, I trully apologize!!! Cheers.
Toss away... |
6chac:
1.Where one can not say, it is best to remain silent. That seems to have escaped your long response, all the while you claim that one can not say. That is delusiuonal, or if volitional, inauthentic.
2. There is a difference between claiming that you are encompassing the Truth in its entirety in words, versus using words to point at the Truth. Granted, pointing at the moon is not the moon, but Jesus and Buddha talked about the "what is" - or Zen, or God, or a higher level of organization, or whatever row you want to hoe - all the time, so I'll go with them, if you don't mind.
2. If someone claims they are enlightened, they usually aren't. I'm not, I know that.
3. I never heard the Buddha say that "I am right and you are wrong" with such judgemental force. Hmmm...
4. What does it mean when someone goes on and on decrying others going on and on?
5. If one has to look it up from someone else, or decry thinking and dialogue, itself part of the "what is", then he probably doesn't know.
Too far afield even for me. 6chac, if you want to continue, contact me directly and I will talk to you there. |
No fun, The fire are out!!! :-) |
Hello Detlof, I did not mean to forget about you, but here it is: I like your wording!!!
"Perhaps it is the ambient noise of a life event , which I miss in classical CDs. Instead of blackness, I expect to hear those subtle cues, which tell me of the size of the hall, those reverbs from the side-, or backwalls, which simply are not there".
I have look for something like that in A'Gon, for a while, but yours are the best.
Thanks
Can quote you some where, else ? :-) |
Hello Asa,
I have nothing to say! Tubes are good! SS is not? Or vice versa? Things that you guy discuss on the subject was discussed long time ago? No need for me to resurrect a dead subject.
About Zen, what do you know about Zen? I know "nothing" about Zen. All I know is if I drink the "water", I know how is it "taste" like. Do you?
"You can look and see parts (reductionist-orientated scientist), you can look to see the whole (going up to a mountain and not coming down), or you can come down from the mountain, realize that the only "Zen" up there is the "Zen" you brought with you, that "it" is everywhere, and see parts and the whole at the same time - they are not exclusive perceptions. Transcending that belief is part of their integration."
Is there such a thing call Zen up or Zen down? Or part or whole? Musical or not! Even if it does, so what. Dinosaurs extinct! Budda is also dead! I know "where" I came from, "where" will I go! Again, you do not drink the same "water" that I drink. You don't know! The moment one try to think to define Zen, one is already wrong! Look it up! :-)
Earlier post that I quote Detlof about my system. Did I say it is a good or bad thing. NO! Musical or not, I don't know! Do I like the sound of it ? Heck, yes!!! The question is can any system replicate "that"? Or do we care? Tubes or SS!
Do I care if my amps is tubes or SS ? NO! Do I care if my amps are musical or not, YES. Like I've said, one only see the finger, but not the moon.
I've seen tons of "good" men like you, and none "good and bad" like me. See how rare am I? Man, I am building up my own sand castle. :-)
Unsound, lookup your post, you arrived at the door!!! :-)
Z man, you are the lion. :-)
Regards
Do you guys really like the Ten Bulls quote? I like it, too.:-) |
"Cleanest", "silky clean", qualities of space to be measured "technically" only in terms of diminishing distortion...yes, if these are the values you adhere to, or your bias in seeing sound, then follow Muralman and get a SS amp...
But, I believe there is more to stereo spatial performance than measuring the technical aspects of distortion. I don't think its radically subjective at all.
And, yes, if you are married to a speaker whose impedance drops to 1 ohm (the Scintillas) then, yes, you will not like a tube amp - because that would be incompetance to marry the two - and will, by necessity, need high powered, current dumping SS amps...and perhaps, to perfect that choice, perfect an argument biased towards the SS amps that you must have...
I've reviewed for TAS, UA, been in the hobby for 25 years etc. and, trust me, I've given Pass a fair shake.
As for hearing acuity, and your implied reccomendation of your own hearing, let me remind: there are many people with great acuity in technical terms who still can not hear what "musical" is. The mind in primary and causal to the ears (mind precedes material). I know many people who are older and have lost some upper frequency acuity who, nevertheless, have exceedingly musical systems. People who claim that the "technical" aspects of frequency acuity are determitive of the ability to hear what is "musical" - and use that argument to bolster their claims - are the same materially biased people who believe that space should be as "clean" as possible. Again, this is not a coincidence.
Muralman, I think you are right: SS is the right choice for you, and , admittedly, I don't think Jadis would match well with Apogees. Then again, I don't know anyone who would actually consider it. |
Asa, your last post took the words right out of my fingers.
For your information, I only mentioned "other sources" because I am humble enough to know my word is as only good as the distance between my mouth and my ears when it comes to forum readers. It wasn't the sound of the Pass I made my pitch to outside sources for anyway, it was the fact it is technically the cleanest of all ss amps. Hearing, as you and I know, is subjective, as you and I demonstrate ad nauseum.
We will always disagree on the subject of noise floor, otherwise known as component distortion. Everything I want to hear is encoded in the medium. I don't want my circuitry second guessing my preferences. I'll do that at the record store.
After I exchanged my tube setup for the Pass, one long time friend exclaimed how much more extended my system sounded. I have off the chart hearing, and I notice the difference between the two is substantial. The music is more alive, to me.
I'm afraid I'll have to agree with Greg as well over the need to spend major bucks for a musical ss amp. I will trump Greg and announce the same goes for tube amps. I didn't get the sound right in my system until I had shelled out a hundred bucks for retubing my cd player. It costs exponentially greater for pre amps and amps. Just take a look at a Jadis. It is true that a budding listener will do much better on a limited budget buying a new sweet Jolida or older CJ and SF.
Kevziek, not so. I don't think Asa has given his Pass a fair shake yet. He doesn't believe me, but I know for a fact one can have the best of both worlds by initiating your best sounding tube signal through and amplified by a silky clean ss amp. Of course if you want the same noise floor/air imparted on the signal before speakers that Asa values then just ignore my advice.
I feel I need to remind everyone that my Holy Grail I am striving for was the product of ss mono blocks doing the work for what I consider the best speaker ever made, the Apogee Scintilla. In the same listening room I heard a fifty grand tube Jadis powering a plethora of 5k dynamic driver units and that never produced any magic for me. |
Detlof, of course the child wasn't foolish, that's the point. The child was unecumbered by prejudicial rhetoric and was endowed with clarity of perception. Those around the child too worried about being percieved as fools were fooled into being fools.
As for me I begining to think that Zaikesman's 9/18 post may have been the most perceptive. We have gone from a recommendation of drunken stupor to appreciate mystical
superiorty to Tarrot cards to childrens fairly tales. Earlier I said I didn't want to get to deep into this. How ever I find my self knee deep in it. I'm getting out before I drown. |
Mural, just re-read my post and sounds a bit snotty to you. That's not how I meant it, just tired with a bad cold today and too tired to re-do it. |
6chac, don't be a pest. If you have an opinion that is contrary to someone else's, state it with reasons. When you just say someone is wrong, over and over, it just makes me think you don't know why but want to make us think that you do, as if discussing it with us is somehow beneath you. It just makes me feel, in your safe room of anonymity, that you really don't have any reasons.
Mural. We will have to agree to disagree on Pass SS at this point. If you are happy, then I am happy for you. On air, all sound is projected, whether "real" or "manufactured" - which is still "real" ie no phenomena is outside "reality". If you mean studio vs. live, then yes, many studio productions create voids in their presentation between players. I tend heavily towards live recordings myself. Second, when I say "projected" that doesn't mean, implicitly, that any projection must be bound to the speaker plane, thus collapsing and bounding the soundfield while, concurrently, drawing our mind to the speaker face. You can have the simulcrum of a projected soundwave without that aural "image" being stuck on the speaker plane - just like live music, and which, again, is what tubes excel at.
"Noise floor" can impart the sensation of dimension and air (since, assumably, you would want that because sound in our atmosphere always moves within dimension containing "air", which is what atmosphere means, and why I used the term) or you can have a void (the sterile "blackness" that many refer to). "Black", a metaphoric visual term, is used to describe the absesne of sound from a reductionist perspective, ie it is the absense of light. Space is not to be characterized as if the source is "light" and the space is "black". Psychologically speaking, that choice in metaphor is symptomatic of a subtle relegation of sound projection vs. considerations of space - which, um, was what I've been talking about...
On "I can verify this [cleaness of Pass] from various sources, not reviewers", I would humbly suggest that you are the best source for yourself; looking to others is still subtle conformism, just like looking to reviewers for your senses of security. Verifica-tion begins and ends with yourself, that is the widest experience. But again, if you are happy with what you hear and others tell you they hear from Pass, then I am happy for you.
Yesterday, I was playing tennis at high school courts when the marching band started by to the football field for their practice. A blare came out of a trumpet, the boy kidding around. It wasn't musically consonant, but it was existentially so, because, well, it was "real". Tubes mimic this real-ness to a greater degree than SS, but I've never heard a stereo - tube or SS - that even came close to its real-ness.
Time to go listen to some music.... |
Roast Detlof, roast...LOL |
Unsound, this child wasn't foolish,only naiv, like a music lover amongst audiophiles and ASA, Buddha on the road to Damascus????--he must have been walking in his sleep---
6chac, how are you going to have the trolls? Broiled or steamed? Cheers, |
Asa, thanks for the compliment about my writing skills. I accept that under protest because I think visually and writing is something of a disjunct from my real life. Don't presume that I am a duck out of water concerning myth and science, though, by reading my posts in an audio forum. Nuff said.
In your last post, you finally touched ground; something I can set my teeth into. I agree with you on the necessity of tubes. I will also agree that ss (I formally disdainly ID as SS) sounds less real than tubes. I loved my all tube setup. I converted a number of ss users over to tubes.
There was one thing missing though. One thing I knew was in my way of a believable stage image. One I knew was attainable based on my memory of the perfect audio moment fifteen years ago. The problem was the sound stretched from speaker to speaker. I can only think that is what you mean by air, Asa. I don't buy your definition. I want the performance to live on its own, divorced from speakers, sort of like fusion reaction suspended in a magnetic force field.
When I first witnessed Apogee magic fifteen years ago, I literally walked around the speakers - still I did not believe the music was connected to them. None the less, my perception of the piano and it's player was one within space, a room. This was due, no doubt, to the recital recording being made live, with all the natural reverberations, subtle as they are, carving out the confined space of a room.
Mind you, this whole image was due to the marriage of many factors: The live stage recording, a fine amp, glorious dipole speakers, and pristine vinyl.
Most music production is not so innocent. I won't go into that, as I am sure everyone knows studio works are as real as pictures of airbrushed centerfolds, after they get finished working it.
Asa, I don't hear you qualifying your music with air, except to say that it exists even in a noiseless room. You make no distinction between live events and manufactured events. I contend, you are merely perceiving noise floor.
The Pass is the cleanest ss around. That I know from my own wide experience. I can verify that with testimony from dependable sources, not reviewers. The ss difficulties you enumerated are minimized nearly completely. One gains dynamic range, simplicity, bass control and most important to me, very low noise floor. As I have written, placing tubes before the Pass forcefully tunes it's performance. Just the other day, a friend who is familiar with my audio journey, listening to my Sylvania tube substitution, exclaimed all dryness was gone. This particular tube's magic breathed life into voices and made high hats shimmer without loosing body and dynamics.
The cd media necessitates tubes. Vinyl is even better. |
Greg has made the best point in the old tubes vs ss issue. "unless you can spend mega$ on ss, the musicality will always be a little wanting, hidden". He is saying that tubes offer a dimension to the music that ss partly misses. Thus ss sound may possibily have a tad of boredom (fatigue) after a few months. Tubes give texture, but a slight drawback in the extreme fq's. But have to say the little Jadis delivers a nice bass-punch. |
Kevziek, I'm glad that we all (er, mostly me...) didn't scare you off your own thread!
On transients, yes, I couldn't say it any better. That's exactly it. I only used "dryness" because I didn't want to go into too much description when I was using up so much space on other things. Breath is the best to look at. It doesn't project the energy, the explosiveness, of, say a hard struck string, but, nevertheless, it has a leading edge transient. Meaning, that all sounds have a beginning as they move out in space. To project this movement, the source (singer/instrument in music)must project with varying force to create a wavefront (and here we see, again, that the sound is not separate from the space because the wavefront in not separate from the air). Transients which possess a disproportionate amount of energy loaded at the transient, relative to the core and decay of the sound, draw the thinking mind to them because they are not "natural"; the transient does not sound "real" because its sound is imbalanced. As the distortion rises in lesser components, the loaded energy carries that increased distortion at the transient and our thinking mind is even more drawn to it (as if it is an object), keeping us from deeper listening levels. Modern SS has done well at reducing distortive remnants, but not all. If you listen to SS breath it lacks a "wetness" that air from the lungs possesses and that effects how the stereo is able to replicate the projection as it moves in space. SS does not capture this "wetness", even though distortive "frission/tension" within the projection is reduced. The SS breath carries a steady "dry" character, while tube breath changes as it moves out, like wind hitting different surfaces differently, but in a subtle way because the energy is low, and carries the "wetness-of-air" even as the breath projection infinitely dissipates.
Second observation: as energy increases, the "dryness" of SS transient energy increases, again creating incongruencies from one time and the next - also not a part of how sound sounds in "reality"
Sound possesses an organic, continuous quality that is fully integrated with the surrounding space, so that it never occurs to us to even think about whether there is a sound separate from space. Tube replicates this existential quality of space/source; it replicates their integral relationship. SS creates dimensional/existential discontinuities that draw our attention, engage the examining thinking mind, and regardless of the distortion issue, causes a deep part of us, the part that instinctively apprehends space/time, or its unnatural absense, to sit up and listen - but not listen to music, but listen for disconsonant reality.
"Pressurized"....tough to find words to describe an existential quality that we live so within that we don't have a vocabulary to encompass a description of its absense. Space is not a thing; it is dimensional vessel that carries within itself all things - you, me, sound, everything. SS creates the impression of dimension (read: existence without motion of wavefront) directly around the projection, but then dissipates at an unnaturally quick pace and into a space that seems to drop off into a void. Since none of us have ever experienced non-existence, or even dissipation of dimension (there is no void in reality; even without things space is a dimensional vacuity, not a void, and even in our atmosphere there is no vacuity), this draws our mind at a very deep level towards identifying this most unusual spatial/void discontinuity.
Tubes, on the other hand, replicate the dimension of the space you are in right now to a greater degree, both in how they replicate space when no sounds are moving through (not a void), when space carries a sound wavefront (how sound symmetrically moves into, moves through and dissipates), and how two sounds intra-act in space (two instruments playing at once).
Tubes may have less "detail" for the identifying mind that wants sound to look like a statue garden "out there", but, I would argue, its rendition is less "real". The ability of a sound simulcrum to catalyze the mind to seep deeper IS the definition of musical; musical-ity is not a quality, but a progression of the listening mind. Tubes catalyze this progression to much greater degree than SS because they present existential qualities in a way that we find congruent, so that we never sit up and think of them (and is why they are so difficult to describe when we finally get around to it, and which is why our present audio vocabulary is insufficient to describe the current state of the hiend). |
Honey, we have 3 trolls for dinner, tonight...Or you want lion meat, instead?
ASA, all that analysis, and still wrong? :-) Z man, wait till I see you! ;-) |
Liquid(ity): nice words; the pleasant, natural flow of transient notes, sounds, without the warning telling lights of a change in course of the music.
That's typical of many tubes, but also of some ss. In these cases, we're happy listening and I don't think we actually notice the paarticulars of the reproduction because the music is too involving.
I'm referring to the usual shortcomings-- tubes' bass, the ss's mid, the tubes high extension vs. the ss, the "ear-friendly" (but usually limited) upper register of tube vs. ss...
I now have ss amps that allow me to forget my old OTL and my little Jadis. However, my ss configuration is in a different class altogether: wide-bandwidth (whereas my tubes were "normal bandwidth", at best). They have enormous driving power in class A topology (a Goliath situation vs my little tubes). And yet, it's only now that my musical ear -- as opposed to the critical ear -- is happy(ier). Morale (mine): a good ss offers precision, control, power, extension, and electricity bills worthy of a seasoned audiophile -- but unless you can spend mega$ on ss, the musicality will always be a little wanting, hidden somewhere... Bottom line is: given a medium budget, select carefully for a good tube. If necessary, tweak it. |
By the way, LIQUID does not have to mean colored or smoothed over. LIQUID to me describes a quality in tubes that is a certain form of transparency, where an instrument's attack and sound has a freeness to it, a clarity. A sound that has an aliveness to it, that is often lacking in SS. SS has more of a facsimile-type sound. A reproduced sound. A mechanical sound. Tubes just seem to RING OUT freely. All the many intricacies and components of the sound of an instrument seem more clearly defined and separated, yet they are integrated into the whole much better. |
Asa, your well-spoken comments on "SPACE" are helping us get closer to defining some very important tube / transistor differences.
When you say the Pass amp will make "leading transients possess a certain dryness", I interpret this as follows: When a SS amp initiates the attack, there seems to be a certain sterility in that attack. There is a certain bluntness and deadness when compared to tubes. Yes, the attack is there and it is quick, but it doesn't sound quite right. It lacks the reality of the attack tubes provide. I believe this is what you are trying to convey, but I am afraid others will interpret "dryness" as accuracy and lack of exaggerated bloom or air. I don't believe it's that at all, but rather as I described.
I'm not sure what you mean by, "Air around sources is more pressurized, but dissipates as you move away from sources." The pressurized thing needs explanation. I agree that the air dissipates more quickly on SS -- it doesn't shoot out as far or for as long as tubes. It is truncated or damped out. It dies out.
Again, this observation is based on my limited exposure to the best of SS amps. But I fear that this will be the case with any SS device. I'm sure others will beat me over the head for this comment, but my fear is that this is the nature of transistors, i.e. switching silicon devices.
Asa, your response to what I say above will be valued. But hurry, before Muralman hits me over the head with his X-150.
space has sterility rather than aliveness |
Zaike, yes, kill the Buddha if you see him on the road, to Damascus or anywhere else, so to speak. Objectively, with the active mind, you can only know a fraction of it, one fraction at a time (or through putting the fractions back together). Subjectively, the very filtering lens of subjectivity ensures that you only see partially at any given time. But, seeing trans-objectively, trans-subjectively, both at once, neither separate, you can "know" the All.
Unsound: yes, science up til this point has been reductionist - break it into parts, watch the parts - but empiric method does not mean that integral conclusions can not be drawn. It depends on your orientation; the method is nuetral and discloses truth through breaking up or putting back together. I disagree on your definition of "mystical": it is not only concerned with the whole, because seeing the parts is also seeing the whole. You can look and see parts (reductionist-orientated scientist), you can look to see the whole (going up to a mountain and not coming down), or you can come down from the mountain, realize that the only "Zen" up there is the "Zen" you brought with you, that "it" is everywhere, and see parts and the whole at the same time - they are not exclusive perceptions. Transcending that belief is part of their integration.
My main point was that an active mind directed at sound/music only discloses certain truths, albeit important ones; to "see" more musical meaning, you must let go of that active urge/instinct and become receptive to the music. And, that these perceptions exist on a deepening contiuum of perception and that a belief in one over the other is a function of egoic attachment to an "idea", not what the experience/experiment itself discloses. The active mind is characterized by objectifying external reality as a series of "things-out-there" and derives from our predatory evolution, that has served us quite well. This mental faculty, because of its focus, focuses the experience of music through that cognitive lens, producing a mind that seeks to control the soundfield through the imposition of "accuracy". But there are deeper levels to listen from, and which require a receptive orientation to the external music. We can call this state "receptive" only to give it a label opposite from "active", but, in fact, it is not opposite from the thinking mind, but before it. The place where receptivity occurs is the ground of thinking, and is prior to it. Denial of the ground of receptivity is a denial of the source of thinking; the thinking mind denying its source, which is not separate from itself. That is irrationality, and the causal source of alienation, from a deeper experience of music, and the Music. |
Detlof, this Tarrot card character appears analogus to the foolish child who said "the Emperor has no clothes". |
The fool in the last card of the Tarot, 6chac,is another image for this. Got nothing to do with God or mysticism, Zaike, it is just one who does not let science devour nature empireously always and all the time, to paraphrase Unsound...hence he's a fool of course, like tubelovers..and ASA speaking in the wilderness.... |
Well, Asa, I guess there's no denying that some of our brains 'Do It' more than others...
(Geez, this is beginning to resemble a Nike ad!)
To paraphrase the late Dr. Bronner (one of the only lunatic philosophers I actually have a *practical* use for, if you know what I mean - no need, I'm sure, to remind audiophiles what cleanliness is next to), Mind-Brain = All-One!
(No, this doesn't mean I don't think that there's actually an objective reality out there [or in here]; if I believe anything, I believe that. It's just that we can't know but an infitesimal fraction of it.)
Oh, and FWIW, I always do my level best to have no God(s) at all. |
6chac: Run, but not before you too, say something? Maybe I just didn't get it (although I liked it). Were you refering to the fact that this thread seems to be highjacked and there is no hope and, God, please, no more, and...Whatever the reference - you can tell us, or just me - it was a nice quote, one I wasn't aware of.
Mytho-magical shamanism aside, its true, you know. Did you intend that? |
I don't want to get too deep into this...The the point of science is the endeavor to understand nature empericaly. The very nature of science requires one to let go of the whole in order to grasp the particulars. The mystical appraoach requires one to let go of the particulars in order to grasp the whole. I think both approaches lead to the understanding that the more we learn the more we learn how little we have learned. A balanced appraoach using both approaches will probably serve us best. This ever so elusive philosphy is called common sense. |
Barefooted and naked of breast, I mingle with the people of the world.
My clothes are ragged and dust-laden, and I am ever blissful.
I use no magic to extend my life;
Now, before me, the dead trees become alive.
Ten Bulls
:-)
Fire, fire, run... |
You know, I know that I can shoot the wind with the best of them, but having dialogue, at all varying levels of (so-called) cognitive sophistication, is good. I try not to obfuscate, but realize that there are also some people out there who will challenge the ideas because I haven't defined my terms well enough. Its a line, and tough when you try to be as concise as you know how. That said, I know its a mouth-full.
On relevance. In the hiend, you have (so-called) Romantic Idealists on one side arguing that anything "scientific" is rigid denial and wanting "warm" music and on the other side those attached to scientific/technological explanations, each arguing from an absolutist position. This creates a "negative feedback" dialogue loop where the discussion has nothing to do with the merits and is propelled by intellectual territoriality (rationality defaulting to prey/predator instincts). Interestingly, this is the same situation in general culture: science has been shown to be great at manipulating matter and finding all kinds of truth that we can use to make all kinds of gadgets, but now we find that it can't tell us everything that is "human" (it provides functional knowledge that can lead to pleasure OR meaning, but doesn't, inherently, gaurantee the latter). Yet, we can't go back to mytho-magical medieval thinking either. The result of this is science arguing with anyone who wants to move beyond it on one side of the fence with people who want to move beyond science on the other side arguing that science is flawed (it isn't, only our use of that power is misguided). So you have people attached to form on one side arguing with people who define themselves as people-who-are-against-people-who-are-attached-to-form on the other (which is their own attachment, ie they define themselves not by whast they go towards, but by what they are not). This is a "negative feedback loop" of ego.
There is a third alternative: that science is not negated but fully integrated into a next sight, one that is not attached to being active (science vs. nature, pulling from the "what is", etc.) nor is attached to not being that (attached to their limited exposure to receptiveness, ie so-called "New Agers"). The mind that sees beyond both these attachments is the mind that transcends both and integrates both.
The hiend is interesting, at least to me, because unlike any other microcosm I can think of, you have the Romantic Idealists and scientific empiricists in such close proximity AND both engagaing in an activity together - essentially, a parallel run experiment on the mind, ie listening to music through technology devices. In other words, in the hiend, the matter-attached and the attached-to-against-matter-attached are both conducting the same experiment, something that can't be escaped by either in dialogue.
But what is truly interesting is that the people attached to active thinking to derive truth actually are listening to stereo and reaching states of listening (where they derive perceptive information, or truth)that are without thought; they are conducting an experiment on their own mind where they disprove their own assumptions. This can not be escaped by the materially attached: the mind moves from active thinking to a silence-absent-thought that itself reveals to them other information. Their denial of it, and their argument that only thinking and/or technology produces listening (truth), is symptomatic of their attachment.
OK, enough. I know I've tried everyone's patience.
Muralman: I love off the topic, which as I've said above, it really isn't. I don't think, however, that anything I said would regress to "traditional myth." In addition to categorizing any idea outside their own matrix of ideas as unknowable or non-existent, science also - in fact, its oldest recoil - claims that you are nothing but the mythological past, ie. all ideas not ours are regressions to mytho-magical worldviews, characteristic of the medieval Catholic Church that we've just moved beyond, says they. This is then used to claim that such ideas are inherently irrational, ie regressions, which, not surprisingly, we then don't need to consider because they are irrational. Nice irrational circularity, eh? You have to be more careful with these types of characterizations in this context; you've gotten it from a worldview that, I know looking at the rest of what you say, you don't identify with. You are too smart for that, truly. Apart from that, I think we see things about the same. You are a good writer to, BTW.
Zaikes: I agree its your brain - but again, not simply material: its your MIND. And not simply subjective - its your mind and "what is" out there, stereo or not. Subject/object, mind/matter are integral, participatory. The "what is" is SUSCEPTIBLE to your mind - and the scientific active thoughts it produces. "It" is not inert with your mind the only God. |
Just read Tubegroover's response above. Excellent point. Moved my system recently to a new room - more acoustically dead. The FIRST thing I noticed when I turned on my SS amp is that the sound of individual instruments was decaying too rapidly to be satisfying. My more live listening room had concealed this with its high level of reverberation.
If you accept this premise, it raises an interesting question: It seems to me that a tube pre should not be able to compensate for shortened decay times determined by a downstream component. |
No Asa, my apologies. I was reading your discussion here at work and was taken aback if not a little envious of the stream of consciousness dissertation you laid out.
Thanks |
Pity I cannot meet you all in person. We'd have great discussions over much beer until we were so out of our brains, that in listening to 6chac's beautyfull ML -20 from Mark the Man, we suddenly would find, that ASA has been right all along! Cheers to all! |
Rather than just reacting with "What a load" after reading Asa's post (no offense intended, Asa, but I do not buy your premises, inductions, or conclusions - sorry!), I thought, "I should instead try to think of something within it, or suggested by it (to me), that I can agree with."
As it relates to the header of this post, that is. And this is what I came up with:
It's not tubes - or transistors - that 'Do It'; It's your brain.
:-) |
Hehehe, of course Muralman1, cool looking is first in my department. ;-) Tubes sucks, SS sucks. LOL |
ISTT, the ML20 is cool looking, huh. |
