Tubes Do It -- Transistors Don't.

Detlof, I agree with Clueless that CDs omit information which analog preserves, but I wonder about your take on interstitial silence - LP playback does contribute a certain minimum noise floor which is much higher than digital (or a master tape). Is it your feeling that you would less enjoy LPs if they sounded the same, except for displaying a similarly "black" lack of background noise as CDs? Do you need this noise to in effect "bias" your ears, or would the more info-rich analog medium be even better if this noise could somehow be removed while maintaining the rest? I have found that the masking effect can be a funny thing: you don't consciously realize when it's going on, but you do as soon as the previously masked noise is removed from the source, system, or listening environment. Shouldn't the ambient background noise captured by the microphones ideally be the only noise floor transmitted or imposed in a hypothetically perfect recording/playback chain?

To me, the tube analogy here is with low-level high-gain tube stages, mainly in the preamp and/or phonostage. I have now configured my own system to the polar opposite of the more conventional tube front-end/SS power amplification scenario mentioned several times above. From having a pure-tube amplification chain (was all C-J), I have gone to an SS phonostage (the op-amp based Camelot Tech Lancelot) and preamplification (the FET based InnerSound), while retaining all-tube power amplification (VTL MB-185 Sig's). Yes, I do find that the lowered noise floor renders my LPs with a little more of the "blackness" of digital, and I consider it a good thing. (BTW, although my digital rig doesn't feature this, I might not be opposed to considering a tube buffered output stage for the CD source, if it isn't a high-gain stage.) This set-up represents a quite recent change in my system along with a new listening room (which is quieter than the old one), and I am still evaluating what, if anything, I will have lost if I choose to remain without tube preamplification. But I'll tell you one thing I do not miss, the constantly encroaching paranioia caused by all the spurious "contributions" courtesy of them cute li'l fire-bottles.

Zaikesman, you pose a very good question, which I have often pondered for myself, however am quite unable to answer in any satisfactory fashion. I go to live music events quite often. Zurich is musically lively city. 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. This is, what makes me so uncomfortable with and dislike most of the classical offerings through this medium. Cheers,

Many live events are heard via tubes. Perhaps that's why many feel that tubes sound more "life like".

Convenience, cost, etc. are valid reasons for choosing anything over something else - I do it all the time myself -but have no validity when discusing absolute quality, or rather, the closest to absolute than we can presently percieve and/or replicate.

I am not biased to one arrangement of matter versus another - and that is the bottom-line difference between one technology and another. If SS sound is more "real" - more like sound-sounds-like as I sit and think about it - or causes me to become more involved in the music at a greater, deeper, more progressive rate than tubes, then I would certainly go that way.

However, I see no need to sauve people's ideas by backing away from the obvious: there exists and has existed a discernable progression that occurs as one becomes adept at listening and more knowledgeable about what is available in technology, and that is: people in their progression move from SS at one end to tube at the other.

Every five years, we say that SS is closer to tube, the implicit assumption to that continuing discussion being that SS is not as good as tube. This is still the same case and it continues to be that case because it is true. No one who has gone over a long progression of evolution in stereo ever says that SS is better than tube because its not true. Isn't that an empiric pattern worthy of contemplation?

Now, what are the problems?

Here we go...SS does not produce space that is pressurized, that is congruent to the space that you exist in in a deep existential way; does not replicate the phenomena of sound as it moves through space that the deep, intuitive structures of the perceptive mind discern; does not offer a continuous simulcrum of the intra-relationship of how source and space are both separate and integral at the same time; does not replicate the "event horizon" of sound projection and surrounding space as a delineation to the the identifying part of the listening mind, and, simultaneously, impart a perception of no-boundary between sound and space to the receptive parts of the listening mind; does not impart an intuitive sense that depth progresses back infinitely, rather than in planes defined by the players on them with a rear plane that, by its existence, defines rear space; does not infuse the deep harmonic fabric of the core note with air, so that sound is seen as integral with space (as it is in "reality"); does not infuse the transient attack with air, nor lend a sense of infinite dissipation to the decay of sound, etc.

Yes, SS has worked to surround players with a greater sense of space immediately around them and gathered within the planes that they occupy; and, yes, mechanical artifacts of distortion have been reduced, but this hardly should cause anyone to be tempted to claim that SS is approaching tube sound in quality of the listenting experience as a whole. By and large, SS has merely improved in the areas that it already excelled at, but reducing sterility in source distortion hardly makes up for the still existing - and I would argue, terminally flawed - rendition of space on: 1) space's integral relationship to sound as it moves within space 3) the sound projection's harmonic structure as it relates to space, and 4) the relationship of how differing sound sources intra-act in space simultaneously as they move out from and towards the listener.

This is what is meant by "congruency" and "continuity".

I do not want to say the SS can not be enjoyable and that it is not worthwhile, but that is a relative statement - and should not be altered just to make some more comfortable.

I have recommended systems composed of SS components, but that does not alter the present state of SS vs. tube, nor does setting up a "euphonic" strawman to push over when you are pushed, nor in, at the end, retreating in trailing arguments regarding price, convenience, etc.

Ahhhh, that felt goood.....

Damn Asa, you did it again! Great post.