2. amps-preamps
  3. 1031724377

Tubes Do It -- Transistors Don't.

I never thought transistor amps could hold a candle to tube amps. They just never seem to get the "wholeness of the sound of an instrument" quite right. SS doesn't allow an instrument (brass, especially) to "bloom" out in the air, forming a real body of an instrument. Rather, it sounds like a facsimile; a somewhat truncated, stripped version of the real thing. Kind of like taking 3D down to 2-1/2D.

I also hear differences in the actual space the instruments are playing in. With tubes, the space appears continuous, with each instrument occupying a believable part in that space. With SS, the space seems segmented, darker, and less continuous, with instruments somewhat disconnected from each other, almost as if they were panned in with a mixer. I won't claim this to be an accurate description, but I find it hard to describe these phenomena.

There is also the issue of interest -- SS doesn't excite me or maintain my interest. It sounds boring. Something is missing.

Yet, a tube friend of mine recently heard a Pass X-350 amp and thought it sounded great, and better in many ways than his Mac MC-2000 on his Nautilus 800 Signatures. I was shocked to hear this from him. I wasn't present for this comparison, and the Pass is now back at the dealer.

Tubes vs. SS is an endless debate, as has been seen in these forums. I haven't had any of the top solid state choices in my system, so I can't say how they fare compared to tubes. The best SS amp I had was a McCormack DNA-1 Rev. A, but it still didn't sound like my tube amps, VT-100 Mk II & Cary V-12.

Have any of you have tried SS amps that provided these qualities I describe in tubes? Or, did you also find that you couldn't get these qualities from a SS amp?
kevziek
zaikesman
3,017 posts
 
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.

:-)
6chac
235 posts
 
Hehehe, of course Muralman1, cool looking is first in my department. ;-) Tubes sucks, SS sucks. LOL
detlof
1,899 posts
 
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!
jetter
3,030 posts
 
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
judit
217 posts
 
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.
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