Tubes Do It -- Transistors Don't.

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

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.

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.

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! ;-)