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
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! ;-)
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.
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.
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,