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What year did tube lose to SS

There was a major paradigm shift when CD became the media of choice I think it happened in 1982. All of sudden I went to the recprd stores and found CDs instead.
Similarly although I was too young to remember first hand, there had to be a year that saw the golden era of HI FI all tubed mostly stereo gave way to Transistor or Solid State. Please take a guess. I have no statistic but I think it was 1964. Was that The year when more SS amps were produced than tubed amps?
mechans
oregonpapa's avatar
oregonpapa
4,867 posts
 
Tubes lost to solid state? Who knew???
douglas_schroeder
3,281 posts
 
The next question is; when did class D supersede class A and A/B? ;) 


ejr1953
927 posts
 
Decades ago I worked in sales at a high end audio dealer in DC.  I'll never forget how the B&W folks who visited were "concerned" over how dull their flagship model sounded in our showroom, drove all over DC to find replacements for the power amp tubes (can't remember which amp), once replaced, the speakers sounded awesome!

With that in mind, I've shied away from tubes....until a few months ago.  Some of my audio buddies worked on me to consider getting a tube preamp, letting me know that in low power applications, tubes would last a long time.

I replaced my solid state preamp with a tube unit and immediately enjoyed a more musical "bloom", especially in acoustic piano.  Now that I've swapped out the original equipment tubes for better models from Russia, this preamp just sounds awesome!
jyprez's avatar
jyprez
241 posts
 

douglas_schroeder

My point is that the tube vs SS issue has nothing to do with the digital vs analog question. Both tube a ss amplifiers can be built as class A A/B or even D. This is a digital vs analog question, not a tube vs. SS one.

My post was simply to clarify this because the original post starts out talking about the introduction of digital media but then ends by talking about the shift from tube to SS.

Tube can be very good and I have hand built several tube amps. They sound very nice but they still can measure up (if you actually do the fourier analysis of the frequency response characteristics) with the best SS amps. Distortion can be pleasing to the ear but it is still distortion.

mechans OP
3,048 posts
 
The digital media sentence was an example of a major industry shift.  I remember as a kid that we had Sherwood tube equipment, but by the time the mid 60s had gone by tube gear was not what most HiFi shops were offering.  Until fairly recently there were only a few brands of tube gear available (during the 70s and 80s, 90s). It was a question asking when people remembered that shift from tube to SS.  It was not a question about digital vs analog. Almost all of my current gear is tube BTW.
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