Solid State vs. Tubes - What if Transistors came first?

twoleftears

The tube renaissance coincided with the release of early digital

Oh no, not even close. The tube renaissance  really began with William Z. Johnson and his Audio Research Corp. The SP-3 was an extremely influential component and helped define the high-end; that was around 1974.

Interesting, because Dr. Leach’s paper on building a low TIM solid state amplifier was also around that time:

http://users.ece.gatech.edu/mleach/papers/lowtim/feb76feb77articles.pdf

It could very well be the time was right in 1974-1976 for an overall HI-Fi revival.

If you grew up in warm incandescent light, then you'll likely find "Daylight" bulbs harsh.  If you grew up with Daylight bulbs, you'll probably find incandescent bulbs very yellow and dull.

The heyday of Mcintosh tubes was the era of low efficiency acoustic suspension speaker, so perhaps they sounded drop-dead gorgeous because the had deep power reserves and clipped softly compared to all those solid state receivers.  I love incandescent tubes.

I Just want pleasant sounding with good realism. Presence and reality. We are all so lucky to be hearing music reproduction at the level our systems deliver. 

Some of my thoughts on this thread were about taste and taste-makers. 

Some of it however was wondering about the interaction of mastering engineers, speaker makers, and amplifier makers. 

In a very real way, THX film sound has things MUCH easier time than we do in music. There are objective measurements for frequency response and room acoustics which must be rigidly adhered to so a mastering engineer/sound editor isn't guessing about what speakers you might have, or amplifiers. 

That's not the case when it comes to music. There's tons of value judgements and expectations being made by the artists/engineers. 

I wonder about how this interaction defines the high-end.