@mahgister lol
Why is solid state more popular when tubes are better?
Yes tubes are more involved and require periodic maintenance. Hybrid tube components need not apply, these are really solid state.
Tubes are better for multiple reasons and yet the world and the trade prefers solid state. Those rare audio shops that are geared toward stereo listening and serious connoisseurs tend to Focus more on tubes. Those in business who like to improve volumes tend to offer solid state. All the YouTube channels looking to improve their business tend to be solid state. Maybe because tubes require much more expertise to sell, and there's lesser and lesser to go around. Solid state is more of a fast food commodity.
Tubes are difficult for businesses due to all the maintenance and complexity so you see it less often. Much much easier to sell hybrids or solid state.
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@atmasphere , do you have distortion measurements that you can share with us comparing your tube and class-D amplifiers? |
In general our class D makes about 1/10th the distortion of our tube amps at full power. At lower power levels its much lower, since the distortion of our tube amps decreases linearly as power is decreased, whereas with our class D the distortion increases dramatically just before clipping. The distortion spectra of our tube amps favors the 3rd harmonic with the 2nd slightly less- the better matched the tubes are the lower the 2nd becomes. In any event that distortion is plenty to mask the higher orders. Our tube amps are fully balanced and differential so the distortion spectra is based on a cubic non-linearity rather than the quadratic nonlinearity you see in an SET. Conventional tube amps that have a single-ended input and push-pull output have both non-linearities in the design so tend to feature a more prominent 5th harmonic (see Norman Crowhurst). SETs and fully differential push-pull amps like ours avoid this problem. In our class D the 2nd harmonic is more prominent and in that respect the distortion spectra looks more like that of an SET. Again the lower orders are prominent enough that they mask the higher orders. But the distortion is essentially about an order of magnitude lower and most of that is the 2nd. More important than the actual distortion values is the fact that in both kinds of amps we make, the distortion does not rise with frequency.
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I find myself convinced by much of what @atmasphere says. I was lucky to be taught tube design at university (due to the non-retirement of an aged lecturer). In other labs I manufactured ICs! Tubes have a lot of strengths and it’s quite possible to design reasonably accurate line-level amplifier stages using them. When it comes to power amplifiers, the need to use a transformer to effectively convert lots of volts to lots of current, creates many manufacture challenges, especially at very low frequencies. It’s also hard to avoid relatively high output impedances, in which cases, the sound can eb affected by the speaker’s impedance curve and every instance will sound different (but not, strictly, accurate). The low cost and size of silicon and germanium devices means it’s economically possible to use 10 optimised devices for the equivalent of a singe tube - which can be compromised though having to do "too much". One approach is to use a 40+ tube amplifier, but even the most enthusiastic supporters find that a bit difficult to imagine :-) |
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