Why is solid state more popular when tubes are better?

Ralph, I hope you are wrong about tube power amps becoming obsolete soon enough. It pains me. I am a traditionalist of a sort and don't want to hear it.

@inna Seriously I wouldn't worry about it. There are tubes for now and I think you'll find that if the amplifier is really making music like it should that it will not matter to you if its tube or solid state. You find that if the music is right, the glow of tubes or the glow of a single LED is just as calming. At least that's how it worked out in my case.

I concede that the tubes have an arcane, perhaps Gothic look to them but once you hear the music that sort of thing is no longer important. Its nice knowing you have the music and its there without a warmup or worry about a rare vintage part failing 5 minutes to 5PM on a Friday afternoon.

Ralph,  I appreciate your trying to console me but I am still in distress.

In any case, so far we have only two kinds of amplification devices -  tube and transistor.

Ralph, do you think that some other kind of the device can be invented in the future that will be superior to both. Do you have any theoretical ideas ?

@inna I think you're looking at this the wrong way.

Tubes sound the way they do because of the distortion they make. If you can make something else to make distortion of the same kind it will sound the same for that reason.

There are lots of things out there you can loosely call 'transistors'. Some are meant for linear operation and some are meant for switching. No-one these days would take germanium transistors seriously except for repairing some old thing. These days GANFETs have lots of buzz around them. Amps that use them have garnered a lot of praise. But in ten years or so there will likely be something else that is better. Maybe someday people will laugh when GANFETs are mentioned. All that you really need to do when looking into this sort of thing is seeing if the manufacturer made some effort to sidestep obsolescence. If class D, is the module easily replaced? If yes, it might not matter if GANFETs are obsolete. 

Tubes are fun to play with because they are so simple. But from a designer's point of view, they come with lots of limitations. Right now is an interesting time in audio history; class D has taken over everything but high end audio. Its making inroads there too but its taken about 50 years to be taken seriously. IME once you get an amp to play and sound like real music, you stop caring about whether it glows in the dark.

Anyway, for our generation of audiophiles there will still be enough tube amps and tubes, if that's what we want. As for the next generations, that may be very different. Probably the same with tape and vinyl.

inna

6,722 posts

09-04-2023 at 10:21pm 

Well, some will say that transistors are not worse, they simply sound different. But I think most audiophiles, especially those with almost unlimited budget, do prefer tube equipment. 

Really? Please show your work.