Simple explanation. It's magic! electricity goes in-music comes out! Lots of people will tell you that tubes are magic.
Can anyone explain what a power tube does inside an amplifier, eg kt88.
I know a tube is cool looking, and looks like a small lightbulb with many pins on one side and when it's turned on filaments glow inside a vacuum enclosed see-through curvy glass enclosure. I guess current flows in, goes on a journey, and then flows out.
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All tubes and transistors can be simplified by thinking of them as 3 pin devices:
Input (music), Output (Music), power.
Between the input and the output a device increases voltage, or current, or both. Amps tend to have multiple stages, up front there’s a voltage amplification, at very low currents. The standard is about 20x from input to output, then at the end is a current stage, which may have no voltage amplification but can deliver the current the speakers need. That’s usually what a power tube or transistor does. This is why tube amps will usually have at least 2 different types of tubes. The smaller one's doing voltage related work, the larger one's current. While voltage goes up by around 20x, current must go up by say 40,000 : 8 or 5000:1 and this is very difficult to do with single stage amplifiers. |
It's all here... taste_of_tubes.pdf (ken-gilbert.com) Best understood with some electronics 101 reading. |
@emergingsoul Someone mentioned using CHTgpt, so I decided to access it and a pretty good and simple explanation comes out. Here is what it says: Today
Default (GPT-3.5)
 provide a simple explanation of how an electronic tube, such as a KT-88 amplifies a signal
ChatGPT
An electronic tube, like the KT-88, amplifies a signal by using a process called electron flow control. Here's a simple explanation of how it works:
In summary, an electronic tube like the KT-88 amplifies a signal by using controlled electron flow. The input signal applied to the grid modulates the flow of electrons between the cathode and anode, resulting in an amplified output signal that reproduces the input signal but at a higher level of strength. This process is used in vacuum tube amplifiers to boost the power of audio signals for applications like music amplification. Free Research Preview. ChatGPT may produce inaccurate information about people, places, or facts. ChatGPT August 3 Version
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I have often wondered this. The tube makes a larger copy of a signal, yes. But how? I imagine they are called valves because they act as gates, only opening to release the larger copy when it is large enough based on specs. Again, how? How does it increase the size and know when it has accomplished its goal? How does the gate open?
I can understand and explain how a gas engine does what it does, but not a tube. Ive read some technical explanations but they always seem to avoid the actual answer to the actual question.
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