Tube amps... what is so great about 'em

I remember something Tim de Paravicini said. Tim is the noted designer of both tube and solid state equipment. He claimed that in properly designed circuits tubes should be indistinguishable from solid state, and vice versa. To back up his claim he manufactured a tube and solid state version of the same amplifier (under the EAR/Yoshino brand). At its worst, some of what people love about tube equipment is coloration. It's pleasant sounding, but it's still colorations. BTW, the same can be said about certain aspects of solid state sound (particularly the super tight bass). I've own or have owned a decent variety of tube equipment (Audio Research, Moscode, Counterpoint, Revox, Quicksilver, Sonic Frontiers) and I've come to the conclusion that tubes are totally cool, but at the same time, there's nothing magical about them.

Depends what you listen to (and want to hear). Not everybody should own tubes. If you only listen to rock, and have spent your whole life listening to it on solid state gear, chances are that you will not think tubes sound "right". On the other hand, if you listen to acoustic music (be it classical, jazz, blues or folk)tubes will open up the sound into a new world of realism and spaciousness. And I don't even own any tube gear yet (too many kids and dogs running around, and a wife that wants all gear hidden inside a cabinet). My day will come. Advice: call a good dealer and ask to have an audition arranged that will pit comparably priced tube and SS rigs using the same speakers, source and music. And please bring your own music; stuff you know and love, otherwise the test is pointless. Let us know!

Tubes are wonderful.....Measuring them you normally end up with just second and third order harmonics whereas with solid state you normally end up with higher order harmonics which comes across as brightness.....Spectral analysis actually does equate closely to what we hear.....Now with that said I will say it is a lot more fun to make solid state sound acceptable.....It ain't easy, but this can be achieved.....

Thanks for all your comments, fellas. How long do the actual tubes last and how expensive are they to replace? I suppose there are all different grades of tubes and like a previous post stated, each will sound a bit different and each will have different prices.

I think I may try to experiment a little bit with this. Get a tube amp and hook it up to my 4800 so it will drive the Martin Logans. I'm very curious about how it will work. I like to listen to all sorts of music, from jazz to light rock to some classical.

thanks again for the help. You may have just created a monster. :-)

tom.

The "magic" of tubes will come from properly matching the amplifier, speaker cables and speaker. Otherwise you may find more trouble than magic.
If your speaker impedence is uneven, if your amplifer's power supply is not strong enough, if your speaker cables are not revealing enough, etc., you could end up with results that are less than optimal and maybe not enjoyable. I am a devout tube lover (of the sound, that is) but I have speakers that are friendly to tube amplifiers and I use the most revealing speaker cables I wanted to afford.
If you're going to be "experimenting" with tube electronics, I suggest you find a dealer willing to loan equipment or some friends with tube amps.