Tube Biasing: do I have to?

Find out the bias #'s that your manufacturer intended
for your tubes and if your unit does not autobias then ask the vendor like THE
TUBE STORE to bias them for those specs.

HUH?!?! Maybe I'm missing something in what you are suggesting, but how
can a vendor "bias your tubes for you?!" How exactly do you bias
a tube outside of a circuit? You have to place the tube within a circuit and
run current through it in order to bias it, and it has to be the same circuit you
are using the tube within. You cannot bias the tube in one place using one
circuit, send it to another place, insert it into an entirely different circuit with
at different load and expect the bias to be correct. Maybe I've been camping
with the wrong campers. I've stayed clear of you old farts as the snoring
keeps me up at night. Can't stand those young audio pros either cause they
got their music up too loud crankin' tunes I don't click with no more. Maybe
you are referring to tube "matching" which a service a good tube
vendor can and often does provide. But biasing?! Splain that to me, would
ya. Unless you are suggesting he send his entire amplifier, his speakers and
speaker cables to a tube vendor to bias it, which really seems rather
ridiculous as it's a pretty simple procedure to do yourself.

Marco

I stand corrected...indeed I was thinking of tube matching and of course biasing must occur in the equipment.The issue is what the manufacturer recommends as an operating range and then tweaking the tubes with a voltmeter.Simple enough with my VTL amps.

Not correctly biasing your tubes is equivalent to buying an expensive 12 cylinder Italian sports machine and not having the engine tuned. It costs you nothing but a little time to bias an amp. I believe it cost $10,000+ to tune a Ferrari. One procedure is clearly a bargain.

Brucegel:

There are good tube designs and bad tube designs. The same goes for SS. Each has its advantages and disadvantages.

As far as digital goes, I feel that CDs are an improvement over vinyl records. It's very hard mechanically to put the signal onto vinyl, and also very hard to retrieve it. CDs don't have those problems, so it's a "less imperfect" medium. The A/D and D/A conversion is where there may be problems, but I feel they're done fairly well, and better than the electrical/mechanical and mechanical/electrical conversion done in vinyl records. The electrical/mechanical and reverse conversion done on CD is less prone to problems because you're simply looking for signal/no signal.

Tape also has electrical/mechanical and the reverse conversions. It's at a smaller scale, but you're still doing it. There are problems with this. Digital tape is more able to ignore those problems because it's easier to do signal/no signal recording and playback. Again, the A/D and D/A conversion could cause problems, but it seems to be quite good.

I'd say that the case is less clear with digital vs. analog tape than with CD vs. vinyl record. Analog tape is probably a better medium than vinyl records. It just costs more to produce which is why it didn't dominate the market.

Getting back to biasing tubes, yes, you definitely want to make sure they're biased correctly. Tube equipment has added hassles that you don't get with SS gear, and that's the price you pay for using tubes. One would hope that the benefit to you outweighs the increased hassle.

Once you figure out how to do it, it's normally quite easy. You shouldn't have any trouble with it.

Skrivis writes "I feel that CDs are an improvement over vinyl records"
Whoa!! You are kidding right?