Tubes vs Solid State - Imaging, Soundstaging, 3D

So hearing hiss is better than not hearing harmonics that can't be heard? I must be missing something?

I will say that I find hiss to be more tolerable than other forms of noise that I might hear, but if I don't hear anything, its a stretch to think that noise I do not hear matters more than noise I do.

I think I prefer to not hear any noise, hiss or otherwise. If I have to hear low level noise, I suppose I would choose random hiss over anything not randomized.

Also, I think negative feedback implementations have come a long way over the last 40-50 years, and though the theory may be sound, the significance with good modern implementations is not what it was.

My Class D amp is dead silent, and has as good low level detail retrieval as anything I have heard. Of course, the room has to be quiet to hear it, which is a different issue that might often come into play.

My tube pre-amp is also mostly quite, though some low level hiss is usually audible in the phono section. AMount varies with tube quality. Not enough to matter for me with the right tube in good working order in play there.

Atmasphere, Thanks for your explanation. I'm not much of a technician, but I'm curious about the effect of rise and decay times in amps and how they might affect sonics. I recall a time when the ability to reproduce a square wave was the holy grail of (SS) amps, but later some designers were finding that proper attention to the decay time was important and too fast of a decay could cause a sense of loss of low level detail. Accurate? Or just sales BS to justify a design which couldn't replicate a square wave? Or is this apples v oranges?

Can you comment. Thanks......

Neil Diamond? Now I'm REALLY upset...last word from me on the dearly departed (from the forum anyway), ALOHA!

I thought I'd get more hiss than I do from my Jolida, but it's actually less than what I had from my previous SS amps...including some well regarded designs. Again, maybe I'm lucky. You have to stick your ear next to the tweeter to hear any noise at all and except for LP surface noise, all is quiet on the Eastern front, except in my guitar room where it's noisy as hell and I just ignore it.

I'll respectfully disagree with Mapman 's assertion that modern implementation of NFB has been improved. When I hear amplifiers that utilize generous levels of NFB it's very apparent in that there's an artificial character quality of the sound. I just don't hear the same naturalness or realism of instruments and human voice. Simple tube circuits that omit or use minimal NFB are much better sounding and more convincing of reality.

I recognize that this is just my observation based on listening to many different amplifiers over the years. Mapman I certainly appreciate your satisfaction with your current class D amplifier and congratulations on your happiness with them. I acknowledge that we just hear things differently and may in addition have very dissimilar listening priorities.
I haven't come across a SS or class D amp that can approach what the well implemented no NFB tube power amps are capable of. For sure I'm in a minority as there are far more owners of SS amps compared to tube.
Charles,