Tell me if i got it wrong..


TUBE VS SS amps ..

the difference in sound is caused by the tubes interpolating values in between each signals to analog and makeing it sound more warm, more smooth where SS amps are precise and reploduce digital sound with too much accuracy and that could be harsh to listen to ?

is that the base of the difference between both ?
or am i completly wrong ?

eheh
tanxs :)
jinmtvt
I like your style Mr. Fatparrot but I take exception to your comments on the Moog synthesizer! Don't be so harsh on the Moog. That old analog circuitry and early digital had real "soul" compared to the mass produced Yamaha and Casio stuff we find in the consumer electronics stores today. ;-)
I agree with Fatparrot, tube equipment can look wonderful, but otherwise his 10/28 post reinforces a point I made back on 10/25. Simply substitute solid state electronics for Fatparrot's quartz watches.

BTW, good music has soul and bad music doesn't. This fact is readily evident over tube, solid state or mechanical (a cup at the end of a string) type equipment.
Accuracy and musicality are not mutually exclusive experiences, but over-accuracy - assuming we define it as added detail to the source sound projection - can diminish "musicality".

This happens because the objective mind, the listening mind, has an evolutionary predisposition to "look" towards objects by defining them against a background (hence, our objective audio language using visual terms). You see (forgive the pun), "musicality" is not something that happens "out there" but is an event between your mind and the musical wave that carries musical information, or message (musicality describes a dynamic of listening consciousness). The deeper you go in listening, the more you transcend your predisposition to objectify the sound wave. If you are a person who is highly attached to his/her objectifying cognitive faculties, then you do not fall deeper into the music because you stay at the the more superficial levels of listening. At those levels, where you focus on the sound as an object, you then, by operation, discount those experiences of music that do not predomonantly deal with your accurate sound-object; you reduce the importance of space, which you will note is not objectifiable. It is no coincidence that those minds who favor accuracy and detail of the singer are the same minds that gravitate towards SS and decry tubes.

Why? Because SS designs relegate the importance of space in favor of greater defining detail in the sound-object. Importantly, as you seep deeper into the music, your intuitive abilties to discern spatial incongruencies increases and tubes excel at spatial rendition at deeper listening levels (also, in deepening levels, sensitivity to detail insufficiencies become less important, which is nwhy tubes guys can sit down to listen to their stereos and objectively note detail "insufficiencies relative to SS gear, but, for some reason, once they are deep into the music, it doesn't seem to matter).

I hope we eventually find mechanical, design-based explanations to definitively desribe these differences in perception as they relate to the gear, but it really doesn't matter. They -tubes and SS- are, as all technological devices, are simply different rearrangements of matter, so it is itself irrational to favor one arrangement over another in a vacuum from the results that they produce. It doesn't matter what given rearrangement produces what result if the results are different; taste is in the tasting.

Last, we will never end this argument of tube vs. SS because we have two minds that are speaking from two different levels of musical perceptibility. Knowledge of deeper levels is state-specific, meaning that its experience can not be described to those attached to shallower levels because those attached minds literally believe that their detailed level is the only one existant and they are unable to conduct the experiment in their own minds because this would mean letting go of their attachment to objectifying cognition. (Which is also why "smart" people who are real good at accumulating objects in our culture many times have musically sterile systems, predominantly SS-based).

Put that in your empiric pipe and smoke it.
Asa, your well-crafted post is engaging but wildly built on
exagerrated, shaky "factoids". To relegate ss and tube camps to assigned cognition strata is patently absurd.
I first took your error in postulating "over-accuracy" with a grain of salt, believing that you were simply trying to metaphorically attach sound perception to the eye-brain's use of boundary recognition to "see" images more sharply. Most first or second year experimental psych students have done fun experiments in the lab explaining this. Colorists in art studios study this to death! So it may be the case that DISTORTIONS in signal reproduction, especially odd-order ones in the treble region, serve to similarly "highlight" transient (and therefore image? hmmm...) edges. But to throw the baby out with the bathwater by moving en masse to an amplification system that
may simply roll off the info, and/or NOT resolve transients as finely, hoping to thusly not "alert" the ear-brain into a kind of hyper-recognition of detail is an UNfortunate state...NOT one to be the goal of accurate (no such thing as hyper-accurate...c'mon, man!) AND satisfying musical reproduction systems. Lots of tube amps interact with speakers to pump up the glorious mids and soften the "ugly,
detail-laden highs" is another way of restating your premise? I'd rather leave the frequency response shaping to a GREAT speakermaker, and use neutral electronics and room treatment to acquire a satisfying experience.
Granted it costs more. It's EASY to get good sound with tubes CHEAP. Hell, I remember the utter coherence of those 5 tube radios of the 50s pumping a naked 4" full-range.
Those dudes had midrange honesty! Just be sure to roll the highs and make sure the FM response didn't have TOO good a signal to noise ratio, eh? The orignal cheap dither?!
OT3rdH, I use Pass Alephs. Tube sound (huh?) with ss bass, detail, and ultrareliability. So I guess I'm in your camp, too...somewhat. But Christ, man, let's cool it with the musicopsychobabble and try to look for REAL reasons for the elicitation of musical pleasure. I think PRAT is the big cahuna, followed by timbral accuracy (for me, as a pianist),
followed by lack of distortion (in all its guises).
I'll agree that tubes can provide decent PRAT, SOMETIMES timbral near-truth (depends on output impedence, speaker load, etc.), and generate lovely 2nd order harmonics (I used to play Hammond organ a lot as a kid...adding those 2nds and 4ths ALWAYS enriched the sound)... ear-brain again, while perhaps masking upper order and high freq crap that ss just allows through. So, for a reasonable price, you takes your pick:
somewhat rose-colored glasses OR a clear lens you have to clean a lot!
Thanks for the fun, Asa, and keep well. Ern
hyper-sensitivity to detail and data
euh mmmm...
i didn't understand nothing..thanhks to my great english :p

can't an SS amp sound exactly like a tube amp if tuned to ?
is the sound difference really related to the major composants or is it more related to the way it is build
and how the engineer thought about it ?

i mean..do all tube amps sounds the same ?
like the base sound.. compared to all SS the same too ?