Build location for tube integrateds

In my experience, tubes- regardless of measurement criteria- present the music in a different and better way. There's more reality there, simply put.

I've owned very great SS stuff that I loved. But when a Cary SLI-80 gave me more musical satisfaction than my $8,000 SS pre and amp, I snapped to attention. Every tube amp I've owned since then has reinforced the notion that there's something there that measurements don't quite capture.

Bottom line- there's a reason tubes are still around- and it ain't measurement criteria. It's music, pure and simple.

I write this as I listen to my tube Exemplar CD player through my Yamamoto HA2 SET headphone amp and AT headphones, spinning the remastered Beggar's Banquet on ABKCO.

Tubes are staying in my house!

I'm not sure what to say about your measurement comment. I own a CAT JL2 and and a Pass Labs XA30.5, arguably among the best samples of tube and SS sound, and I'm sure the Pass measures better, no one would pick a the Pass sound over the CAT sound IMHO. I'm not biased towards tube or ss, I own both, but when you hear both, the choice is clear.

Pubul, how do you use them, I mean if one sounds much better than the other why are you still using the Pass? I assume you are more in the audiophile mode with the tubes turning it on, letting it warm up, etc. and that takes more time. What speakers and source are you using with the CAT?

regards, David

>>Especially the 1 KHz square wave. Wow! The output is highly distorted<<

Don't get too hung up on charts, graphs, and specs.

Over the years I've heard a bunch of speakers that measure flat 20-20K and sound like dogsh**.

Where's that pooper scooper?

I guess the point I was trying to make above is that for those who need some sort of empirical evidence to justify their purchase, a tube amplifier isn't for them. I believe the reason being we do not yet know how to correlate a test to the phenomena of music.

Those who take measurements and make declarations based on them regardless of what is in front of them need to be assess what the definition of a scientist or engineer actually is. As an example, if everyone can see that grass is green with the eyes that God gave them, but it measures "pink" using a sacred colorimeter, who is right, those who feel the grass is green or pink?

The resurgence of tubes over the past generation (against all odds and their disadantages in terms of cost, weight, heat, efficiency, maintenance, lack of supply of good tubes, as well as "scientific evidence") can be explained by not much more than there are those willing to trust themselves over what we are consistently told we hear or do not hear.

Bottom line, I don't listen to square waves (or anything else of that ilk), I listen to music. And, because that is what I care about, I listen to music through tube amplifiers.