RWW--this is an old, tired topic that doesn't need to be rehearsed again here. And SNS has set the record straight.
My earlier post was meant as a comment on the vicissitudes of audio enthusiasms, not as a comment on the intrinsic merits (though many!) of SETs. I was arguing that I think SETs came back on the scene in a big way not because some amp designer woke up one day and said to himself "I need to use some 300Bs", but rather because, at a certain point in time, the CD market was flooded with recordings done with early DDD technology, and most of them sounded bad, with that digital glare or edginess that makes them very hard to listen to, if you've got any kind of half resolving system.
That DDD helped to bring back SETs (if such was the case) is entirely serendipitous, as SETs have many other fine qualities beyond the ability to tame digititis.
The original post does, of course, make me curious to hear the Spectrons (though who knows where, in this audio wasteland), a brand about which many eulogistic comments have been written of late.
My earlier post was meant as a comment on the vicissitudes of audio enthusiasms, not as a comment on the intrinsic merits (though many!) of SETs. I was arguing that I think SETs came back on the scene in a big way not because some amp designer woke up one day and said to himself "I need to use some 300Bs", but rather because, at a certain point in time, the CD market was flooded with recordings done with early DDD technology, and most of them sounded bad, with that digital glare or edginess that makes them very hard to listen to, if you've got any kind of half resolving system.
That DDD helped to bring back SETs (if such was the case) is entirely serendipitous, as SETs have many other fine qualities beyond the ability to tame digititis.
The original post does, of course, make me curious to hear the Spectrons (though who knows where, in this audio wasteland), a brand about which many eulogistic comments have been written of late.