Solid State for Rock and Tubes for Jazz, Yes or No

Atmassphere,

Maybe some semantics at work. When I say "tight", I mean it has body, definition, impact and I like to say it is "articulate" as well.

I find I have to test bass using recordings of electronic music in addition to all the various acoustic types because I like it all. For me, I think electronic music ups the ante a bit for really good bass (call it what you like).

When its "tight" and all the rest, bass in electronic music sounds optimal to me as well as bass from acoustic instruments. It is also most dynamic and all the rest. Its very hard to get that way and still have acoustic bass sound real I think in that electronic music and acoustic music are different beasts with different attributes.

Electronic music is perhaps "less real" than acoustic, but real nonetheless.

All I know is it all sounds great and about as good as it gets in my house these days. After hashing through the technicalities, that in the end is all that really matters.

I'm with Atmasphere,

If you are too lazy to read any further my answer to the question is NO.

For those more patient audiophiles-

Body and texture are what you would hear from a real bass in a reasonable room. That over damped thing is unnatural. Not to say electronic music cannot have it though.

The beauty of a synthesiser is you can completely control it's envelope. (Attack/Decay/Sustain/Release or ADSR). So if you want notes to be tight fast and nimble you can tell the synth to do it. Even to impossibly short lengths. An acoustic bass has a whole set of other characteristics which do not contain that kind of repetitive tone across the frequency.

To my ears and after having high sensitvity horns and all sorts of low sensitivity speakers, that over damped and very deep bass seems artificial. It can be impressive but ultimately unsatisfying.

My little SET amp with very low damping factor creates chest vibrating and very real sounding bass. It is full texture and life without ever feeling the need for tighter or deeper. Even with snappy electro music. Solidstate and other high damping amps tend to create deep bass with little texture IME.

But it's all about your system. The interaction between amp and speaker, and what you like is the ultimate test. A good hifi should play all music.

The question is too simple and the answer is more complex.

Chad, I'll agree it is a very system dependent thing.

As I outlined above, I can clearly hear the difference as others have described between the more highly damped bass (and sound overall) and less damped bass by switching between my BC ref1000m and TAD Hibachi 125 amps.

Which do I prefer?

With my main large OHM F5 series 3 speakers, I might lean towards the less damped sound with most smaller ensemble jazz, maybe not big band and similar scale classical, but for psynth/electronic music, big band large scale symphonic works, and other larger scale types of music, the high damping brings out the best with the large OHMs overall I would say.

With my smaller OHMs, it might start to lean more towards less damping.

With my smaller monitors, Dynaudio Contour 1.3mkII and especially Triangle Titus, things start to favor the less damped sound. I would love to run my Triangles off a tube amp someday to test those waters!

OF course those are just my observation and findings with my gear, but it does support the premise that whats best is very system dependent.

For quite sometime I`ve felt the amplifiers with high damping factor produced bass that seemed contrived and artificial.They just did`nt sound like bass instruments do in natural/live settings.It`s as though the normal bloom, tone,fullness,body and natural decay of bass instruments are sacrificed for enhanced tautness,tightening and 'slam'(organic vs hifi oriented traits it seems).I`ve never understood the advantage of ultra DF(ABOVE 100).Are there any speakers with Q factors so high that this level of DF is mandatory?I `ve yet to hear live bass produce the 'tightness'sound some do seek/prefer. I acknowledge it`s a matter of audio system preference like many other desires/choices.A friend and I attended a jazz club recently and listening to an unamplified stand up bass,the rich texture,warm tone and sheer density of that instrument was just beautiful. Did`nt matter if he plucked or played con-arco the full and rich sound was always present. An overdamped amplifier might just screw that up it you want that realism preserved.

My own sense of a more realistic and natural bass is just as Chad and Atmasphere described. I find that a good tube amp with the right speaker can provide a very natural and believable bass(if perhaps less spectacular at times).This is an interesting topic.
Regards,

Assuming that the amp-speaker combination is basically compatible, one can get better dynamics and "slam" from tube amps than solid state. Try an OTL amp, you will be shocked at how much more lively such amps will sound than a solid state amp at the same average volume level. Solid state amps can provide a lot of power and can be made to play at loud levels, but, most sound dynamically flat at lower volume levels compared to a good tube amp, particularly OTL and SET amps (assuming the speakers are efficient enough for the very low powered SET amp).

While not reaching deep, and often not being able to do the room shaking thing, I like the bass from SET amps--it is tunefull, varies with the qualities of the particular music (does not sound generic or the same all the time), and natural. The bass on solid state amps can also sound very good. I know it is a generalization, but, I often have more issues with tube pushpull amp bass--everything seems to sound the same--punchy, but, sort of uniformly so.