larryi
Responses from larryi
| Fine tuning the system. Where do you start and how do you proceed ? Start by assessing what you like about the sound you are getting and what improvements you want. Keep in mind that anything that you do, if it is at all effective, alters the sound and that can be for better or worse. Be prepared to accept that ... | |
| How often do you send your tube pream/amp to the manufacturer for service and calibration? Never have sent a tube amp or preamp to a manufacturer. The only thing I ever sent to the manufacturer was a CD player. | |
| From Audio Note AN/J-D to where? I like the AN-E’s, particularly because they work well with lower-powered tube amps (my favorite kind of amp). At your price point, and your preference for placement near a corner I don’t know of too many alternatives. Volti makes some good soun... | |
| Can you do anything to make power tubes last longer ? It's been a while since I ran amps that required biasing, but my approach was to start at the low end of the builder's recommended range. Then, in part because I'm lazy and because I want to be gentle on the tube. I would just leave things be an... | |
| Can you do anything to make power tubes last longer ? What is "normal" is not necessarily ideal for tube electronics, particularly vintage gear that was built for lower voltages that were prevalent when they were made. As I mentioned above, my local dealer who only sells tube amplification often has... | |
| Can you do anything to make power tubes last longer ? Yes, the concern over skin oil has to do with light bulbs, not tubes. The oil deposited on a high intensity, high temperature light bulb will carbonize from the heat. That leaves a black spot on the bulb. The light from the bulb is absorbed by ... | |
| Can you do anything to make power tubes last longer ? I agree that most tube amps sound good after a short warm up, it takes solid state gear more time to sound good so I can see why people keep solid state stuff on all the time. There is no good reason to do that with tubes. I also agree that many... | |
| Revox Introduces A New Reel-To-Reel Deck...$16k I recently heard an expensive copy of the Nora Jones tape and it is indeed terrific sounding. But, not only are good tapes exceedingly expensive, the selection of music is very limited. Still, I have been pleasantly surprised by what does occas... | |
| Can you do anything to make power tubes last longer ? It is almost always better to turn gear off when not listening and turn it back on when resuming a listening session. Tubes are not light bulbs which are designed to come on instantly so they don’t suffer as much from thermal shock from being tur... | |
| Can you do anything to make power tubes last longer ? Be sure you know what you are doing in setting bias on the low side. If the measurement is in mA, the lower number means running the tube more gently. If the bias is in mV, a higher number means lower current and gentler treatment of the tubes. ... | |
| What do the statistics say about the age of Audiophiles and the replacement rate? We need to UNITE. We need to get all of the dying hobbies together so they can mercifully expire together--how about audiophile grade sound for ham radio? | |
| Are EL34 based amps more musical than KT series based ? Or it's purely a matter of design? I have an EL34 headphone amp that sounds quite good. Among pentode/tetrode tubes, my favorites are very low powered tubes. I run 349 output tubes in pushpull that deliver about 4-5 glorious watts per channel. This is my favorites tube aside fro... | |
| Are EL34 based amps more musical than KT series based ? Or it's purely a matter of design? It is a matter of taste and specific implementation. While there are some rough generalizations one can draw about the sound of particular tubes, I don’t see such generalization extending to the KT label. I generally don’t like the KT88 tube, bu... | |
| This Might Not Exist, Any reasonably priced, smaller speakers with 100db Sensitivity? You will need to find speakers that are not only efficient, but also easy to drive. This means a true 8 ohm, or higher, impedance speaker. Tekton speakers mentioned above might work and they sound pretty good to me. Zu is also quite efficient, ... | |
| Vibration control. Tube equipment. What's the best way to do it ? I would not bother with vibration isolation unless I knew it was a problem. I run tubes that are notoriously microphonic--Western Electric 310a and 310b tubes. I have not had any obvious problems with feedback or other obvious effects of microph... |