Tube Equipment: Gimmick?

KT-88,

Your definitive statements of tubes over SS are rather dumb.
Your inability to grasp the concept that people might not like the same things you like and that it is ok, rather disturbs me.
Your notion that your beliefs are the end-all-be-all of fact blows my mind.

In fact, you have demonstrated almost every aspect of a person that that causes me to not want to want to get to know them.

Yet, somehow, i feel that yer an ok person, and i would probably get along with you in person just fine.

you are a strange person.

But I think you might be sitting a little too close to your tubes. :)

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Kt88 - Yes, I took it that way......I really was amused by it, I was not making fun of you for having made the comment...I really thought it was a very funny oxymoron. I end every post with my name, Marco, and you are welcome to use it rather than call me "jax2". FYI I like an occasional beer, but am far more partial to red wine. I think Slappy's comment was made in a spirit of comradery (I don't work on cars much either, but do all my own work on my motorcycles...I can usually figure out cars, but prefer two wheels to four). I also prefer tubes, but have heard some pretty amazing SS systems that have their own merits, I just prefer those that tubes offer better and have not heard any SS gear that sounds that way. Slappy, I don't know about curves and 2nd order harmonic distortion (I do know what they are, but I don't care much beyond that), but I do know what I like to hear. I never really gave a rat's-a.....oh god, there I go again...must be Terrets Syndrome.....I simply don't care what the numbers, graphs and bars say...my ears keep drawing me back to tubes. If I listened to more intensely dynamic music I may be swayed to the SS side, but it is pretty rare that I my listening leans in that direction. Was that better Kt88? The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. Tubes rule! Everyone should like tubes best! That's it, simple and to the point. Polite and succinct. Everyone oughta' like me now. Don't rock the boat. Tubes are the best thing that ever happened to the the high end! Many people say so, and so do I. If you don't like it well then Screw...er, well you can just go jump in a lake. Fuckin'A Bubba! Damn straight.....oh hell, I'm hopeless! Cat piss, dung heap, fart, poop. You gotta love the tubes man! I got tubes. If God has a high-end system, you know it's gotta be tubes all the way! If Jesus were to come back for that second coming, the first thing he'd do would be to get himself a tube-based system. Buddha too, in fact I know Buddha was talking about going from push/pull to SET a few years back. I think his system is up on AudioAsylum but he may not have had time to update it. I wouldn't let my dog listen to an SS system! Once I brought an SS system into the house just to try it out and my dog ran away...couldn't find her for four days. The bitch had packed her bowls and moved on down to the tube room in the high-end shop down on Roosevelt. Told me she wouldn't come back till I got rid of that SS boat anchor! Those dogs can hear things we humans can't even dream about hearing. I don't know about you folks, but I'd sure like to hear some more polarizing views on the subject......Brussel sprouts anyone?

Marco

The REAL advantage of 8X10 is super sharp image ( thx to German Optics.) and Super Large negative size. In photo equipment, the lens and image output size are the things we care for. It has absolutely nothing to do with camera body. You can use a real light meter to measure the lighting condition so you don't even need a "super" camera body. Digital photography is a totally different subject.
There are lot more electronic component involved.
To compare a film (tube gear) vs digital (Solid State) gear is a good analogy.
We now have fuji's 20 megapix medium format camera vs say 8X10 camera. The 8X10 is still better overall. The Fuji can be sharp but not as refined as film at this time. It doesn't mean that digital will not get there but we're not there yet.

You always have take your own physical sensitivity into consideration. Visual is always more acccurate than hearing and easier to proof. Hearing on the other hand is very subjective due to the nature of our ear. You always have to ask yourself how to define beauty and what sound good to you.

Back to Tube gear vs Solid state. IMHO, I would say the top 30% of tube preamp are pretty good. However, I would say maybe only the top 5% of tube preamp are pretty good. However, if you look at the cost factor, the SS always at least 2 to 10 times more expensive. The manufacture understands the market strategy and they've decided to jack up the price on tube gears too. The tube preamps are no longer cheap these days because the SS has inflated the tube gear due to poor performance from SS.

If someone give me a free $5000 SS preamp and force me to use it exclusively (which means I can't sell it) then I will not take it. I rather pay my own to get a tube preamp because I can't appreicate the "beauty" of the SS preamp.

A typo here. It should have been "top 5% of SS preamp"
Another thing I would like to add is: There is almost nothing new in SS preamp. Most of them use JFET and Op-amp to amplify the signal. However, many manufactures are more focus on the new generation of hybrid tube preamp. I always found the tube has bigger sound stage and better image seperation due to the physical nature of the tube with larger plate ( more information gets transferred ) than the condensed transistor circuits ( more complicated but compressed.)

If you have not heard the top of line tube preamp then you can't really claim that SS preamp is more accurate (it might be true on paper but it is not true in sound.)

For amp, it is another story. I think the top 20% of both tube and SS amp are good. However, the SS counterpart always cost $$$$$. Depends on your speaker requirements, some outrageous power hungry speakers can work better with SS amp. On the other hand, the super high sensitive speakers only work well with tube amp.

Stop attacking each other and make yourself look like a 3 year old bully. No Gimmick in tube equipment. You just need to own both and figure out what your ear and brain want.