Tell me if i got it wrong..

I was thinking about this post again...tube equipment is just so damn visually pleasing! An electrical device used to build the amp actually becomes part of the design esthetics! And the warm glow of tubes in a darkened room reminds me of a soothing fire in the hearth. I also appreciate the fine craftsmanship required to make a tube! Does a transistor marked "Motorola" inspire awe the way a tube marked "Mullard" does? I think not! For that matter module (quartz) watches are usually MUCH more accurate than movement (mechanical) watches. How many truly fine watches (audiophile quality!!!) use quartz modules? NONE! Why? Because modules don't have a "soul"! Finely crafted products all have "souls"! A Stradivarius violin has a "Soul". A Moog synthesizer does not. Music has a soul. Sounds do not. Something with a soul combines both science and art...and I think that art can de defined as inspiration and passion. Therefore, I submit that tubes have a "soul" and transistors DO NOT!

C'mon, Fatparrot! I grew up playing a Hammond B (a pre-synth?) for 10 years.
My mostly baroque experience may not have met your "soulful" requirements, but I hope Jimmy Smith, et al, don't read your post!

I like your style Mr. Fatparrot but I take exception to your comments on the Moog synthesizer! Don't be so harsh on the Moog. That old analog circuitry and early digital had real "soul" compared to the mass produced Yamaha and Casio stuff we find in the consumer electronics stores today. ;-)

I agree with Fatparrot, tube equipment can look wonderful, but otherwise his 10/28 post reinforces a point I made back on 10/25. Simply substitute solid state electronics for Fatparrot's quartz watches.

BTW, good music has soul and bad music doesn't. This fact is readily evident over tube, solid state or mechanical (a cup at the end of a string) type equipment.

Accuracy and musicality are not mutually exclusive experiences, but over-accuracy - assuming we define it as added detail to the source sound projection - can diminish "musicality".

This happens because the objective mind, the listening mind, has an evolutionary predisposition to "look" towards objects by defining them against a background (hence, our objective audio language using visual terms). You see (forgive the pun), "musicality" is not something that happens "out there" but is an event between your mind and the musical wave that carries musical information, or message (musicality describes a dynamic of listening consciousness). The deeper you go in listening, the more you transcend your predisposition to objectify the sound wave. If you are a person who is highly attached to his/her objectifying cognitive faculties, then you do not fall deeper into the music because you stay at the the more superficial levels of listening. At those levels, where you focus on the sound as an object, you then, by operation, discount those experiences of music that do not predomonantly deal with your accurate sound-object; you reduce the importance of space, which you will note is not objectifiable. It is no coincidence that those minds who favor accuracy and detail of the singer are the same minds that gravitate towards SS and decry tubes.

Why? Because SS designs relegate the importance of space in favor of greater defining detail in the sound-object. Importantly, as you seep deeper into the music, your intuitive abilties to discern spatial incongruencies increases and tubes excel at spatial rendition at deeper listening levels (also, in deepening levels, sensitivity to detail insufficiencies become less important, which is nwhy tubes guys can sit down to listen to their stereos and objectively note detail "insufficiencies relative to SS gear, but, for some reason, once they are deep into the music, it doesn't seem to matter).

I hope we eventually find mechanical, design-based explanations to definitively desribe these differences in perception as they relate to the gear, but it really doesn't matter. They -tubes and SS- are, as all technological devices, are simply different rearrangements of matter, so it is itself irrational to favor one arrangement over another in a vacuum from the results that they produce. It doesn't matter what given rearrangement produces what result if the results are different; taste is in the tasting.

Last, we will never end this argument of tube vs. SS because we have two minds that are speaking from two different levels of musical perceptibility. Knowledge of deeper levels is state-specific, meaning that its experience can not be described to those attached to shallower levels because those attached minds literally believe that their detailed level is the only one existant and they are unable to conduct the experiment in their own minds because this would mean letting go of their attachment to objectifying cognition. (Which is also why "smart" people who are real good at accumulating objects in our culture many times have musically sterile systems, predominantly SS-based).

Put that in your empiric pipe and smoke it.