Solid State vs. Tubes - What if Transistors came first?

There would not have been a golden age of classical music, either.

The Federal Aviation Administration mandated tube radios for air to ground communications be switched out for solid state radios back in the 80s. When the new solid state radios were finally implemented at all the centers, pilots and air traffic controllers commented, “Hey, what happened to all the air and warmth?!”

Sorry, pal, you’re wrong. I was on the ARINC team that decided who won the $2 billion contract for the new radios. That was 1989. They went with US Air Force radios. I’m talking about the radios at all the centers. Try to pay attention.

Did they give a bus driver uniform to wear?

Actually, digital is generally more compressed than vinyl. The technical advantages of digital are theoretical only these days. Take a gander at the Official Dynamic Range Database sometime. Even hi res downloads are compressed. Read em and weep. 😢

Glubson, you’re absolutely right. It’s obviously a conspiracy. 

Look, tubes sound like music. Everything else doesn’t. Unless it’s very low power transistors in portable CD players. Then it sounds like tubes, not transistors. If in fact portable CD players have transistors and not tiny little tubes. Tubes have air, tubes have lots of dynamics and tubes have warmth. If you like your music to sound like paper mache then transistors are for you.

Can’t see de forest for de trees. 😛

glupson
geoffkait,

I doubt it is an organized conspiracy. More like aural blinding by the numbers.

I was comforted that I am not the only one with similar results. Looking for official, I stumbled upon unofficial in some article in Stereophile. Enough of the readers' responses assured me I was not completely wrong.

https://www.stereophile.com/cont

>>>>Yes, I’m aware there are a lot like you.

Vinyl deforms every play, not degrades. It’s an elastic deformation so no worries, mates!

200-300 plays? What do you listen to, Metallica? Obviously there can be long term damage if the cartridge and tonearm geometry is not correct. It is not correct to call a stylus a rock. It’s an extremely small light smooth almost zero mass crystal with very low friction. Note to costco_emoji - try taking the quarters off your cartridge.

Thanks for your input, glubson. How’s the 🍑 🍔 🍔 coming along? I take it for granite it’s coming along fine.

That post by glubson just set the all-time record for the number of Strawman arguments. I counted at least twenty.

Bad, glubson! Bad!

I agree with mapman. Tubes were a step along the way to where we are today - which is tubes. Sometimes in order to create you must first destroy. Even John Curl likes tubes. He says they just sound right.

 
dave_b
The names Glupson...Bad Glupson! Get it right Jeffkate

>>>>Thanks, dale

Bingo!

Apparently glupson’s humor is a little too subtle for prime time.

I’m dead serious.

>>>>>In that case I really don’t get it.

All the important music ever made was recorded and mastered with tubes. By logical deduction all the unimportant music ever made was recorded and mastered using transistors.

Geez, glupson, all my LOLs are turning to WTFs. 

Are you channeling the dude from Taxi Driver now?  If so you’re good!

Well, if dale is going to see them they must be big. I didn’t realize Bachman Turner Overdrive was still performing.

I got as far as, “My understanding is...” 😀

You’re right, glubson. It is fun learning new things. But I like learning new things that are true. Not logical fallacies from newbies and wannabes. But that’s probably a difference between us, you know, just going by what you say. 

I wrote the book on crystals. Oops, I forgot you can’t read. Never mind.

Too bad De Forest’s hearing was shot by the time transistor radios came out. Otherwise he would have said, Yikes! Transistors suck!

One thing Peter Walker didn’t have the good sense to do was produce the Quads without that abominable looking and horrible sounding rattletrap of a metal grating on the front and back of the speakers. I mean, come on, people!  No wonder he thought all amps sound the same.

Help me out, here. He’s talking about being deaf, right?

Carl Sagan. Now there was a brain 🧠. He thought the way you could travel to a far away galaxy (as in his novel Contact) was via a black hole. Up until Kip Thorne convinced him to change it to worm hole. 

What’s this, the Organ Grinder and his Monkey Show? 

Nobody’s perfect. Even the Kipmeister.

I once visited Latin America. Fortunately I took Latin in school.

This is shaping up to be a good solid diagnosis of 🍑 🍔 🍔

I am giving serious consideration of changing my diagnosis in the strange case of glubson to Tourette’s. I’m still trying to find the emoji for Tourette’s. Maritime still looks like a good solid 🍑 🍔 🍔

Two things that are suspected to be quite bad for an audiophile’s hearing. One is sitting in close proximity to aircraft engines all day for twenty years. The other is listening to solid state amplifiers and radios for twenty years. They’re also suspected of causing, you know.... 🍑 🍔 🍔

No reason to bring glubson into this.

maritime51
Why not, you do regularly as some weird form of pseudo sexual sadism.

>>>I guess you would know.

Actually, to be completely up front about it, I do not ridicule Asperger’s or anyone who might have it. I might even exhibit a few symptoms myself from time to time. Asperger’s symptoms appear to your humble narrator to be a lot like symptoms of our old friend, audio nervosa. Look inside. 👀

Famous Autistic People
Dan Aykroyd
Hans Christian Andersen
Benjamin Banneker – African American almanac author, surveyor, naturalist, and farmer
Jodie Foster
Robin Williams
Tim Burton
Bobby Fisher
Stanley Kubrick
Lewis Carroll – Author of “Alice in Wonderland”
Henry Cavendish – Scientist
Lee Deforest - Scientist
Albert Einstein
Abraham Lincoln

I almost agree with Elizabeth. It is nostalgia. But it’s nostalgia for listening to what voices and musical instruments really sound like. You know, instead of thin, two dimensional, airless, synthetic, bland, metallic, generic, irritating and hard like you get with solid state. It’s like organic food vs non organic food.

This seems apropos, you know, from the point of view of the solid state believers.

“The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the original false conception come true. This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.

In other words, a positive or negative prophecy, strongly held belief, or delusion—declared as truth when it is actually false—may sufficiently influence people so that their reactions ultimately fulfill the once-false prophecy.

Self-fulfilling prophecy are effects in behavioral confirmation effect, in which behavior, influenced by expectations, causes those expectations to come true. It is complementary to the self-defeating prophecy.”

“Solid state is more convenient.”

Out if the mouths of babes....

So, gentle readers, it all comes down to precisely the same reason why most people prefer digital. Convenience. Why didn’t he just come right out and say it and spare us all the philosophizing?

No offense intended to anyone living or dead but loudness is not the same thing as dynamic range. People! One way to avoid poor dynamic range is don’t listen to CDs. Oh, did I just say that?

glubson, prove it. No offense intended.

Dale, whatever.

It’s so charming when one troll has another troll’s back. What a team! The Gloopster. Moop-a-rama. Enter the jitter person. The triumvirate! I must leave now!

Bingo! I’m pretty sure in real life he’s a priest or bishop or something. And we already know Moops is Amish. 

Speaking of burn outs....just joking, no offense....

Two things are true. You can’t change the mind of a dead person. And you can’t change the mind of a dyed in the wool naysayer slash pseudo skeptic. 🤨 

“His most famous invention, in 1906, was the three-element "Audion" (triode) vacuum tube, the first practical amplification device. Although De Forest had only a limited understanding of how it worked....”

Apparently Deforest and maritime have something in common. 🤭