Tubes Do It -- Transistors Don't.


I never thought transistor amps could hold a candle to tube amps. They just never seem to get the "wholeness of the sound of an instrument" quite right. SS doesn't allow an instrument (brass, especially) to "bloom" out in the air, forming a real body of an instrument. Rather, it sounds like a facsimile; a somewhat truncated, stripped version of the real thing. Kind of like taking 3D down to 2-1/2D.

I also hear differences in the actual space the instruments are playing in. With tubes, the space appears continuous, with each instrument occupying a believable part in that space. With SS, the space seems segmented, darker, and less continuous, with instruments somewhat disconnected from each other, almost as if they were panned in with a mixer. I won't claim this to be an accurate description, but I find it hard to describe these phenomena.

There is also the issue of interest -- SS doesn't excite me or maintain my interest. It sounds boring. Something is missing.

Yet, a tube friend of mine recently heard a Pass X-350 amp and thought it sounded great, and better in many ways than his Mac MC-2000 on his Nautilus 800 Signatures. I was shocked to hear this from him. I wasn't present for this comparison, and the Pass is now back at the dealer.

Tubes vs. SS is an endless debate, as has been seen in these forums. I haven't had any of the top solid state choices in my system, so I can't say how they fare compared to tubes. The best SS amp I had was a McCormack DNA-1 Rev. A, but it still didn't sound like my tube amps, VT-100 Mk II & Cary V-12.

Have any of you have tried SS amps that provided these qualities I describe in tubes? Or, did you also find that you couldn't get these qualities from a SS amp?
kevziek
Personally, I think it is rather funny that some people think that "tube heads" are in it for the distortion. That cracks me up!
TWL, its consistant with people preferring vinyl to digital. Its the distortion!

Salut, Bob P.
Bob, if it were distortion, why do we think that it is sometimes so close to live music? It would seem then, would it not, that either live music is, or our ears are distorted and then if indeed it is distorted, as the measurement crowd loves to point out, then it is mostty even order harmonics and that is indeed closer to live music in comparison to ss clipping.
If you coun't blocking/chopping sound out (which is, in part,why cd's are so "quiet")as distortion, cd's create more distortion than any source. It's just the sin of omission and some folks do not miss what they do not hear and consider it "clean"...

C'est la vie

Cheers
I remain,
Detlof, I don't know why you think that vinyl-tube playback sometimes is closer to live music, anymore than you know why I think that CD-SS playback is closer to live music, if well recorded. I do know that ticks, pops and limited dynamics do not make me think that I am closer to live music, but coughs and whispering might!
I do believe that a poor recording played back on a Vinyl system will sound better than the same poor recording played back on CD system, possibly because the vinyl system adds or replaces the element missing in the recording (creates phase distortion or changes the frequency response).
The explaination lies more in the recording than in the playback system.

Salut, Bob P.

PS. My vinyl playback system consists of Oracle Alexandria MK IV, with RB300 and BPS. I still use my PAS 3x and ST 70 in my second system.