Tubes Do It -- Transistors Don't.

Well here you have it, Audiogon meets the philosophy majors. I'm going home to have a can of my favorite beverage, or maybe a bottle, or maybe a can or maybe I'll pour the contents of the can in the bottle.

Jetter, you can also pilosophise with beer, sometimes even better and deeper. There is no contradiction there. 6chac, congratulations on your system. Which CD's do you refer to, which can really do this? Very curious... Cheers,

Hello Detlof, thanks, quite a few, but just to name one, the CD is Telarc/Mozart Requiem. That same CD was dull, opague, compress on my old system which I'd sold in 1992. Check my answers in other treads.

Regards

ISTT

Jetter, I wrote that when I was drunk! Sincerest apologies. I regret every word, just ignore it. Oh my God, what will happen to us if we read such things!!

Pass another cold one...

Asa, I've read with interest both of your treatises. You sound like an old friend of mine, a Professor of Philosophy. I haven't heard such an emotional science versus art lecture since my friend bent my ear over Science's inhumanity in dealing with philosopher Velikovsky and his planetary theory.

I, for one, need to see or hear to believe. I will not rest my beliefs on traditional myths. For instance, I have found, to my satisfaction, the science of evolution triumphs over myth; truck loads of circumstantial evidence supports the seventeenth Earl of Oxford over Shaksper of Stratford, and, thanks to science, today's best of audio selection is better than that of fifty years ago. The scientific method is very important in these matters. However, as an artist, I can also tell you this. Scientists don't know everything. Art is just as important. Nelson Pass knows this too. That is why he continues to simplify his products, knowing customers hear the difference.

Like you, I have heard the Pass sound a little dry, nothing like Krell, but definitely supplanted in the ss clade. I expected better. After rolling some cd player tubes, finding Mullard was musical, but veiling, Phillips flat and dull, etc. I settled on a half century old Sylvania set. Gone is any hint of dryness. Now the delivery is sweet, dynamic, sensory airy, and with great body. I had to stop and think about all this for a while, because I just listen to the music these days.

When it comes to reproduced music, I just trust my ear/brain. I wouldn't be carrying on this discussion if I hadn't had a gestalt audiophile experience one day. I had walked into a audio listening room in an old brick store and office building. I had been there before where I listened to the best audio equipment of the day. This day was different. Keith Yates (check out his site) the proprietor of the shop was nowhere to be seen. As I entered, I became aware of someone, distinctly in a room somewhere, playing a piano. What appeared to be great room dividers were sitting in Keith's marvelous room. After some investigating, I came to the conclusion the big dividers were not the source of the piano playing. How could they be? I was hearing and thinking a real performance in a real place. Resuming my search through the building for the person playing, I finally stumbled on the answer. This utterly convincing image was a mirage. A first rate vinyl assemblage played no small part in this aural triumph. The amp, surprise, was an early model Levinson, probably no. 20s. The real magic of the day lay in the Apogee Scintilla full range ribbon speakers.

I have been chasing that experience ever since, with no small matter of success. I think I am lucky to have heard such convincing trickery.

Sorry about the off topic stuff.