Tubes Do It -- Transistors Don't.

Roast Detlof, roast...LOL

6chac, don't be a pest. If you have an opinion that is contrary to someone else's, state it with reasons. When you just say someone is wrong, over and over, it just makes me think you don't know why but want to make us think that you do, as if discussing it with us is somehow beneath you. It just makes me feel, in your safe room of anonymity, that you really don't have any reasons.

Mural. We will have to agree to disagree on Pass SS at this point. If you are happy, then I am happy for you. On air, all sound is projected, whether "real" or "manufactured" - which is still "real" ie no phenomena is outside "reality". If you mean studio vs. live, then yes, many studio productions create voids in their presentation between players. I tend heavily towards live recordings myself. Second, when I say "projected" that doesn't mean, implicitly, that any projection must be bound to the speaker plane, thus collapsing and bounding the soundfield while, concurrently, drawing our mind to the speaker face. You can have the simulcrum of a projected soundwave without that aural "image" being stuck on the speaker plane - just like live music, and which, again, is what tubes excel at.

"Noise floor" can impart the sensation of dimension and air (since, assumably, you would want that because sound in our atmosphere always moves within dimension containing "air", which is what atmosphere means, and why I used the term) or you can have a void (the sterile "blackness" that many refer to). "Black", a metaphoric visual term, is used to describe the absesne of sound from a reductionist perspective, ie it is the absense of light. Space is not to be characterized as if the source is "light" and the space is "black". Psychologically speaking, that choice in metaphor is symptomatic of a subtle relegation of sound projection vs. considerations of space - which, um, was what I've been talking about...

On "I can verify this [cleaness of Pass] from various sources, not reviewers", I would humbly suggest that you are the best source for yourself; looking to others is still subtle conformism, just like looking to reviewers for your senses of security. Verifica-tion begins and ends with yourself, that is the widest experience. But again, if you are happy with what you hear and others tell you they hear from Pass, then I am happy for you.

Yesterday, I was playing tennis at high school courts when the marching band started by to the football field for their practice. A blare came out of a trumpet, the boy kidding around. It wasn't musically consonant, but it was existentially so, because, well, it was "real". Tubes mimic this real-ness to a greater degree than SS, but I've never heard a stereo - tube or SS - that even came close to its real-ness.

Time to go listen to some music....

Mural, just re-read my post and sounds a bit snotty to you. That's not how I meant it, just tired with a bad cold today and too tired to re-do it.

Detlof, of course the child wasn't foolish, that's the point. The child was unecumbered by prejudicial rhetoric and was endowed with clarity of perception. Those around the child too worried about being percieved as fools were fooled into being fools.
As for me I begining to think that Zaikesman's 9/18 post may have been the most perceptive. We have gone from a recommendation of drunken stupor to appreciate mystical
superiorty to Tarrot cards to childrens fairly tales. Earlier I said I didn't want to get to deep into this. How ever I find my self knee deep in it. I'm getting out before I drown.

Asa, your last post took the words right out of my fingers.

For your information, I only mentioned "other sources" because I am humble enough to know my word is as only good as the distance between my mouth and my ears when it comes to forum readers. It wasn't the sound of the Pass I made my pitch to outside sources for anyway, it was the fact it is technically the cleanest of all ss amps. Hearing, as you and I know, is subjective, as you and I demonstrate ad nauseum.

We will always disagree on the subject of noise floor, otherwise known as component distortion. Everything I want to hear is encoded in the medium. I don't want my circuitry second guessing my preferences. I'll do that at the record store.

After I exchanged my tube setup for the Pass, one long time friend exclaimed how much more extended my system sounded. I have off the chart hearing, and I notice the difference between the two is substantial. The music is more alive, to me.

I'm afraid I'll have to agree with Greg as well over the need to spend major bucks for a musical ss amp. I will trump Greg and announce the same goes for tube amps. I didn't get the sound right in my system until I had shelled out a hundred bucks for retubing my cd player. It costs exponentially greater for pre amps and amps. Just take a look at a Jadis. It is true that a budding listener will do much better on a limited budget buying a new sweet Jolida or older CJ and SF.

Kevziek, not so. I don't think Asa has given his Pass a fair shake yet. He doesn't believe me, but I know for a fact one can have the best of both worlds by initiating your best sounding tube signal through and amplified by a silky clean ss amp. Of course if you want the same noise floor/air imparted on the signal before speakers that Asa values then just ignore my advice.

I feel I need to remind everyone that my Holy Grail I am striving for was the product of ss mono blocks doing the work for what I consider the best speaker ever made, the Apogee Scintilla. In the same listening room I heard a fifty grand tube Jadis powering a plethora of 5k dynamic driver units and that never produced any magic for me.