What the heck is bias anyway?


I'm getting a new tube amp that will need to be biased. The process of doing it seems fairly straight forward, but I am curious: what are you actually doing when you bias an amp? In english, for us technical Ludites.
grimace
Well, whatever the hell it is, it sounds really nice!

Thanks for the answers and food fight! :-)
I had a Cary V12R before the CAD 120's. You need to use a meter, not just depend on the red led's. They run hot, but are a great amp. The led's show that the tubes are good. Happy listening.
how the sound will be impacted? Will I get louder? Or does it allow to get louder? Will I get more bass? Does it related to the power rating in the specification?

The bias sets the point where the tube idles. When you apply a music signal the amount of current increases and decreases. Lets say for max power the current needs to swing plus and minus 40 mA from the bias point. If the bias current is set too low (say 30 mA) then it won't be able to make a full swing down since it wants to go down 40 but will hit zero and clip before it gets there. Even if you don't hit the zero point the tube operates in a non linear manner as it approaches zero so anytime you get near there distortion goes up.

If you set the bias current too high you might hit the limit on the plus 40 swing and clip, but even if you don't the tube will run hotter than it needs to at idle and shorten its life.

So you want to set it where it can make a full swing in both directions without running the tube too hard or swinging down into the nonlinear area near zero.

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