The sound of a vacuum tube amplifier?

dogpye5 asked:

The electronic valve amplifiers actually sound the best? The audio quality of critics seem to think so. I would appreciate some "world" real views.

Comments

2 Responses to “The sound of a vacuum tube amplifier?”

Heinz M on August 30th, 2009 12:00 pm

Opinions about that are totally subjective.
Personally, having experienced all kinds of tube amps, I find that amps with high impedance solid state circuits are every bit as good. And the additional advantage of never having any hum from speakers, which always was a big problem (I imagine they use DC heaters on the cathodes today), I think that this ‘tubes are better’ really is more affectation than fact.
Of course one could set up a test, where these people would have to make a side by side comparison between tube and solid state and that would tell the story. Like a Coke versus Pepsi test.
And digital versus analog just comes out to a high enough sampling rate.
smudgeward on September 2nd, 2009 12:58 am

They still use them for Marshall guitar amps, can’t get much more real world than that. I can’t help thinking that tapes and records sound better than CD ‘remasters’ as well, after all the human brain works by analogue processing not digital.

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