The HiFi Five Episode 43: Solid-State Versus Tube Amplifiers

0:03 Welcome to the forty-third episode of the High Five Five. Please like this video and subscribe to the channel. Tonight's show, Solistate versus Tube Amplifiers. Tonight's guests, David Burning is the founder and designer of the David Burning Company, which has made vacuum tube components since 1974. David invented the Zero Hysteresis Output Transformerless Amplifier in 1996.

0:25 Some of his designs today are manufactured by Linear Tube Audio. John Curl is an audio component designer who designed the Mark Levinson JC2 preamp in the early 1970s, founded his own company, Vendetta Research, in 1981, and has designed amplifiers for Parasound since 1989. Michael Framer is the founder and editor of Tracking Angle and the editor at large of The Absolute Sound.

0:47 He joined Stereophile in 1995 as a senior contributing editor, where he started his analog corner column. Michael also was the driving force behind Musicangle.com and Analog Planet. Ralph Carson is the founder and designer of Atmosphere, which in 1978 began manufacturing OTL tube amplifiers and now also makes Class D solid state amplifiers.

1:08 Good evening, gentlemen.

1:09 Good evening. Good evening.

1:11 Question one. If you take two amplifiers, one solid state and one tube designed to the same power output rating, what are the measurable electrical differences that cause them to sound different? Ralph.

1:25 Oh, okay. Well, um, first question I would have is does the tube amp or even the solid state amp, does it run feedback?

1:33 You tell us. Take it both ways.

1:36 Well, that's gonna make a big difference. Uh the amount of feedback that the amplifier runs is gonna change how much uh what its output impedance is like. The lower you can get the output impedance, the closer those amps are gonna sound to each other on a given speaker load. However, you can't this gets really technical.

1:56 Uh Ron, is it okay if I get into the weeds here a little bit?

2:00 Uh very shallow weeds tell us very succinctly.

2:03 Okay, very simply. It's hard, very hard to put enough feedback on a tube amplifier to actually make it neutral. Okay, this is because there's uh there's too many things that can cause the amplifier to go into oscillation if you try to do that. So um the result is that uh uh the tubes are going to express some of their inherent characteristic, which is going to be that you're gonna have more of the second and third harmonics showing up in a tube amplifier, which is going to imbue the warmth, the richness, the lushness that uh uh tube lovers like.

2:46 So um that's going to be the big difference that you're gonna hear between a solid state amp of a given power and a tube amp of the same power. Now, if the tube amp has no feedback, its output impedance is going to be even higher, and it will not behave as the voltage source that to which most speakers are designed.

3:08 You know, there's uh speakers have a box resonance, and you don't want to put a lot of energy into that resonance, and the voltage drive principles that most speakers are designed for, and most solid state amps comply with, uh, prevent them from doing that. So it all works out. But in a tube amp with no feedback, like you know, your typical single-intero amp, you actually have to have special speakers that are designed to work.

3:37 We're talking about measurable electrical differences that's very, very, very measurable and also very audible. You can draw a direct line between the two.

3:46 Okay, David.

3:48 Yeah, I I like to think of the amp and the speaker as a system pair, but Ralph is absolutely correct, and it's number one on my list, too. Output impedance is the the largest driving factor that I see in the difference between the the solid state amp and the and the tube amp, in that the solid state amp, almost all of them have a lot of feedback, so the output impedance is low.

4:13 That's the measured output impedance is low, and the tube amps um don't match uh output impedance quite that low. Um, there's variation, of course, in tube amps depending on how much feedback is used. Um, also there's variations on what kind of tubes are used, triodes, pentodes, whatever, because those uh the pentode is much higher impedance than the triode.

4:39 So uh a pentode amp without feedback is going to give you basically almost a current source. And so all the resonances in the speaker are going to you know play forth loudly. So, anyway, that's number one. I'll put impedance. Um then there are some other factors, how the amp overloads, how it clips. Um, you can measure that, and that uh that can make a difference depending on what your listening habits are.

5:06 Do you drive the amplifier and overload or not? Um there's uh you know you can measure distortion, but that's uh you have to be careful there because uh what they tend to do is total harmonic distortion into a resistive load. Well, yeah, you can measure that and and try and correlate the sound of the solid state versus the tube.

5:28 But um frankly, I don't think that's a big one. But if you look at the different harmonics, is it second harmonic, is it third harmonic, or is it high order odd harmonics? Uh those are measurable and those, you know, those make a difference subjectively. Um sorry, go ahead.

5:47 Oh, okay. Well, yeah, um, I agree with the uh the first two guys, um uh very much so. Uh I've always been in competitive with vacuum tubes, and I've I've lost uh several um times uh over the last 50, 60 years, really. Um I uh will say that vacuum tubes have certain advantages, and uh one is that the distortion order is usually very low.

6:19 So even though there's more distortion, you know, you can actually measure numbers, the actual order of the distortion, second and third harmonic, for example, are really very innocuous, comparatively speaking.

6:33 You know, we're we're we're we're gonna get to the distortion distortion question later. What okay particular electrical measurement do you think most c closely predicts and correlates with sound?

6:45 Uh well I know what's wrong with solid state more than I know what's right with uh tubes. Uh tubes actually have certain qualities that the solid state um uh uh tends to uh used to originally tend to ignore. And uh slew rate was um uh no or that or TIM was one of them and uh in the early days. And uh also there's a new another thing that's just uh uh coming out now, but by some is um PIM.

7:20 And these distortions are measured as with special methods. They're not they're not usually uh uh given by or or can't be done by just uh any old test equipment.

7:36 What is PIM an acronym for?

7:38 PIM phase intermodulation distortion. And usually that has to do with the open loop bandwidth of the uh amplifier. The amplifier that that's the uh what the frequency of the bandwidth uh uh frequent the highest frequency before it starts to droop when you don't have any feedback applied. And uh the it should be up to 20,000 cycles if you can get it.

8:06 Now, interestingly enough, vacuum tubes usually have a fairly high open loop. Um not open loop, but but um uh yeah, open loop uh bandwidth, comparatively speaking, compared to solid state. That's one of the differences uh between the two. And it has been for many, many years. That's because you can't put too much feedback around the amplifier, and therefore you never can really to make the thing work, you've got to have a reasonably high band open loop bandwidth to make the thing work at all.

8:41 Because you've only got maybe 20 dB.

8:44 Okay, let's move on. Michael, what do you think?

8:46 You're gonna ask me to talk about measurements of uh I've built a lot of amplifiers, I've listened to a lot of amplifiers, but I've never designed an amplifier. And I'm not sure why you're asking me this question.

8:59 We can move on, no problem. Question two. How much of the commonly perceived differences between tube and solid state sound is inherent in the devices themselves, tubes versus transistors? And how much comes from the circuit topology and power supply surrounding the devices? In other words, can the surrounding circuit and power supply have a bigger influence on the sound than the tube or transistor nature of the device itself?

9:25 David.

9:27 Well, um I am a big believer in looking at the transfer characteristics of the various devices. And um the devices, yes, themselves have a big difference. Um, and you can track that back to the you know the transfer characteristics. Power spies have a big effect on sound quality as well, or uh differences as well.

9:52 Um, so and circuit design, of course, does as well. Um so anyway, the uh yeah, what we also could talk about is um you know the various types of amplifiers. We've got we've got the OTLs, we've got the transformer coupled, we've got bipolar transistors, we've got MOSFET transistors, we got a rather obscure, wonderful transistor that you can't get anymore, and that's the SIT, static induction transistor.

10:23 Yamaha made some amplifiers back in the, I think back in the early 80s or late 70s.

10:29 Well, let's stipulate whatever nature of transistor you want to talk about. The question here is how much of the resulting sound from the component is that transistor, whatever transistor it is, versus the surrounding power supply and other uh circuit design?

10:43 Yeah, it's it's huge. I mean, the the uh the the transistor, the whatever the active device is, um, it's those those transfer characteristics largely make the difference. Uh what is the impedance of the device? Big, big difference. Uh if it's a low impedance device, well, you can build an amplifier with little or no feedback, and that's gonna sound one way.

11:06 Uh if that's not the case, if you've got a transistor which has fairly high impedance, you need feedback uh to get the output impedance down. So uh yeah, the devices are huge. And uh so I spent an awful lot of time you know studying those different devices with their you know their transfer characteristics.

11:26 The power supply, uh, lots of energy storage in the form of capacitors, very, very beneficial to get the impact in the base. Um so you know that's a biggie. Uh okay.

11:38 Well, let me ask you very specifically, in your experience, which is the greater driver of the overall sound, the device or the surrounding circuitry in your experience?

11:48 I really think the device.

11:50 Okay.

11:51 That's my that's my I mean you can cover it up with negative feedback and suppress those differences.

11:58 Uh but the device helps really is the bigger driver.

12:01 Don't cover that up.

12:02 The device is Michael, what's your experience? You've uh reviewed components of all kinds. In your experience, which do you think is really more probative, the device or the surrounding circuit?

12:13 The device by far. Even though you know different transistors have different sounds and different tubes have different sounds, there's a certain tube sound and there's a certain solid state sound, and they can be you know fudged to a degree that they can sound closer to each other, but there's a certain basic thing you can hear the difference.

12:30 You know, I I did I was once challenged to a thing at the AES. Can you hear the difference between amplifiers? And it was a guy named David Clark, and he said, All amplifiers that measure the same sound the same. I don't know whether you remember this story or heard this story, but he said to me, We'll do a double blind ABX test, and you will not be able to hear the difference.

12:50 I'll set it up. So he set it up at the AES. There were five amplifiers, and I took the test. A lot of engineers at the AES took the test, John Atkinson took the test, and it wasn't necessarily a really good double blind because we didn't have a chance to listen a lot, but you go back and forth and back and forth.

13:10 I named, I got every identification correct, and it was I knew which one I was listening to every single time. John got four out of five correct, and one of those amplifiers was actually a VTL300. Now, why why that was put into this mix, I don't know, because it didn't measure the same, it didn't sound the same.

13:29 But the average engineer at the AES for this test could not distinguish between the amplifiers. They could not reliably tell which was which. I got after I got every identification correct, I said, I'm gonna name what these amplifiers are. That's a crown DC 300, that's definitely I got them all correct.

13:48 And then and I was I was the subject of this challenge. And then we had the big meeting at the AES, and Stanley Lipschitz got up and he said, Here's the bell curve of what occurred. Uh most engineers could not hear a difference. Michael Fermer's result was an outlier, so we tossed that result. That's exactly what happened.

14:09 And I said, I will never do a double blind test with you people ever again.

14:14 Nothing like putting your thumb on the scale to get the results you want. Ralph, which is the bigger driver of the sound, the device or the surrounding circuit?

14:21 Okay, well, as you know, we make a class C amplifier. And we made triode OTLs for you know 50 years, almost 50 years. We still make them. Um, I'm gonna say it's the topology. If you understand that it's the distortion signature of the amplifier that defines how that amplifier sounds, in other words, what Michael was listening to was the distortion signature of the various amps, and he could pick that out.

14:50 Well, if you know that fact, that is an avenue that allows you to design uh, say, a solid state amp that sounds like tubes because guess what? It has the same distortion signature. Or you can make a tube amp sound like transistors by getting the same distortion signature. So I'm gonna go with topology.

15:12 However, there is a caveat. If we're not talking about a whole lot of feedback, or maybe none at all, then it's gonna rely on the devices used. So it's uh, in my opinion, a trick question.

15:25 Well, that's all trick questions. No, I I agree that with uh uh pretty much with everybody. Uh the thing is, tubes are more linear than any other device that I know of. And that includes SITs or or whatever, because I used to design with those too. Uh I thought they were really cool, but they stopped making them back in the 70s.

15:49 And uh having, you know, I've got a couple in a drawer. That's all. But you know what? Um uh all else being equal, I think it's easier to design a good sounding tube amplifier than it is a good sounding solid state amplifier. And then then that's when topology comes in. There's one real advantage to solid state.

16:11 You can use complementary devices like N P's and or N channel and P channel, whatever. Electrically opposite devices that together in push-pull can remove remove the potential the problems of uh transformer coupling or even capacitor coupling. You can direct couple everything and you can have a lot very much reduced distortion inherently with the topology.

16:48 So I I I'm uh more or less that's the only way I know to make competitive uh solid state is with a topology.

17:01 Question three. Let's say an audiophile is agnostic and has no preference for tuber solid state. How should an audiophile go about selecting an amplifier? Let's just help the hobbyists out there with a basic roadmap.

17:13 Michael Well, there's one distinction that I have to say is the the bottom end slam and weight of a solid state amplifier is different than a tube amplifier, in my experience. And so if you listen to mostly rock and roll and you want that slam, you should probably uh stay in the solid state area with an amplifier.

17:35 And you might want to put a tube in a in a phono pre-amplifier or someplace else in the system to get a little bit of warmth in your system. That that's my basic take. It it depends on what kind of music you like to a great degree, and also what your speakers are. So John Me?

17:54 Oh, I uh what's the basic roadmap for helping a audiophile select an amplifier? How would you advise uh uh new hobby?

18:03 Well again, it's it's it's it's partly is who listens what they listen to music. My lady friend uh who uh uh has a nice system is all vacuum tube. And what she listens to opera, and it really works for her with electrostatic speakers is quad electrostatics and uh a good tube amplifier. Yeah, I mean it works for her and for other people.

18:28 Okay, so you're saying the musical genre preference would drive the amplifier. Um so take a couple of different genres and tell us what amplifier would that would prescribe.

18:38 Oh man.

18:39 Well, I don't know. Rock and roll, rock and roll, of course. Like uh Michael said, uh, you know, the bass is always better or easier to make a lot of bass with Solasting. The the problem is is that the the tube amplifiers kind of run out of breath when they're what about big symphony orchestra classical?

19:02 What would you select for that genre?

19:06 It depends on then on the speaker efficiency.

19:11 Take an 86 dB speaker and then take a 94 dB speaker.

19:14 Oh boy.

19:15 Well, I yeah, I I I it's hard to do get really loud with uh solids. I mean with vacuum tubes. You the power getting in a power up above a hundred watts is tough. It can be done.

19:31 Um yeah, I guess uh you know what you would like to say is yeah, just take a couple amplifiers in your price category. If you can, take a moment and listen to them. And you know, if you can live with them for a week or so, uh or more even uh to make a decision that way. Well that you know that's kind of ideal, maybe.

19:56 Um, you know, you're using the kind of music you like and whatever. Um I hate to say it, but uh there are more than just a few people that uh choose an amplifier based on how much it impresses or how much they think it impresses their friends. Uh so you got that element too.

20:18 Well, stereotype are based on that.

20:20 So that's all but uh anyway, it it's uh those are you know, obviously I think listening is is important in you know deciding what kind of music you like. Um it should be noted that uh tube amps generally you can overload those a little bit more than you can solid state before they get objectionable, uh which means you can get away with perhaps a little bit lower lower power damp with the tube.

20:49 Um but that's that's variable. I mean, there's different some tube amps are pretty bad when they overload too. They go into nasty crossover distortion because the coupling caps. Uh but anyway, it's it's uh you know, oftentimes you can get away with lower power that way. Uh so basically, listen.

21:12 Ralph, somebody on What's Best comes to you and says, I want to buy an amplifier, how do you steer them in the direction of your tube components or your class D?

21:22 That really depends on what kind of loudspeaker they have. Um, if you've got a loudspeaker that's got dual woofers and it's a four-oh load in the base, but the uh the mids and highs are eight ohm, you're probably not gonna have a lot of success with a tube amp. It's gonna have trouble making power into that four ohm load and get the mids and highs right.

21:42 You maybe you can use a four ohm tap to fix some of that, but uh, if you're not running feedback in the amplifier, the the mids and highs aren't going to be right. So uh the speaker is really an important variable here uh because they the the the if it's gonna be a tube amp, it needs to be. Friendly.

22:02 So that's a variable that we you cannot really answer that question without having that figured out first. I'm going to fly in the face of some of this stuff because I can tell you that electronics are absolutely music genre agnostic. There is no way you can make an amplifier favor a certain type of musical genre, no matter what you do.

22:28 Anybody who can figure out how to do that would be an instant billionaire overnight. It's just that simple. So you can drop that notion that rock and roll needs solid state or something. The two bands we make, for example, full power down to one cycle per second, they can shake the room very easily. Now, do they play bass differently?

22:47 Yes, they do, but they have plenty of grunt. We uh, you know, our MA2 makes like 200 watts and our big one makes over 500. And there's no alpha transformers, direct coupled, there's no coupling caps. So uh, you know, it's it's not, I will concede that they are unusual. Um, but you you can't make the generalization that a tube ant necessarily is going to make worse or better base uh that's going to be so loud speaker dependent that uh uh you know this is just a tough call.

23:23 So if someone comes to me and asks, the first question I have is what kind of speaker are you planning? And how big is your room? Then we can figure out uh what kind of power they're gonna need and what kind of amplifier is actually gonna be suitable. And you know, I've I've I've uh sent people away plenty of times because the speaker that they fell in love with for whatever reason wasn't gonna be suitable with not only our ants, but probably a lot of other tube ants as well.

23:49 So, you know, that's that's the best answer I can give. I uh I apologize.

23:54 No, that's fine. Question four. Often the marketing strategy of a solid state manufacturer is to suggest that the solid state component has the breath of life of tubes, and the marketing strategy of a tube component manufacturer is to suggest that the tube component has the resolution and dynamics and slam of solid state.

24:12 What is it about a transistor that struggles to duplicate what some people like about the sound of tubes, and what is it about a tube that struggles to duplicate what some people like about the sound of solid state? John.

24:25 Well, I think that with vacuum tubes, it's not so much the tube itself, uh although it might be also of course included uh as important, but the it's the transformers and uh capacitors, uh coupling capacitors that uh add to the sound and change the sound a lot. Uh you know, that's one of the weaknesses of vacuum tubes is that not being complementary devices, you you have to have some sort of coupling usually.

24:55 And you just can't DC couple throughout, uh, which you can with solid state fairly easily. So uh when it comes to solid state, you've got to keep your lit your your higher order distortion down to nothing, almost nothing. And that's very hard to do. You usually have to run some real class A or something uh to get that effort that that lower order distortion.

25:24 In other words, this little bit of second and third isn't gonna kill you. But it's the set fifth and the sevenths is gonna uh and ninths. The uh uh in any amount really uh that's measurable, uh probably is hearable. So that's that's the difference between them.

25:43 Okay, could you repeat the question again just so what is it in the nature of a transistor that struggles to duplicate what some people like about tubes, what some people describe as a breath of life or a musicality. We all know what that word means, but it's we all use it. Um and and that's what is it about a tube that struggles to duplicate what Michael was referring to before?

26:05 Uh solid state slam and dynamics in the base.

26:09 Uh okay. With the transistors, uh what it's difficult to do is to build a uh solid state amplifier that has the same distortion signature as a good tube amplifier. That's that's that's pretty tricky. So uh uh John was um basically expressing that earlier. Uh in the tube amplifiers, uh, you know, most of them that are the ones that aren't OTLs uh have alpha transformers, and that's a low frequency uh uh limitation.

26:43 It's a low frequency pull. It's gonna cause the amplifier to roll off. That's gonna cause phase shift. And if you have phase shift in the base frequencies, that'll rob the amplifier of its impact. So uh, you know, this this is also very measurable. If you measure the square wave response of the uh circuit with its tuber solid state at uh 20 cycles per second, uh you'll see what's something called square wave tilt.

27:08 And uh the more tilt there is, the more phase shift, uh, the less impact it's gonna have in the bottom end, even though it might be full power right down to 20 cycles per second. So uh that's that's one of the tricky areas for uh tubes to be able to play bass uh, you know, with the same kind of slam as transistors, it's not uh insurmountable, but it is definitely a thing.

27:33 So, you know, that's uh and the other issue is uh man, there's a there's an area where we're gonna go under the weeds here, but there's something called gain bandwidth product, and that is uh the ability of the amplifier to uh it it's basically the frequency at which the gain of the amp is fallen to unity.

27:54 In other words, the input is equal to the output, and theoretically that's where the amplifier can amplify or pass the signal without distortion. Uh, if you don't have enough gain bandwidth product, you're going to have trouble putting feedback on there. And if you put feedback on an amp and uh the gain bandwidth product is not supported, what happens is that a certain frequency the distortion will begin to rise.

28:19 And when the distortion rises, that may mean that it's not masked by the uh lower-ordered harmonics. Uh and this was, I would say, a fairly common problem in solid-state amplifiers uh through the 70s and uh 80s and well into the 90s. Um there's much faster devices these days, so it's it's a little bit more.

28:43 I got to bring out the weed whacker. That's a little too much to be able to do that. Um Michael, do you have a thought on this topic?

28:50 Yeah, I think when you talk to audiophiles, not designers of the equipment, the people that like tubes will tell you there's a sense of musical flow about tubes, a sense of airiness, a sense of continuity, and they find solid state amplifiers generally, we're generalizing all through this. That's one of the problems.

29:10 They find that solid state amplifiers have a crunchy quality to it. And you know, the same things can be said about you know, analog versus digital. Um most analog turntables, whatever their problems are, they have that musical flow and relaxation, whereas the digital has this crunchiness. And that's what I think people relate to with amplifiers.

29:30 If the amp they want flow in their in their sound and they want an airiness on the sound stage, they think uh tube amplifiers give them that. And if uh the tube amplifier people are not going to want what the solid state amplifiers do, and the solid state people are gonna say, I don't even like that flow so much, I want more of this impact and more of uh sharper transients for whatever reason.

29:52 Maybe their speakers are gooey and soft sounding. You know, it's all about combining the right things. I think a lot of these questions and answers are doctrinaire in a sense that I don't think in the real world they help people too much. Because in the real world, you have to it's like making a recipe.

30:07 Do I want to use San Marzano tomatoes or do I want to use tomatoes from California? You know, what do you want to make in a recipe? It's all adding different things together to give you the final result. So one person on this on the questions here said, I want to hear exactly what's in the recording, so I like solid state amplifiers.

30:24 You know, I don't necessarily want to hear what's exactly in the recording. You know, the person making the recording has their own taste, has their own system, has their own mastering chain, has their whatever they want to do. I want to put together a system that pleases me, since every recording is a distortion, every recording is wrong, every recording is some person's idea of what good is, every microphone is a transducer that has problems.

30:48 Ultimately, in the end, you have to take your recordings that you like, your music, and put together a system that has faults in every corner and put together something that pleases what you think sounds music sounds like, and not worry about making it accurate to the source because every source is going to be different.

31:07 So yeah, the um the the notion that the objective is accuracy to the source is impliedly an objective, and in in my view, it is merely one of several possible objectives, not the objective for each of us. Uh David, what do you think? Did you agree with John with uh Michael's contrast?

31:27 Let me just one thing I want to say here. Um, you know, this whole discussion, you know, more feedback, more accuracy to the way the speaker designer intended the thing to be driven with a low impedance folder source and so on and so forth. Well, um in my findings, uh there's some problems there. Uh I have found uh quite a variation in base drivers in particular, which I can measure uh their position.

31:56 Uh are they what kind of output impedance from the amplifiers do they really achieve the best damping qualities? And I'm talking about if you're going to put an impulse or a square wave impulse into the into the speaker, you want the cone to move. Uh ideally, you want to be critically damped. You want the cone to step in its position up and then be flat.

32:24 And that's you know, that is critical damping. If it overshoots, it's it's under damped and it's going to sound woofy. And if it's under if it's over damped, which many solid state amps do because the output impedance is too low, it comes up slowly and then reaches its steady state value. It doesn't reach, it doesn't quickly come up.

32:46 So uh I actually measured some uh I had a gadget I made that I could actually look at the the driver itself and how it moved and displayed that on a oscilloscope compared with the input waveform that I was putting into it. And there was one speaker I found that I had to put a series resistor of 7.5 ohms in in series with that line to get that optimum critical damping.

33:13 Uh anything less than that, it was over damped and it didn't sound good. So, yeah, so when we're talking about accuracy, take it with a grain of salt. Um so anyway, I will say that uh in terms of the solid state versus the tube, uh, you know, for whatever reason, uh if you want really, really good base impact, forget the 20 hertz frequency response.

33:41 You better be looking at maybe three to five hertz. If that amp should be flat down to that and be able to deliver its full power down to that. Transformer coupled amps can't do it. Umizotal can. Uh Ralph's uh OTL can do it, I I assume. And uh so uh you you need that if you want base impact. And if you have the right speaker for it, um you can you can get that.

34:10 But if it just goes down to 20 hertz, so it's gonna be phase shift at 20 hertz. It's and if you have an output transformer, that's gonna soak up. There's magnetizing current that takes away energy that should be going into the speaker. So an output transformer is a real problem. Uh so you're not gonna get you know that good base impact.

34:30 So that's a big difference there between and and the solid state, of course, will give you the base impact, but uh you may have the speaker over damped, and it may not be uh it may not have a good transient response as a result of that. Uh so much this depends on putting the system together. Speaker and amp, it's really a system.

34:52 Ralph has always told me that I like the warmth of my tube amps because I'm just attached to the gauzy sound of output transformers.

35:00 Yeah, most of the sound of tube amps is is the transformer. Uh don't not the tubes don't have sound in particular, uh, but though the output transformers do. Some people like that and some don't.

35:13 Question five. Is a hybrid amplifier design tube input stage with a transistor output stage, or a reverse hybrid transistor input stage with a tube output stage, like the KR audio? Is that sonically the best of both worlds or sonically the worst of both worlds? Michael, I remember you did a review of the Ypsilon hybrid.

35:31 Well, I I own uh Roger Majeski's RM200 uh amp, which is a JFET input and a tube output. And and I really love that amplifier because it it to me, and I don't use it that much because I my my speakers like more power, so I use solid state amplifiers that sounds sort of like tube amplifiers. People come over and say, man, if I if I if I bought a tube amplifier, if I bought a solid state amplifier, I would want those because those have a tube-like quality.

35:58 But the RM200 to me has a a touch of warmth, a touch of air, a touch of the things that tubes do in the output. But for some reason, the the JFIT input uh gives it a little bit of this, and it's just a nicely balanced amplifier. So that works to me. I I I haven't experienced too many amps on the other side.

36:19 I I did the uh the Ypsilon a long time ago, and I I don't remember it in extreme detail, so I can't really answer that. I've covered a lot of territory in 40 years of doing this, you know.

36:31 Ralph, what do you think about hybrid amps?

36:34 I generally try to avoid them. Um they they can be tricky to work on, but uh I would I would see that as an extension of the idea of uh running a tube preamp with a solid state amplifier. You you basically have a hybrid system, so you can take a you know properties of both. The big deal is how much feedback are you going to be able to loop around that?

36:57 Uh because uh, you know, however you look at it, uh you're you're you're trying to it sounds to me like if you're trying to c uh put tubes in a solid state amplifier, you're trying to warm it up because you haven't figured out how to uh fix the inherent distortion problems. Uh so I I I I I just avoid them.

37:21 That's that's that's me. David.

37:25 Well, I it's a matter of execution how good it comes out. But I'm I'm a big believer in hybrid amps. I the very first uh amp that I made uh more than one of, and actually we was selling back in the mid-70s, uh, was a hybrid amp. It was transistorized up to the output stage, and the output stage was two.

37:48 Um it was screen drive pentode and it had a lot of power, it was almost 200 watts. And uh it uh it was a very, you know, it was a good sounding amplifier. And I haven't heard one for a long time, but I think the last time I heard one, I said, yeah, this this was pretty good. Uh so it, you know, of course, at that time I was probably more interested in ruggedness of the amplifier.

38:15 I wasn't really even it tuned into the audio file community. I didn't even know it existed back in in the middle 70s. Uh it was friends that came along and said, Oh, you made an amp with tubes in it. Will you show me how to make one or make one for me or whatever? So that's you know kind of how I got into it.

38:33 But uh yeah, I was I was um big believer in in the hybrid uh uh type of amps. Uh I made a preamp one time, which uh I made a lot of them, uh the TF10, which was an interesting hybrid. It used a uh it was like a complementary pair. The the triode was like the you know, the N channel device, and the I had a P channel fit uh made it to each triode, and that was like the you know the complementary device.

39:04 You know, the characteristic didn't quite match, but they were similar enough that I I made the various game stages out of that pair of devices. And you know, it was a very popular preamp, and and actually continues to be. A lot of people still using them, and I still get requests for repairs and things like that.

39:23 So it was also the first uh um the you know, the first probably the first audio file product that used a switching power supply. This was 1978. And uh, you know, this was really uh outrageous at the time to consider putting a switching power supply in in all things, but a tube preamp. I mean, it was it was crazy, but um it was the right decision, and uh you know I never looked back.

39:55 I use those switching power supplies and everything I make.

39:59 John, have you ever tried hybrid designs? No, I never did, uh, but I have heard some good ones. Uh Bash Kum King used to uh, you know, was a colleague of mine, and he uh worked for PS Audio, and uh he made some good stuff as far as I'm concerned, subjectively with a vacuum tube uh front end, you know, just uh almost adding a single-ended uh vacuum tube stage.

40:26 But it it definitely helped the sound. Uh I I liked it. Uh-huh. But I I'm pure in that silly sense. I usually I I I like to use FETs if I can. And I don't even use bipolar transistors anymore unless I have to. And uh so but uh uh that that's me, you know, because I can work with them comp in a complementary way.

40:52 I can work comp my circuits are almost entirely complementary uh in their design uh uh design.

41:00 I kind of agree with Michael. I've had good experience with hybrid. The uh aesthetics eclipse mono is a hybrid, absolar makes it a hybrid. Um I used to like the Lamb hybrid, so I I kind of agree. I think hybrids can be the best of both worlds. Question six. If you prefer or design solid state components, John, what is one sonic or engineering advantage you concede that a tube has over a transistor?

41:26 Or if you prefer design tube components, what is one sonic or engineering advantage you concede that a transistor has over a tube? Let's start with you, David. What's something you think transistors do better than tubes?

41:40 Well, when it comes to engineering, there's a whole laundry list of reasons why transistors are better than tubes. Uh they're you know, they're they're smaller, you got complementary pairs, they're make design easier. Um they're uh reliable, you know, more reliable than tubes, right? Providing you're conservative in your design.

42:02 Um so you know, there are a number of those things. Uh tubes are more rugged. You can abuse tubes and they won't blow up uh as easily. So uh you know, in terms of engineering, those are you know kind of the major things I I I see. Um you know, sonically, I love triodes. Uh they're the linear ones. I mean, they're just uh using them without feedback.

42:30 I mean, that's just sonically uh terrific. Um now a friend of mine and myself, uh I have a friend who actually came up with a pair of these Yamaha SIT transistors. And I put them on my curve tracer, and I was all excited about these things. Hey, hey, these are really triode-like, not as linear as a 300B, but nonetheless, they they have low output impedance, about eight ohms.

42:57 And uh so we decided let's build a single-ended amplifier choke loaded. He only had two of these devices, so we couldn't do push-pull. So we did a single-ended choke-loaded amplifier. It was about 20 watts output. It was a great sounding amplifier.

43:16 So John, what's one thing you think um tubes can do sonically or engineering-wise, better than transistors?

43:24 I think they could sound smoother, all else being equal. Because of the uh the they're basically more linear intrinsically. So um that's what I think that uh um you you can still add uh, you know, there's distortion added because of the the uh lack of feedback, uh total amount of feedback and this and that.

43:47 But most of that's fairly pleasant. Uh second and third really isn't uh it's very difficult. Reasonable amounts of that really don't make much difference in the sound. Michael?

44:02 I think you can get more value out of an inexpensive tube amplifier than you can out of uh sonic value than you can out of an inexpensive solid state amplifier. I think you have to spend more money to get a really fine-sounding solid state amplifier, and it's easier and less expensive to design a tube amplifier that works and sounds good.

44:23 Ralph.

44:29 Okay. Plain and simple.

44:33 Question seven. Tube amplifiers, especially SETs, often have a lot more measured distortion than solid state amplifiers, yet some listeners prefer the sound of tubes. What is it about the type of distortion that matters more than the amount of distortion? Putting the question differently, how important is the distinction between even order and odd order harmonic distortion in explaining subjective sonic differences between solid state and tube?

45:00 John.

45:02 I think it's more the order of the distortion, not so much whether it's uh even or odd. Um it's true that even is easier, all else being equal, than odd in every case. But uh in other words, second harmonic is easier to listen to with a certain amount than uh third harmonic, let's say. But when you get up to seventh harmonic, it's that's the interesting one.

45:26 Seventh harmonic is completely in harmonic to music. It's like playing a f I I call it playing a frying pan along with the orchestra. It's sort of like you're not really playing music anymore. Uh it doesn't tune, it's always out of tune that certain amount. And it's really hard to get, unless you run class A electronics uh and your output stages and everything, uh you can't it's hard to get get that um rid of that seventh harmonic.

46:01 So that's what I think is more important, most important is the higher order fifth, seventh, ninth. That's where I look. And I look at the distortion waveform. The waveform is often shown in many of reviews like absolute uh not absolute sound, but uh um the other one. Oh come on, well, you know. Um, you know what I mean.

46:29 I mean, the ones that measure the tubes, I mean the the the we give you make pictures of measurements. You look at a picture of the distortion waveform and uh at a nominal frequency. And how smooth it is depends. That's that's what really is important. If it has little kinks in it, little uh uh edges, uh then it's gonna sound bad as far as.

46:54 Well brief briefly, is seventh order distortion a bigger problem generated by tube amps or by cell fit amps?

47:00 Well, uh it's almost impossible. You can get a little bit of seventh. I I did a talk uh years you know, you know, months ago, years ago now, um uh that where I showed a little bit of seventh harmonic uh in a vacuum, you know, just have a little vacuum tube amplifier. But it's really hard to get. And it's really, really down there.

47:25 You know, it's down a hundredth of a percent. You know, it's not it's not gonna be there. It's not like a tenth of a percent or something like that.

47:33 Ralph, now is the time to talk about the distortion.

47:37 Okay. Well, you know, this is the Radiatron Designer's handbook, third edition. Yay! And uh, you know, if you look in there, what you'll see is that it was understood uh that the uh harmonic structure of the amplifier was really important and they knew this before World War II. That's right. So uh the this, you know, it shouldn't be any mystery that you have to have a correct, shall we say, musical distortion signature.

48:11 It and when I say musical, it's also going to be innocuous. You're not going to notice it's there. General Electric did a study of how much people could put up with even ordered harmonics like second-ordered harmonics. They got up to like 35% before anybody noticed it. Okay, but they wouldn't get to like uh 0.1% of the seventh-ordered harmonic before it became objectionable.

48:42 Okay. And that study was done in the 60s, uh, but it was just a reflection of what was known back in the 1930s and before. So you you want a musical amplifier, it's gotta have a musical distortion signature. Doesn't matter if it's tube or solid state, it's gotta have that musical distortion signature.

49:03 If you can get that, it's much easier to do with tubes, of course, because the uh the especially in a single-innered triode, the second and third harmonics are so prodigious compared to the higher orders that they will mask those, even though uh the higher ordered harmonics in a single-innered triode is more than any other kind of ant made.

49:24 The second and third is so prodigious that it'll mask their presence and the ant sounds nice and smooth. You never know it's there. However, your ear is still responding to those higher orders because the ear uses the higher orders to sense how loud the sound is. So that's why the single-inner triode stuff uh sounds so dynamic.

49:43 I should put air quotes around that because the dynamics is really that distortion masquerading, fooling the ear into thinking that the transients have so much more transient dynamic life. Uh, it's it's just distortion masquerading as uh actual dynamics. Real dynamics comes from the signal and not the amplifier.

50:07 But uh regardless, you know, if if you can if if you can present a musical uh distortion signature, it's not going to matter if it's two versolic steep.

50:20 Michael, you once reviewed the Wave Egg 833, whose distortion measurement almost gave John Atkinson a heart attack. Yes. What do you think about the distortion question?

50:32 Well, that amplifier, it was very colored, very, very, very colored. It was fun to listen to. A lot of the things that come in and go out are fun, you know, because they're they're outside of the normal range of what you normally hear. And so that thing was fun because it was huge. You took up the whole wall, it had these big, you know, big tubes.

50:51 And uh but I could never have that, never own that, because it it after a while you start hearing it as opposed to the record that you're or the file or the CD that you're trying to listen to and and talk about. But I I just I just think um, you know, too much distortion of any kind becomes unpleasant.

51:12 And uh, you know, the the whole cliche is uh you know, even honor even order harmonic distortion is musical, and odd order harmonic distortion is not musical. But I'm hearing the opposite here from some people who design the equipment, which I don't. So I have to leave that up to them, you know. And I uh I live in a solid state world for the most part now, and I'm perfectly happy.

51:34 And I didn't think that would be the case, but that's where I'm at. But again, I I bought products that are solid state but sound kind of tubi. And uh when I had tubi stuff, I like the tubi stuff because it sounded sort of solid state. You know, the idea is to get into a range where you don't hear it all the time.

51:52 If you own a system that you keep hearing certain characteristics, it's it does become pleasant after a while because you hear those characteristics. And that's also partly determined on your tastes and how you hear. Everybody, you go to a hi-fi show and you walk in a room and you say, My God, how does anybody listen to that?

52:08 And that's something that someone who makes it likes, and people walk in the room and go, Oh, I like that sound. So you you can't make generalizations about what people like and what they should like and not like. And that's why, as a reviewer, I just try to say how something sounds as opposed to whether I like it or not, and and not draw a value judgment about how it sounds.

52:29 And when you're saying uh solid state that sounds leans a little bit too, you're still talking about your Dart Seal 468s.

52:35 Yeah, yeah.

52:36 David, what do you think?

52:39 Well, um the uh on the topic of uh you know, something like take a single-ended triad amplifier, um the distortion comes up very gradually. Um it you know, low signal levels, yeah, there's probably not very much. Uh, and then if you you know reach up toward toward clipping, of course, these amplifiers are generally pretty low powered, so it's easy to get up there.

53:07 Uh then then the distortion kind of gradually increases, um maybe dominated by second, but third comes in there pretty strong too. Um, I find in my amplifiers anything above third really is you know is vanishingly small. Um it, you know, maybe not zero, but it's it's you know it's very low. Um you know now when you talk about a push-pull amplifier, things change a little bit.

53:37 Uh then you can you know get some remnants of a of a crossover distortion, and then your some of your higher harmonics can come in. Um so you know that that definitely sounds different, and my single-ended amplifiers sound different than you know, than my push-pull amplifiers, even using the same you know, triodes or whatever.

54:01 Uh so uh yeah, I think a lot of that is you know probably the way that distortion you know characteristic looks. Um a lot of my push-pull amplifiers I tend toward pushing the efficiency as high as I can, which means they're pretty close to class B. And that uh you know that certainly makes it more challenging to not have those high-order harmonics.

54:26 In fact, it's really impossible not to have some. Uh so I don't know. That's uh that's kind of my take on it.

54:36 Uh question eight. Why do some listeners describe tube electronics as more dimensional or holographic? What do you think they're hearing? Is that back to a distortion question, Ralph? It is.

54:51 Is that is is that is that all you need to know? It it has to do it has to do with the phase of the third harmonic in particular. If the um if the phase is uh is in phase with the uh fundamental uh signal, um it'll it'll cause the uh uh uh sound stage to be uh greater depth.

55:14 Michael, what do you think?

55:17 I think people hear that that that's sensation and then that's all they like it or they don't like it, and it and what it causes it. It's not my concern.

55:29 Let's see, this is on the dimensional yes.

55:32 Why does what what do you think some listeners are hearing when they describe tube electronics as more dimensional or holographic?

55:38 Yeah, it comes it comes down to I think uh in part how tightly the amplifier is controlling the speaker. You know, again, that's feedback, output and beans, and all this stuff we already talked about. Uh so I think that's you know, that's that's the bulk of it, really, in a nutshell. Um it's more holographic if that, you know, if the amplifier is not trying to, you know, keep kicking the driver to a precise you know position, it's just sort of letting it flow more.

56:14 Uh I don't know. It's just it's just that's kind of the feeling I get.

56:20 John, can tube can transistor amplifiers be as dimensional and holographic as alts as uh tubes? I don't think so.

56:28 Uh not as easily. Uh you know, we can make uh we tend to go toward clarity and and clean cleanliness, you know, but uh not not we don't add dimension as much. Although that third harmonic uh phase uh is fascinating. I've never really thought about it that way, but that that makes sense. And uh uh, you know, that that could be the a real important thing to some people, especially.

56:58 Question nine. How important are an amplifier's power supply, transformer, and energy storage capacity compared with its published output wattage? In other words, can a 50-watt amplifier with a big transformer and a lot of capacitance actually outperform a 100-watt amplifier with less ambitious power supply, particularly when driving demanding speakers?

57:19 We know output power depends on voltage and current, p equals EI, and so a bigger transformer and greater capacitance cannot create additional power in output watts. So, what is the electrical mechanism that seemingly allows this to happen, David?

57:35 Well, I am a firm believer in lots of energy storage and deformer capacitors. It gives the base more impact. Uh it it just uh if if the energy storage is undersized, you know, it's just the amplifier just kind of spiders out of steam, in you know, you know, in my opinion. Uh so I you know, I've always been uh you know big on that.

58:02 Um you know, and that that was I wasn't the one that discovered that. I mean, there was a company called POE that made uh two BAMs back in the 1970s, and they were the first ones I'm aware of that really put big capacitors into their power supplies. And uh, you know, that was kind of a revelation because up to that time, you know, capacitors were little itty bitty things that really uh you know very poor quality.

58:30 And uh so you know, take your your your typical Dynaco Stereo 70. I mean, what a lousy power supply that had. Um the audio circuit was decent, the output transformers were decent, but the the power supply was you know awful. And uh so you know that's certainly uh uh you know, if that used that same audio circuit and transformers, output transformers with a decent power supply, that would have been a much better amplifier.

58:57 Um so you know, it's huge. Um, but you can get into trouble if you don't know what you're doing. Uh you know, there's some uh tube designers that uh want to use big chokes in the power supply, and uh you know they're not they're looking at big chokes as you know, filtering elements, but not looking at the capacitors so much, and you've got a power supply that rings, and so that you know that gets you know put on the audio signal.

59:26 I mean you can hear it. Uh it's got a whoop about it, you know, that's that's not not right. So uh so yeah, I you know energy storage in the form of capacitors, not inductors, uh is is important. The um what I have found that you know trying to voltage voltage regulation, even though I do it in all my amplifiers, is not that important.

59:52 It's uh the energy storage in the capacitors is you know a bigger deal. As far as transformers are concerned, I've got rid of those a long time ago. I use power factor correction in all my amplifiers now, um, which has an advantage because it draws the line current sinusoidally rather than in big bursts of pulses.

1:00:13 Um that has implications to other components in the system. Uh you know, it's it messes up the line voltage less. Uh so uh you know, so that's you know, that's one thing that that I do. But as far as the you know, the if you're using a line frequency transformer, I think it still really comes down to the energy storage and the capacitors.

1:00:36 Um if the transformer is undersized, well, yeah, the voltage will sag a little bit on the continuous uh you know burst of base energy, and that's you know, that's not good. But um, yeah, throw out the transformer. It's useless.

1:00:54 Michael, have you found sometimes that modestly output uh amplifiers, but with very large transformers and very large capacitance storage can sometimes seem subjectively louder and stronger than other amplifiers?

1:01:08 Um, that's a question I'm really not qualified to answer because I haven't I don't think about it in those terms. I don't think about when I review product, I don't think about those factors. So I really can't answer that. But one thing we haven't discussed that's so important is the interaction between a loudspeaker and the amplifier, because that that really determines a lot of what we hear.

1:01:27 We haven't really discussed that. We've we're talking about the amplifier as a separate entity and a loudspeaker as a separate entity, but until you put the two together and and see how they could perform together, and I think talking about these different amplifiers and these different designs should be uh spoken about in the context of the kind of speaker that they're being asked to drive and the way that the amplif the speaker is interfering or reacting to the amplifier.

1:01:52 Because without those two things, talking about both of those things, we're talking in a vacuum. And I don't think it makes complete sense to do that.

1:02:00 Well, tell us how should audiophiles think about matching the speaker to the amplifier?

1:02:06 That's a whole nother qu question. We should have a have a whole discussion about that. But one thing I think it's really important to say as a reviewer is that it's so difficult to tell people how something will sound in their system when I can only talk about how it sounds in my system with what I've got in my system.

1:02:24 And that's that's a concern that every reviewer has to deal with before they make you know pronouncements that they say are final, because you can't do that. So um, you know, I've heard horn speakers driven with a couple of watts that sound phenomenal, but I've also heard horn speakers where you know the impedance of the speaker is driving the amplifier and it's it's a mess.

1:02:48 And then how what are you reviewing at that point? If you're reviewing the amplifier, reviewing the speaker, or you're reviewing the amplifier. So uh there's a lot of questions that have to be dealt with that we're not even looking at. So for a different show, perhaps.

1:03:01 John.

1:03:04 I don't know what to say. Uh I think burning uh was the best. Uh, you know, I I'm learning a lot from the other guys, um you know, as far as uh and I agree with most of the what they they say. Uh I like big power supply sometimes. Uh when I I build different amplifiers at different price points, and the higher price point amplifiers, the biggest thing is the power supply.

1:03:31 And when you have difficult loads, and you know, big electrostatics, you know, and and other uh and big direct radiator systems, you've gotta have a big power supply. And uh if you don't, uh you can you just and uh sometimes the people don't know any better, even real engineers they'll they'll say, well, uh it works pretty good at eight ohms, uh I don't care about anything else.

1:03:59 Man, eight ohms is uh a very nominal number. You know, speakers can drop down to an ohm or something uh dynamically uh uh uh at certain frequencies. It it depends on the speaker, of course. But if you have an easy loaded speaker, easy speaker, and there are such things, well then it doesn't matter the power supply doesn't matter nearly as much.

1:04:25 Uh I think the the idea was David, was it that didn't you were saying about the Dynastereo 70 and how it I mean, you know, I have a couple of Dynamark IVs which are Stereo 70s but with twice the power supply. It makes a difference.

1:04:42 Well, your JC1 JC One Plus has a very big power supply.

1:04:46 Oh well, the JC One Plus has a huge power supply. Uh I mean to be honest with you, comparatively speaking, you know, thousands, hundreds of thousands of microparats. I mean, we don't fool around. And a huge I'm talking, you know, a couple of kilowatt toro transformer for the output per channel. I mean, my goodness.

1:05:11 But you know, that raises the price dramatically, and it's probably overkill for most of the people. But for difficult loads, it's great.

1:05:22 Ralph? Well, if you start with a class A amplifier, whether it's uh push-pull or single-ended, it's going to present a pretty well constant load on the power supply. So if your transformer and filter caps are up for uh handling that at all frequencies, that's where you start. The more you move away from class A, the beefier your supply has to get.

1:05:52 Because you're going to have more and more variation on the uh on the power supply voltage. And so you're going to have More and more variation if you don't have enough capacitance to support that, uh, you'll start to see noise on the waveform. Uh what I'm saying is if the amplifier can modulate its power supply, that will increase its intermodulation distortion at higher power levels.

1:06:20 It'll make the amplifier harder to listen to. Uh if you give it uh uh more than what you might think is uh enough capacity, uh the amplifier will sound smoother because there's less intermodulation, it'll also uh take on greater authority. And you know, so one of the problems I think class D had was that uh in the 20 years ago, people were saying, oh, this is so efficient, uh, you know, this is what we're gonna get away with.

1:06:53 Well, you have to put a really beefy supply in a Class D amplifier so that it doesn't uh uh the all the uh variation in power from idling at say 40 milliwatts or something uh and then going to full power of 200 watts. You have to make sure that supply has capacity to handle that uh without any voltage drops.

1:07:17 So yeah, that makes a big difference.

1:07:20 Question 10. What's the biggest misconception audiophiles have about solid state versus tube amplifiers, Michael?

1:07:29 Uh I I really don't know. I know I know that most people who like tubes will say solid state amplifiers sound like ice cubes, and most people who like solid state amplifiers will say tube amplifiers are for boobs, because that's what someone said here in the comments. And you know, the these prejudices are totally ridiculous because you have to listen to yourself and listen to an amplifier in conjunction with the loudspeaker.

1:07:55 And before you buy an amplifier, you should know the impedance characteristics of the loudspeaker and its efficiency and all of the electrical qualities of the speaker before you listen to an amplifier that might be good for your speaker and and vice versa. So, you know, the prejudices on both sides, it's like the analog versus the digital prejudice.

1:08:15 I mean, it's it's getting better now. I'm prejudiced against digital, it's getting much better now. I just reviewed a DAC that was the first one I could actually sit and listen to and wanted to come downstairs and turn it on and listen to it. Otherwise, I was all into records. So it's the same with these amplifiers.

1:08:33 You know, solid thing tube amplifiers, they're great ones of both kinds, and you have to go listen to them and listen to them in the context of your loudspeaker and your kind of music and not be prejudiced towards or against one or the other at this point.

1:08:49 I agree. I discourage people from being dogmatic. As you were saying before, the speaker matching to the amplifier is what's absolutely critical. Some people choose to start with an amplifier, like a low-power SET, and then find a speaker which is appropriate for that particular amplifier. Other people do it the other way around.

1:09:12 Ralph, the biggest misconceptions. Okay. The biggest misconceptions are threefold. First off, that the tubes are always colored. Second, that the solid state is always bright and harsh. And third, that uh that the uh a tube amplifier is going to favor a certain type of genre of music, whereas the solid state is going to favor some other genre of music.

1:09:40 The equipment is music agnostic. It absolutely does not care, it doesn't know what you're listening to, it's just simply doing its job. So that's uh those are the uh what I would say the three biggest misconceptions. The the important thing to understand about tube amplifier power is that it is more expensive than solid state.

1:10:01 That's that's about the size of it.

1:10:04 Why do you say that? There's been an enormous jump in the price of big boar solids there over the last few years. Uh we have a number of solids amps that a few years ago were quarter million dollars.

1:10:18unknown Yeah.

1:10:18 A couple of years ago, now a half a million dollars. Now there's a gold one that's a million dollars.

1:10:22 Wait, are you telling me that there aren't tube amplifiers that cost that much?

1:10:27 Not that I'm aware of.

1:10:28 Uh okay. Well, uh, there are there are there are very expensive tube amplifiers also. Uh you know, just the simple fact is though that tube amplifier power is very expensive. That is why there were horn speakers. Okay, because even in the 30s and 40s and 50s, tubes were expensive. So the speakers were designed to get the most out of the power that they possibly could.

1:10:53 That has not changed. So, you know, that that's the thing that you need to be aware of about tubes versus solid state as far as colorations. If you do things properly, it won't be colored. So you don't have to worry about that as long as you're careful. And, you know, again, I mean, not to say that there aren't solid state ants that are harsh and bright, but that doesn't mean that all of them are.

1:11:18 You know, uh, when you try to work with these generalizations, you're gonna get in trouble.

1:11:22 For sure. John, what do you think is a misconception people have about solid state electronics?

1:11:28 You know, I really don't have any opinion uh beyond what the other guys have said. Um, you know, uh yeah, I really don't have anything to offer uh to add. David, any thought there?

1:11:42 Well, I think uh uh uh Michael hit hit the the nail on that really. I I think personal bias is a really big one. And I have to admit, uh of course I've been going to shows for a long time, I've been doing this for a long time. And it used to be I walk into a room with uh you know hi-fi show, and if they were playing tubes, I you know, I said, Yeah, that sounds good.

1:12:06 If they have a solid state amplifier, yeah, I don't like it. I walk out, and uh so that persisted for you know some years, and then uh but I I don't do that anymore. Um frankly, the solid state amplifiers uh have gotten a lot better. I mean, my hearing, well, my hearing certainly isn't what it used to be, but I don't think that's really the whole reason.

1:12:32 I think uh you know the solid state amps have improved, and here's here's some of the reasons why. Um of course, gain bandwidth product, uh you know, bumping that up, which is you know been a tremendous factor in making uh you know better amplifiers. You know, if you're gonna use a lot of feedback, having the gain bandwidth product to do it, um, you know, that feedback is gonna do a much better job.

1:12:59 But there's some other things too. Um capacitor quality. Um when I when when I when solid state amplifiers first became available, they were dealing with the technology in capacitors that were uh for tube circuits. They were high impedance circuits, they didn't require much current and whatever. So, you know, if there was a fair amount of what they call ESR uh equivalent series resistance in the capacitors, so what?

1:13:29 Um now in comes solid state, direct coupling to the speakers. Now you need, you know, quite a bit of current out of the power supply and out of those capacitors, uh, you know, under transient conditions, which uh, you know, some fast wavefront form, you know, fast wavefronts there, uh the capacitors fail miserably.

1:13:53 And I think uh okay, but what what's a mis well, how does that relate to a misconception?

1:13:58 Um well the misconception uh came down to, as I say, personal bias. But uh if you uh you know can move away from that personal bias, which which I have, um you know, I'm just saying these are the reasons why I think that I can move away from that is the amplifiers have simply the solid state amps have gotten better.

1:14:29 Um and and I I think that's the bottom line. And there are a number of reasons, and you know, those are some of the ones.

1:14:38 My personal antidote to misconceptions is do not be dogmatic. There's no substitute for listening to components in your own system, and just decide what you like the way it sounds. Very great, gentlemen. Under the music segment, does anybody have music recommendations for us tonight?

1:14:57 I do.

1:14:58 Go ahead, Ralph.

1:15:00 All right, there's a local band in town called E. It's uh the band name is spelled I E, and unfortunately, there are a number of bands uh nationally that have that same name. The album I'm listening to is called Reverse Earth. Um and uh, you know, I think there's some material on there, Ron, that you might actually like.

1:15:22 Uh um it's uh heavily uh uh the the keyboard guy is excellent. And uh uh, but it's it's just really accessible, really well thought out, really beautiful stuff. Um so there's my musical. Oh, and it's available on LP. That's how I heard it.

1:15:42 Michael, what have you got for us?

1:15:44 Well, I just started listening to this uh I'm not the hugest bluegrass person, but um most of the bluegrass that I like is a hybrid kind of like thing, like uh this Dillard and Clark record. This is one of my favorite records ever, all time. But it's not really it's sort of bluegrass because it's got Doug Dillard, but it's kind of rock as it's got Gene Clark.

1:16:04 But this uh record just got reissued on first time on vinyl, I think. Is it yeah? So this is a bluegrass record, J.D. Crow, Tony Rice, Doyle Lawson, Bobby Hicks, Todd Phillips, the bluegrass album, and it's more pure bluegrass recorded in 1980. And I'm really enjoying the hell out of it. It sounds really great, too.

1:16:25 Just came out in a round of records. Great, a lot of picking, a lot of good picking, y'all. Anybody else?

1:16:36 David, John? I could I could I could offer some ideas here. I'm gonna take a different tact. Um, I'm gonna divide my music up into tools, tools of my trade. Um, this record was the one that I was using back in the I guess the 1990s to try and refine the sounds of my at the time transformer coupled uh tube amps.

1:17:07 And this string quartet, I could with my transformer coupled amplifiers I was making at the time, I could get maybe two of the instruments to sound convincing, but the other two were not. And I diddle around with the circuit and I'd pick up one of the other instruments, but I lose one that I had before, and it was very frustrating.

1:17:29 Um when I invented the Zotal amplifiers, I actually was trying to do something else, but I I came up with this concept which turned which has become the Zotal Amplifier, and uh the uh I thought it was the craziest idea ever. I'm using the Zotal Amplifier uses switching power supply.

1:17:52 David, we're on to music, we're past the engineering. Any other music recommendations?

1:17:56 Well, uh anyway, okay. I just want to say that yeah, once I got to that, all the instruments sounded right. Okay, so that's that's number one. Okay, number two, um, I don't know if you can see this. This is a collection of 1910 acoustic recordings. And uh this is a very valuable tool in listening to how the amplifier and speaker couple together.

1:18:25 If the coupling is good, and you know, and it's mostly comes onto the speaker, really. But if if things are working right, this is a delightful recording to listen to. It's well remastered uh from the old original acoustic recordings. If there's something wrong, this sounds nasty. You want to run from the room, the paint is peeling off the wall, and so on and so forth.

1:18:49 So, anyway, then it comes down to stuff that I just personally like to listen to. I have a big collection of open real tapes, musicals, okay, uh, operas, you know, particularly the well-known classics. I mean, you know, I just these are kind of my go-tos. Um, you know, some nice well-reported bands from way back.

1:19:14 Uh so anyway, those are those are my musical.

1:19:17 Very good. John, any music recommendations? Not particularly. I think kind of blue is kind of nice. I do enjoy that. And and I do like uh the old direct disc uh records. Uh I use those as my test references usually um because I'm used to them. But uh they are out of date and uh you know they're hard to find these days.

1:19:38 Well, are you talking about the uh Sheffield Lab Directed Disc? What are you talking about?

1:19:42 Well, uh Sheffield and uh Crystal Clear.

1:19:45unknown Uh-huh.

1:19:45 Deutsche Chromophone just made one. Deutsche Chromophone just made a directed disc recording of also Spracked Zarathustra at the Berlin Philharmonie. They had two lates. They set up two Lads, they Drake schlipped two LADs over there so they could switch records. They timed it exactly for life performance.

1:20:03 I haven't heard it yet, but it's supposed to be spectacular. I played the Bruckner 7th that DG released from Directed Disc. I played it last night for the first time in a couple of years. It's un that's an unbelievable record. If you have that record, if you can find a copy of that, it's unbeliev unbelievably phenomenal.

1:20:20 And my system is that much better now than it was a couple of years ago. It sounds that much more spectacular.

1:20:27 Gentlemen, this has been great. Thank you very much for joining.

1:20:32 Thank you. It's been fun.

1:20:34 Have a good night, everybody. Bye bye.

1:20:37 Bye bye. I had sat down today, it was terrible.