Tube gear obsolete??

[ack]

I thought the crux of Ralph's position with using feedback is that it adds odd order harmonic distortion. I don't 'get' his use of the term 'strawman argument' for anything I said either.

I got that too: feedback affects distortion; we get that, we know that. I don't yet understand what affects a SS amp's output impedance - presumably so widely that would affect its power output to a significant degree - and feedback in particular. The discussion was around *output power*, not sure why feedback came into the game and why we veered off to distortion.

 

[Steve Williams]

I got that too: feedback affects distortion; we get that, we know that. I don't yet understand what affects a SS amp's output impedance - presumably so widely that would affect its power output to a significant degree - and feedback in particular. The discussion was around *output power*, not sure why feedback came into the game and why we veered off to distortion.

especially since you guys are now way OT. Perhaps this debate could go on in another thread

Poor Ralph ventures into this thread as a long time manufacturer of tube amps so presumably his comments deserve some authority and then he gets pulled into this. Mark the strawman argument is valid here. Lets stay OT or start another thread

 

[Andre Marc]

especially since you guys are now way OT. Perhaps this debate could go on in another thread

Poor Ralph ventures into this thread as a long time manufacturer of tube amps so presumably his comments deserve some authority and then he gets pulled into this. Mark the strawman argument is valid here. Lets stay OT or start another thread

This is quite amazing. One poster has been designing and manufacturing gorgeous sounding amps
for many years, raved about by customers and in professional reviews, and is surrounded by pseudo engineers
who have never designed or built a commercially viable product in their lives. Astonishing.

On top of that Ralph has distinctly great taste in music.

 

[jazdoc]

This is quite amazing. One poster has been designing and manufacturing gorgeous sounding amps
for many years, raved about by customers and in professional reviews, and is surrounded by pseudo engineers
who have never designed or built a commercially viable product in their lives. Astonishing.

On top of that Ralph has distinctly great taste in music.

Anyone cool enough to play "Satanic Majesties Request" at RMAF is OK by me!

 

[Andre Marc]

Anyone cool enough to play "Satanic Majesties Request" at RMAF is OK by me!

Yes sir! Funny, Art Dudley called that the worst Stones album ever...???

 

[mep]

First we have this:

MEP, you simply have no idea of what you are talking about. And you are a few months older than me, so I have to assume audio is not your first interest.

And then we have this:

FWIW this is not a scientific article but that does not make it false. That is another Logical Fallacy known as Personal Attack, You have no idea what peers might think, the comment is simply intended to discredit without proof of any sort.

Was not your behavior in the first paragraph I quoted above a “personal attack?” As for your second paragraph, I asked if this paper had ever been published in a scientific journal and I gave my opinion that I didn’t think it would pass a peer review. I do have an opinion what peers might think and that is what I stated. Could I be wrong? Of course I could be wrong. Submit the paper as written to AES and if it gets published I will pay you $100. If it doesn’t, you can pay me $100. I’ll put my money where my opinion is and since according to you I have no idea what I’m talking about, it should be an easy bet for you to collect on. The only thing I ask is that we both send the payment to Steve Williams so he can hold the money in escrow until after the bet is over because I want to collect my money at the end.

You are quick to throw out “strawman argument” and “personal attack” when I feel neither term is appropriate based on what I said. Speaking of personal attack, here is your next volley:

It appears you read the article but did not understand it despite it being written with the minimum amount of math and layman's terms so it would be easy to grasp.

In other words, I’m so dumb that I can’t comprehend a simple article that is easy to grasp. I got it (I think).

Next we have:

And you still persist with the Strawman. I will point out what the Strawman/weakness of your arguement is: I never said anywhere that an amp with high output impedance could have flat frequency response on any speaker!!!

Let’s clear this up right now. Here is exactly what you said in post #321:

The Power Paradigm is a means wherein an amplifier of high output impedance can also have a flat, uncolored presentation.

To which I responded:

You are never going to have a flat, uncolored "presentation" from an amplifier with a high output impedance into the majority of all loudspeakers known to man whose impedance changes across the audio bandwidth.

I stand by the statement I made above because it’s true. I never said that you were claiming you could pull off your flat frequency response with “any” speaker so you are trying to add some high-order distortion to the output of your response which like most high-order distortion is very unpleasant. Does that make it a reverse strawman argument that you are trying to use against me?

How many speakers are in current production that will allow your amplifier(s) to have a truly “flat, uncolored presentation”? And then I suppose we will have to parse the definition of what “flat” and “uncolored” means because again, no speaker I’m aware of acts as pure resistance at 4, 8, or 16 ohms. The real truth is that there are speakers that are going to play nicer in the thermionic box (I didn’t want to say sandbox because I might get accused of saying you are using SS devices) when driven by tube amps with a high output impedance which you have already mentioned. That doesn’t mean they will be truly flat and uncolored though unless we parse the definitions of those two words.

I *did* also point out that Soundstage.com did some measurements and confirmed what I am saying. Look for the MA-1 review published on their site.

I took your advice and did a search on the review of the MA-1 that was published in Soundstage.com along with taking a peek at the measurements. Here is the link for others who care to see how this amp measures in the real-world:

http://www.soundstagemagazine.com/measurements/atmasphere_ma1_mkii2/

I highly encourage other people to read the review and then read the measurements and then please get back to me and tell me I was out to lunch when I made my original statement: “You are never going to have a flat, uncolored "presentation" from an amplifier with a high output impedance into the majority of all loudspeakers known to man whose impedance changes across the audio bandwidth.” Also, take a look at the output power available from this amp at 4 ohms, 8 ohms, and 16 ohms at 1% THD. It’s not close to being flat, but I guess I don’t know what flat is because as was inferred, I’m about as sharp as a bowling ball. This amp doesn’t approach its rated output power except at 16 ohms at 10% THD.

 

[mep]

especially since you guys are now way OT. Perhaps this debate could go on in another thread

Poor Ralph ventures into this thread as a long time manufacturer of tube amps so presumably his comments deserve some authority and then he gets pulled into this. Mark the strawman argument is valid here. Lets stay OT or start another thread

Fine-Put what I just posted in a new thread because I'm tired of the nonsense. I vehemently disagree that I used a strawman argument and a careful reading will show the reverse to be true.

 

[NorthStar]

I think what this whole enchilada comes down to is: What kind of sound gets you off?

Years ago I worked for Audible Illusions so I had a Modulus preamp at home. I decided to do a straight wire bypass test on it. I had two of the jacks on the back of the Modulus wired together for the straight wire and I used my transistor phono stage directly into my amp (no volume control). There were simply two interconnects between the phono stage and the amp. Another set of jacks on the Modulus had two resistors on the input that padded the signal the same amount as the tube gain. I ran that resistor pad directly into the grid of the tube line stage (no switches, pots or anything). The output went through a Wondercap and then right to the output jacks. The transistor phono stage going directly through the two interconnects sounded good......but going through the single tube line stage sounded outrageously better. It plain sounded bigger, warmer, more real, more everything. No way anyone would have preferred the "straight wire". However, all this great sound was just the added coloration of the tube line stage.....plain and simple.

There was an article in the old FI magazine where they described a listening session: First they had someone stand in between the speakers and sing. Then they played a CD of him singing the same song through a system that had a solid stage amp (Aleph 3?). The CD sounded good and pretty close to him singing live. Then they inserted a single ended Class A tube amp for the solid state amp and everyone came in their shorts! Wow, you could now hear his tonsils....its so alive....its so pretty....its so big....it sooo.....everything. Then they realized that this sound was better than when he sang live! Yes, better than live!!!! (I might have some details wrong...its been a long time since I read that article.....but you get the idea).

It is not that all tube equipment makes the sound better (more liguid, sweeter, smoother, creamier, bigger, more space, etc.). Some tube stuff is quite transparent. However, tube gear is really easy to make sound good whereas transistor gear is unforgiving. If you do not pay attention to every little thing in a transistor amp then you will hear brightness, closed down sound, graininess, glassiness, peakiness, etc. You need to upgrade the fuse, damp the heatsinks (how many transistor amps have damped heatsinks?.....not many....if you run your fingernail down a heatsink and it goes zing...then you are adding zinginess to the sound of the amp. Transistors, regulators and diodes need to be damped if they are sitting up in the air on leads and not held to something. Binding posts are veiling and some are downright horrible. Some diodes sound really bad (fast, soft recover are nice). Then of course there is feedback......too much and you get a closed down sound relative to what you can get without feedback or with a small amount. If you have a really fast tweaky circuit like the Job then a small amount of feedback is OK. You have to get the square wave really steep and clean with no overshoot....then you get sweet extended highs. High open loop bandwidth is really cool.

If we all had access to amazing master tapes then it would not matter so much what we played them through (great solid state, tubes or hybrid). But we don't. There is almost always some harmonic richness and openness that is missing from our recordings. So it makes sense to have at least one tube piece in the chain to sweeten it up. Check out Srajen on 6 moons. He is always talking about the synergy you need to get the sound that "he likes". Usually it is a combo of passive or transisitor pre and a tube amp or a tube preamp with a solid state amp.

Do you really want to know how transparent your amp is? Very simple. Just do a straight wire bypass test on it. My friend Sieg Modes was doing this back in the 70s. You simply insert your amp in between a preamp and another amp and turn the preamp down the amount of gain of your amp. You need to mount rca jacks on the output of the amp. Remember, an amp is simply a gain stage. If it cannot drive the high impedance of an amp without coloration it certainly is not going to do any better driving a 2-8 ohm speaker. All arguments about transparency would end if someone were to do this. Transparency means.....no sound of its own. A great "sounding" amp is not necessarily transparent. How come no manufacturer in the history of audio has ever done this? Could it be that we don't really want to know? I mean....."I paid $50,000 for that color!?!"

I personally feel that if you tweak each technology to its max then both solid stage and tubes will get you dang close to "no sound". It used to be that transistor amps were considered a no no.....but in the last 10 years transistor amps have made great strides: Dartzeel, Soulution, Constellation, Technical Brain, Goldmund/Job, Ncore class D, etc. etc.

So, we are stuck with our "colors".....since all amps sound different then only one amp could be totally "transparent". I know, its the one you own....he he. We play at the highest level we can afford (or tweak to) and we pick the colors that match our other colors and if we are smart and keen we get some synergy and sound that is amazing. I think this is the best we can do right now. Enjoy you color!

Hi Ric, I truly enjoyed reading your post just above (I've read it twice, and with particular attention).
It does sound true (right) to me, and it has the proper color, with solid rings attached to it. ...And I didn't notice any typo either.

By the way, are you thee Rick Schultz ? ...The cable man, and much much more.

 

[zztop7]

The Rick Schultz of Peanuts fame passed away years ago.
zz

 

[NorthStar]

The Rick Schultz of Peanuts fame passed away years ago.
zz

No no, not that one.

 

[Steve Williams]

The Rick Schultz of Peanuts fame passed away years ago.
zz

.And I didn't notice any typo either.

I agree and I want Bob to stop pointing out members' typos in their posts. We aren't in school anymore so we don't need nor appreciate when you point out and list typos

 

[ack]

I would very much like to further explore the issue of Constant Power since it was brought up, and in particular in reference to SS amps in a negative way - it ties very well to this very short thread by DonH50 and especially posts 1 and 13, where #1 includes a SS amp with somewhat poor output impedance (0.1-1ohm), and #13 involving a SS amp with a much lower output impedance range (0.04-0.16). In those cases, and with the values that Don used and my hypothetical varying load of 1-16 ohms again, there would be some power variance with the amp in post 1 (because its output impedance actually rises to 1ohm as a function of the input frequency), and negligible with the amp in post 13. However, considering that in most cases a transformer-coupled tube amp would not even be able to reach that low 1ohm output impedance (never mind 0.1) of said SS counterpart in post 1, if that SS amplifier is not providing constant power with speaker X then surely said tube amp isn't either with speaker X; moreover, Don's graphs clearly showcase frequency response disparities between SS and tube amps of various output impedances, as expected. I hope we are in agreement here. Otherwise, I hope I am missing something and that somehow SS amps' output impedances vary much more widely than what I think and what Don used. The bottom line is that I find references to lack of constant power and SS amps quite a bit misleading.

Feel free to move to another thread and correct me.

 

[NorthStar]

It was all in good humor Steve, all in good humor. As you wish, I'll keep that side of my sense of humor out of your site, no problemo, you can relax.

 

[mep]

I would very much like to further explore the issue of Constant Power since it was brought up, and in particular in reference to SS amps in a negative way - it ties very well to this very short thread by DonH50 and especially posts 1 and 13, where #1 includes a SS amp with somewhat poor output impedance (0.1-1ohm), and #13 involving a SS amp with a much lower output impedance range (0.04-0.16). In those cases, and with the values that Don used and my hypothetical varying load of 1-16 ohms again, there would be some power variance with the amp in post 1 (because its output impedance actually rises to 1ohm as a function of the input frequency), and negligible with the amp in post 13. However, considering that in most cases a transformer-coupled tube amp would not even be able to reach that low 1ohm output impedance (never mind 0.1) of said SS counterpart in post 1, if that SS amplifier is not providing constant power with speaker X then surely said tube amp isn't either with speaker X; moreover, Don's graphs clearly showcase frequency response disparities between SS and tube amps of various output impedances, as expected. I hope we are in agreement here. Otherwise, I hope I am missing something and that somehow SS amps' output impedances vary much more widely than what I think and what Don used. The bottom line is that I find references to lack of constant power and SS amps quite a bit misleading.

Feel free to move to another thread and correct me.

I'm going to start a new thread called "Constant Power" so we can sort facts from fiction and I would like your post here moved over to it.

 

[Steve Williams]

I'm going to start a new thread called "Constant Power" so we can sort facts from fiction and I would like your post here moved over to it.

let me know if any others Mark

 

[Atmasphere]

my opinion[/B] that I didn’t think it would pass a peer review. I do have an opinion what peers might think and that is what I stated. Could I be wrong? Of course I could be wrong. Submit the paper as written to AES and if it gets published I will pay you $100. If it doesn’t, you can pay me $100. I’ll put my money where my opinion is and since according to you I have no idea what I’m talking about, it should be an easy bet for you to collect on. The only thing I ask is that we both send the payment to Steve Williams so he can hold the money in escrow until after the bet is over because I want to collect my money at the end.

You are quick to throw out “strawman argument” and “personal attack” when I feel neither term is appropriate based on what I said. Speaking of personal attack, here is your next volley:




In other words, I’m so dumb that I can’t comprehend a simple article that is easy to grasp. I got it (I think).

Next we have:



Let’s clear this up right now. Here is exactly what you said in post #321:



To which I responded:



I stand by the statement I made above because it’s true. I never said that you were claiming you could pull off your flat frequency response with “any” speaker so you are trying to add some high-order distortion to the output of your response which like most high-order distortion is very unpleasant. Does that make it a reverse strawman argument that you are trying to use against me?

How many speakers are in current production that will allow your amplifier(s) to have a truly “flat, uncolored presentation”? And then I suppose we will have to parse the definition of what “flat” and “uncolored” means because again, no speaker I’m aware of acts as pure resistance at 4, 8, or 16 ohms. The real truth is that there are speakers that are going to play nicer in the thermionic box (I didn’t want to say sandbox because I might get accused of saying you are using SS devices) when driven by tube amps with a high output impedance which you have already mentioned. That doesn’t mean they will be truly flat and uncolored though unless we parse the definitions of those two words.



I took your advice and did a search on the review of the MA-1 that was published in Soundstage.com along with taking a peek at the measurements. Here is the link for others who care to see how this amp measures in the real-world:

http://www.soundstagemagazine.com/measurements/atmasphere_ma1_mkii2/

I highly encourage other people to read the review and then read the measurements and then please get back to me and tell me I was out to lunch when I made my original statement: “You are never going to have a flat, uncolored "presentation" from an amplifier with a high output impedance into the majority of all loudspeakers known to man whose impedance changes across the audio bandwidth.” Also, take a look at the output power available from this amp at 4 ohms, 8 ohms, and 16 ohms at 1% THD. It’s not close to being flat, but I guess I don’t know what flat is because as was inferred, I’m about as sharp as a bowling ball. This amp doesn’t approach its rated output power except at 16 ohms at 10% THD.

The Personal Attack is a form of logical fallacy as outlined on the Nizkor Project page. Scoll down on that page and you will find the link describing it.

Here is the complete review of the MA-1 from 11 years ago, since we are on the subject:

http://www.soundstage.com/revequip/atmasphere_ma1ii2.htm

This is the link you should actually look at- which is the whole review including measurements. Scroll down and look at the manufacturer's response. The reason the amp did not make the power, BTW, was because Bascomb failed to supply the amplifier with the required AC line voltage (120V), and also because 2 tubes had bad sections. He assumed that the voltage coming out of his variac would be the same at full power as it was at idle. Being a class A2 amplifier, the amp does draw more power at full output, and the voltage drop across his test gear limited the final output power.

But what you will also see is a diagram based on their measurements that shows the constant output power response of the amp. When Bascomb did the measurements he only showed output voltage and did not calculate the associated current. When you include the current you get see that the power stays fairly linear.

This does not work with all speakers, although it did seem to work with the reviewer's speakers and also, interestingly, Bascomb King's own speakers. This is one of the phenomena where the amp seems to measure poorly but then seems to sound just fine (this is a common phenomena in the pages of Stereophile...). We are not always measuring the right things, a point I made several pages back.

I provided a list of speakers (some quite well-known) that work fine with amps built around the Power Paradigm, which includes most SETs or any tube amp with little or no feedback.

 

[sickophant]

It's like you're both yelling at a brick wall from either side.

 

[mep]

let me know if any others Mark

I want to know what happened to the new thread I took the time to write and post. It has seemingly disappeared and I don't know why-but I want to know why.

 

[cjfrbw]

I want to know what happened to the new thread I took the time to write and post. It has seemingly disappeared and I don't know why-but I want to know why.

That's called "Super Moderator's Unequal Power Distribution."

 

[mep]

That's called "Super Moderator's Unequal Power Distribution."

Yeah, well, I was asked to start a new thread and I did take the time to write it and include a bunch of facts and then someone wiped it out and didn't have the decency to tell my why. I hardly think it's fair that someone twists my words around to something I never said and then uses the made-up words to say I created a strawman argument when nothing could be further from the truth. Someone also accused me of being younger than they were which would explain my lack of knowledge until they found out I was older. Someone held up the great Radiotron Designer's Handbook as the secret bible and assumed I never heard of it let alone owned one. So I just wanted to discuss facts, but the nonsense I have been exposed to only goes one way, and it's not mine.