This sounds ill conceived in the extreme. The SET, though measurably more colored, reveals micro-dynamics, harmonics, and detail that was on the recording. Details masked by cleaner solid state. Just prima facie this makes no sense. SS amps if good are measurably cleaner, and will reveal quite well what is on the recording while a dirtier amp by measurement will by definition muddle and cover up the finest details or create artifacts which may be perceived as detail when it actually is added artifact. Any surprise that an amp adding subtle artifacts may sound like more is happening than a clean one?
And yet here we are, 38 pages and 381 posts on, trading ill-conceived rhetoric back and forth with people apropos single ended triode amplifiers who:
...have only heard a small number of them.
So here's my suggestion: Go hear a bunch more, and in you can, some directly-heated triode amplifiers operating linearly well below their power output producing a tiny amount of second-order harmonic distortion and no higher order distortion into some copasetic speakers.
Then tell me about your experience, rather than you opinion. If it's impossible for you to conceive that an amp that measures well may in fact suppress and kill off some of what's on the recording in order for it to measure well, then you'll have a lifetime of musical bliss available to you from cheap solid state the rest of your life.
Look dude, I'm not picking on you. And to be honest, after 50 posts, I'm already out for the count.
Given that life is short and forums are no respecter of just how much time can be consumed by circular arguments on the internet with persons of variable life experience, I'll make this my last post - for my sake, if not for yours.
So I'll end with some context.
It was around the time that I migrated from a full-blown Naim system to a Wadia 581, a VTL 6.5/MB-450 combo, Dynaudio C2's, Finite Element Racks and footers, and Nordost and Wireworld cabling in a large acoustically-treated and dedicated room that I fell out of love with hi-fi. Six figures is a lot to spend on any depreciating asset, but that was the cost of nirvana, apparently. Not only that, I had also built and funded a boutique recording studio filled with expensive mics, outboard, AD and DA converters and modified active ATCs with various collections of vintage drums kits, guitars and amps.
Having loved music all my life, sung in the choir, played in wind bands, jazz bands, brass bands, orchestras, pop bands, rock bands, electronica acts and progressive metals bands, I had made my passion my career, and begun the upwardly-mobile ascent toward being a full-time producer/engineer, owning the most select gear put to use in the service of the most discriminating of clients.
Only, I didn't own it. The bank did. Overnight, the credit bubble with which my home and business were fuelled burst, along with the hopes and dreams of my clients - talented though they were. We were forced to liquidate everything and came up short to the tune of multiples of thousands of dollars.
I was forced to consider whether my chosen career was really all that sustainable, built as it were on the illusion of liquidity. I decided it was not, and went back to university to emerge into the wonderful world of advertising, built on the illusion of limitless consumption.
And it was during that time that I began to ask some critical questions. Though I had owned many fine hi-fi systems from many fine manufacturers, I had often wondered why when listening to music through the large collection of audiophile-approved components in an audiophile-approved room did I constantly find my attention wandering? I would often catch myself playing guitar or reading a book while listening. No bad thing in itself, but I wondered: Was I bored? I had owned many and various iterations of solid-state and valves, owned vinyl and digital - in this sense I was fairly agnostic. If "high-fidelity" exists beyond Platonic idealism, then I can say I had attempted to realise it, only to come up short.
It was not long after that I discovered idler drive turntables, low-powered SETs and horns. I was riveted. I began connecting again to the music. To the songs. To the lyrics. If music made by human beings as an act of volitional expression and intention can be captured, then surely that same expression and intention can be played back, no? Wasn't that the reason I had become a producer - to capture human creativity and emotion via the medium of sound? If so, why had the six-figure system in the dedicated room been so lacklustre, so… flaccid in those areas? Don't get me wrong - it
sounded great. But it couldn't deliver the expression, intention, purpose, emotion and meaning of the music in the way the idler drive/SET/horn system could. Conceptually it departed from the idealism perpetuated by certain factions - subjectively it was revelatory. If there was anything that reproduced the gestalt of hearing musicians creating art in real-time that I frequently experienced in the bands I played in and the artists I recorded, this came the closest.
And so, I began making plans for an all-out assault on a state-of-the-art idler drive/SET/horn-based system with bespoke transformers and field-coil power supplies, all hand-wired with silver. Having learned some simple lessons from the financial crisis we had been co-conspirators in, we had decided to prohibit ourselves from becoming indebted to another party and would save for whatever we wanted. This proved felicitous in that I was making amazing amounts of money from freelancing in advertising. My work was good. People liked it. I became successful and people liked it more. Soon the work became a tidal wave of dollars lashing the shores of our sun-kissed lives, and we rode it all the way to the bank.
However, in the midst of this saga we had introduced three beautiful little children. They were born so perfect and well-formed I was amazed that less than three minutes of my time and energy could produce such wonders. (Ok, ok… less than two minutes.) We liked them a lot. The problem was I wasn't seeing much of them, nor my wife who bore them. Working six and seven day weeks will do that. Sure, the money was nice. It was great, and yet…
So in the year that I turned 39 I began to reflect on our decidedly first-world situation. We had everything we could want in abundance and no time to enjoy it. We had introduced children who needed us yet I was never around to be needed. So we made The Decision.
We sold everything and spared nothing. We used the money to move away from our very expensive apartment in our very expensive city and moved thousands of miles to rural France for a simpler life. I took less work and made less money. We had none of the things we previously considered essential to our well being, and yet discovered that in our marriage, our children and the time that we had now freed up for ourselves we actually had everything. Suddenly the very expensive hand-wound transformers I wanted seemed… redundant. If having tungar power supplies for field-coil drivers in hand-crafted horns meant spending less time together as a family, then I would gladly do without.
I still love music. My wife (a flautist) and our children (yet to choose instruments for themselves) love music too. We listen to it all the time. But I'm much less concerned as to what its played on. For now, at least, we've found contentment in being a family who are not tied to expensive things and the concomitant need to fund them by working 24/7. An idler drive turntable, boutique single-ended directly heated triode amps and horns may indeed find themselves sharing our living room one day (or maybe a Devialet and some LS3/5a's will - who knows?), but regardless, I remain convinced the future welfare of our family will remain joyfully and musically intact.
This is a good forum, and I have no doubt it will be better without me. It's been a pleasant distraction from real life but for me, it's run its course. At the very least, my family will appreciate me not staring into my Mac any more than I need to. Shalom.