It is interesting. When you talk to a lot of audiophiles, many conversations go like "You gotta have tubes. At least in your preamp." But rarely you hear people for calling for tubes in their cd players and DACs.
There are plenty of DACs with tube output stages out there. It is deliberate coloration of the source, and not my choice, but it might make your ears happy.
Tim
Tim-So all small signal tubes run in pure Class A circuit have deliberate colorations that are absent from the SS equivalent circuit or are you saying that designers that use small signal tubes intentionally design a non-linear circuit in order to impart a certain sound?
The latter. While I believe that one could design a transparent tube output stage for a DAC, I can't think of a good reason to do it, so I believe the marketing and user descriptions that attribute a "smoother" more "musical," "analog-like" tone to these otherwise digital devices.
Tim
There are plenty of DACs with tube output stages out there. It is deliberate coloration of the source, and not my choice, but it might make your ears happy.
Tim
Tim-The reason to design a transparent tube output stage for a DAC is that some people prefer sound that has been amplified by tubes. I respect people who wouldn't touch tubes with a 10' pole and think that SS is the holy grail. There is something for everybody in this wacky hobby and we all need to respect each other at the end of the day. And by the way, I'm enjoying digital much better since I downloaded Foobar. I think it sounds much the better than Media Monkey and I have no idea why it should be so. I can appreciate digital much better now than I could before. I'm beginning to feel like I didn't waste my money building my digital music server.
Tim-By defintion, all amplifiers create a sound. I'm not talking about using tubes to alter the recorded signal, just amplify it. You are making way too much of what I said, but what you said sounds good until you realize it was distorted.I respect your preferences too, Mark, but if the output stage, tube, SS or metaphysical, creates a sound you prefer instead of reproducing the recorded signal without audibly altering it, it is, by definition, not transparent. It's not semantics to believe that a component can have a "sound" and be transparent at once, it is a refusal to accept one's choice as a preference without dressing it up in the language of objective accuracy. That is what I have a bit of trouble respecting.
Tim
If I had to bet on a null test winner, it would be the integrated circuit.......how about you?
Tom
Cable measurements are pretty much proven to show that there are differences between cables...see some threads here on WBF, and thus certainly if they are big enough (and they can be) then they are audible, and I have heard it and measured it, there really is no magic there!
As far as no conclusive studies on low values, that is where as I have said in the past, stereo or mono production, via a speaker(s) trying to bring the event to you instead of you to the event (as in binaural) might just not work all that well as an illusion, and so, for example, some prefer the sound of SET amplification despite the distortion components. With binaural, I want the best accuracy possible because of the way binaural is more true to the way we actually experience music at an event.
Tom
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