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The Surprisingly Long Life of the Vacuum Tube

construction-physics.com

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Re: The Surprisingly Long Life of the Vacuum Tube

#31

Post by cogman10 »

utopcell wrote: post #22
n_kr wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a guitarist with over 30 years of playing, and owner of many tube and non-tube amps, I disagree. Even experienced guitarist cannot reliably distinguish between transistor and tube circuits in a blind test. Having said that, if only the knowledge of playing a tube amp gives someone a better experience, even if its not empirically distinguishable, thats a perfectly valid reason to prefer it.

Minor correction: An experienced guitarist cannot distinguish between "captured" amps, or amps which at their core simulate vacuum tubes at the software level. I definitely can't tell the two apart. However, I believe it is easy to distinguish a pure vacuum tube-based circuit from a JFET/MOSFET-based one. There do exist vacuum tube replacements like the AMT 12AX7WS [1] or Jet City's RetroVales [2], but I would argue…

Not who you are responding to, but I'd say the point I was making wasn't that the sound wasn't different (though, the differences are almost certainly not large enough that most people can tell the difference). But rather that if that exact sound profile is desirable, it's easy to reproduce with transistors alone.

The two products you list are proof of that.

Re: The Surprisingly Long Life of the Vacuum Tube

#32

Post by WalterBright »

adrian_b wrote: post #10
boring-human wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the cost of the gold-plated audiophile cables to wire it...

Vacuum-tube amplifiers are not in the same class with techniques that are unlikely to have any perceptible influence on what you hear. Among amplifiers that are not perfectly neutral, vacuum-tube amplifiers subjectively seem more pleasant. Moreover, while an electronic audio amplifier made with modern components can be made perfectly neutral when terminated on a resistive load, i.e. it can reproduce any input signal…

In related news, replacing stock parts on your engine with chrome plated ones makes your car race-ready.

Re: The Surprisingly Long Life of the Vacuum Tube

#33

Post by boring-human »

WalterBright wrote: post #32
adrian_b wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vacuum-tube amplifiers are not in the same class with techniques that are unlikely to have any perceptible influence on what you hear. Among amplifiers that are not perfectly neutral, vacuum-tube amplifiers subjectively seem more pleasant. Moreover, while an electronic audio amplifier made with modern components can be made perfectly neutral when terminated on a resistive load, i.e. it can reproduce any input signal…

In related news, replacing stock parts on your engine with chrome plated ones makes your car race-ready.

This would have been better as a "spoiler alert."

Re: The Surprisingly Long Life of the Vacuum Tube

#34

Post by aidenn0 »

cogman10 wrote: post #11
chromacity wrote: post #9

I think this is an odd article. It mixes together a variety of technologies that have little in common (gas discharge tubes, CRTs). It doesn't really say anything about the operation of vacuum tubes, their advantages, or disadvantages. And doesn't even really support its own thesis. The reign of vacuum tubes lasted for less than the reign of the transistor and is in no way unusual in the world of electronics. There a…

There's really not benefits to vacuum tubes pretty much anywhere. The only place I can think of where they are superior (which may not be true anymore) is high power transmission in, for example, radio and radar towers. In all other applications transistors will be superior. Especially because any problem from a transistor can be fixed by adding more transistors until the problem is gone or imperceptible. The audioph…

> There's really not benefits to vacuum tubes pretty much anywhere. The only place I can think of where they are superior (which may not be true anymore) is high power transmission in, for example, radio and radar towers.

Tubes are still fairly common in 62 dBm HF ham amplifiers, but solid-state amplifiers are available now, so it's only a matter of time there.

> In all other applications transistors will be superior. Especially because any problem from a transistor can be fixed by adding more transistors until the problem is gone or imperceptible.

This is often, but not always, true. E.g. parallel MOSFETs operating in triode mode are subject to thermal-runaway.

> The audiophile purists are using pseudo-intelectualism to justify a superiority complex. They frequently fail double blind tests whenever push comes to shove. The most famous example of this was them being incapable of telling the difference between a coat-hanger and a premium cable.

Tube amps often will be audibly different in a double-blind because many of them have high harmonic distortion (as compared to a transistor amp). Most people think this is a Bad Thing, but audiophiles call it a "warm sound."

Re: The Surprisingly Long Life of the Vacuum Tube

#35

Post by utopcell »

cogman10 wrote: post #31
utopcell wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minor correction: An experienced guitarist cannot distinguish between "captured" amps, or amps which at their core simulate vacuum tubes at the software level. I definitely can't tell the two apart. However, I believe it is easy to distinguish a pure vacuum tube-based circuit from a JFET/MOSFET-based one. There do exist vacuum tube replacements like the AMT 12AX7WS [1] or Jet City's RetroVales [2], but I would argue…

Not who you are responding to, but I'd say the point I was making wasn't that the sound wasn't different (though, the differences are almost certainly not large enough that most people can tell the difference). But rather that if that exact sound profile is desirable, it's easy to reproduce with transistors alone. The two products you list are proof of that.

I see your point, though strictly speaking, the two products I mentioned mimic 12AX7 tubes, which are preamp tubes. I'm not aware of E2E designs that also mimic power tubes.

Re: The Surprisingly Long Life of the Vacuum Tube

#36

Post by anikom15 »

cogman10 wrote: post #11
chromacity wrote: post #9

I think this is an odd article. It mixes together a variety of technologies that have little in common (gas discharge tubes, CRTs). It doesn't really say anything about the operation of vacuum tubes, their advantages, or disadvantages. And doesn't even really support its own thesis. The reign of vacuum tubes lasted for less than the reign of the transistor and is in no way unusual in the world of electronics. There a…

There's really not benefits to vacuum tubes pretty much anywhere. The only place I can think of where they are superior (which may not be true anymore) is high power transmission in, for example, radio and radar towers. In all other applications transistors will be superior. Especially because any problem from a transistor can be fixed by adding more transistors until the problem is gone or imperceptible. The audioph…

The benefit is that they are incredibly simple to build.

Re: The Surprisingly Long Life of the Vacuum Tube

#40

Post by otherme123 »

n_kr wrote: post #16
bregma wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. There is nothing in the digitally sampled and modelled world comparable to plugging your guitar into a hot over-driven tube amp and showing the feedback who's the boss. Pure analog transistors don't give that luscious even harmonic distortion and usually just clip like a meth-addled dog stylist in a poodle-grooming station.

As a guitarist with over 30 years of playing, and owner of many tube and non-tube amps, I disagree. Even experienced guitarist cannot reliably distinguish between transistor and tube circuits in a blind test. Having said that, if only the knowledge of playing a tube amp gives someone a better experience, even if its not empirically distinguishable, thats a perfectly valid reason to prefer it.

Maybe recently, with impulse responses and Fractal Axes-like machines, you can get any sound from silicon. But in the 90's the difference between silicon guitarrists (Dimebag Darrell or Chuck Schuldiner) and tubes was clearly noticeable.

Also, some 90's lower end amps with a valve in the prev sounded way better than similar priced amps that opted for pure solid state, at least for metal music and high distortion. For the clean channel the difference between them was minor.

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