Do you prefer solid state or tubes...
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I worked for Harman/Kardon in the '70s. When a new product was in development, periodically, they would have the "golden ears," listen to it and render their opinion. It was like listening to wine snobs describe wine. My hearing was good then, I couldn't tell the difference. It must have had an effect, because their products sold well then, and today.
Even if there was a subtle difference between a well designed tube amplifier and a well designed solid state amplifier if you are over 30 years old you are kidding yourself if you think your ears are capable of hearing the difference. If you are over 40 the issue borders on the absurd.
A somewhat important difference is that solid state devices are low impedance compared to tubes (has little to do with sound quality) which means they are direct coupled to the speakers (speakers are low impedance devices) whereas tubes are high impedance and need a transformer to match the impedance of the speakers. The failure mode of solid state devices is short circuit which means the full output of the amplifiers DC power supply is dumped into the speaker coil. Speaker coils have very low resistance and as such do not like DC and your very expensive speaker coil goes up in a little puff of smoke.
This is a non-problem with tubes as the failure mode is an open circuit and even in the unlikely event of a short there is a transformer between the tubes and the speakers. Transformers do not pass DC.. Some people put protective devices like fuses between the solid state amplifier and the speaker and hope that the fuse will blow faster than the speaker coil.
Next is the issue of vinyl media vs digital (CD's for example or some other digital storage device such as ipod). Vinyl is soft and a phono stylus has a diamond (think really, really hard) tip. No matter how low the phono arm force is to make contact with the vinyl audio grooves, the vinyl degrades with each playing. Digital has zero degradation no matter how many time you play it.
Why anyone wants to go back to the snap, crackle and pop if vinyl beats me — perhaps if one of you guys like vinyl you can dial my number using your rotary dial phone and tell my why.
A somewhat important difference is that solid state devices are low impedance compared to tubes (has little to do with sound quality) which means they are direct coupled to the speakers (speakers are low impedance devices) whereas tubes are high impedance and need a transformer to match the impedance of the speakers. The failure mode of solid state devices is short circuit which means the full output of the amplifiers DC power supply is dumped into the speaker coil. Speaker coils have very low resistance and as such do not like DC and your very expensive speaker coil goes up in a little puff of smoke.
This is a non-problem with tubes as the failure mode is an open circuit and even in the unlikely event of a short there is a transformer between the tubes and the speakers. Transformers do not pass DC.. Some people put protective devices like fuses between the solid state amplifier and the speaker and hope that the fuse will blow faster than the speaker coil.
Next is the issue of vinyl media vs digital (CD's for example or some other digital storage device such as ipod). Vinyl is soft and a phono stylus has a diamond (think really, really hard) tip. No matter how low the phono arm force is to make contact with the vinyl audio grooves, the vinyl degrades with each playing. Digital has zero degradation no matter how many time you play it.
Why anyone wants to go back to the snap, crackle and pop if vinyl beats me — perhaps if one of you guys like vinyl you can dial my number using your rotary dial phone and tell my why.
H/k was all solid state. We were concerned with blowing up the power stage, or a separate amp. The final stage is protected by current fold back circuits, but if a user added parallel 4 ohm speakers, it put a lot of current through the final power stage. They had to be able to with stand a dead short.
Current foldback will indeed protect against dead shorts, better than fuses as there would be a race between whether would the fuse go 1st or the speaker coil.
I always wondered why all amps didn't use fold back as only added minimal cost — I can only guess because consumer wouldn't know what the extra cost was about until an output transistor shorted up to the high PS rail .
Why would you use parallel 4 ohm speakers — either put them in series (taking care with the phasing) or use parallel 8 ohm speakers (again taking care with the phasing)?
Amps I designed (way back when) all had foldback but these weren't for audio use (at least not the audio commercial users were familiar with) and cost was not an object as much as reliability was in my applications.
I always wondered why all amps didn't use fold back as only added minimal cost — I can only guess because consumer wouldn't know what the extra cost was about until an output transistor shorted up to the high PS rail .
Why would you use parallel 4 ohm speakers — either put them in series (taking care with the phasing) or use parallel 8 ohm speakers (again taking care with the phasing)?
Amps I designed (way back when) all had foldback but these weren't for audio use (at least not the audio commercial users were familiar with) and cost was not an object as much as reliability was in my applications.
Yes all the time. Tube amps would break all the the time so we’d pull out the solid state. Tubes much warmer.
Best example of warm in this context I can think of is listen to Purple Haze by Jimi then listen to Red House. On Purple Haze he played a Fender Stratocaster which has a lighter puckery sound but on Red House he used a black Les Paul the ultimate warm sounding guitar. Wish I knew which Amps he used .
Best example of warm in this context I can think of is listen to Purple Haze by Jimi then listen to Red House. On Purple Haze he played a Fender Stratocaster which has a lighter puckery sound but on Red House he used a black Les Paul the ultimate warm sounding guitar. Wish I knew which Amps he used .
"Why would you use parallel 4 ohm speakers — either put them in series (taking care with the phasing) or use parallel 8 ohm speakers (again taking care with the phasing)?"
Because someone has two pairs of 4 ohm speakers that they like the sound of and and simply hooks them up to the "A speaker" and "B speaker" jacks on the back of the amplifier.
Because someone has two pairs of 4 ohm speakers that they like the sound of and and simply hooks them up to the "A speaker" and "B speaker" jacks on the back of the amplifier.
Regarding vinyl vs CD, tubes vs. solid state and "warmer":
Total HARMONIC distortion, it has been shown that this figure has to get rather High in order for the human ear to perceive it. Enter modulation Distortion however can be detected even at fairly low levels. One of the reasons for this is that there are all sorts of harmonics that get added in after the electronics: the speaker's the walls Etc. There is no musical instrument which plays a sine wave: the way you distinguish a "C" on a piano versus any other instrument is the overtones.
The much higher distortion in tubes and vinyl are both of the harmonic nature so the ear doesn't distinguish so much between harmonics caused by the instruments themselves, the amplification, the speakers, the walls, blah, blah, blah. As such the "warmer" sound of tube amps is actually by adding distortion, but Distortion that pleases the ear.
Total HARMONIC distortion, it has been shown that this figure has to get rather High in order for the human ear to perceive it. Enter modulation Distortion however can be detected even at fairly low levels. One of the reasons for this is that there are all sorts of harmonics that get added in after the electronics: the speaker's the walls Etc. There is no musical instrument which plays a sine wave: the way you distinguish a "C" on a piano versus any other instrument is the overtones.
The much higher distortion in tubes and vinyl are both of the harmonic nature so the ear doesn't distinguish so much between harmonics caused by the instruments themselves, the amplification, the speakers, the walls, blah, blah, blah. As such the "warmer" sound of tube amps is actually by adding distortion, but Distortion that pleases the ear.
"I always wondered why all amps didn't use fold back as only added minimal cost — I can only guess because consumer wouldn't know what the extra cost was about until an output transistor shorted up to the high PS rail ."
What may seem like a small cost difference in high-end Electronics actually can make a huge difference in Mass Market. You can't just add one piece of quality to a receiver, you kind of have to have the quality of all the pieces be equal. Once you start adding little improvements here and little improvements there by the time you're done your product cost twice as much. And it's even gotten worse recently as things have gone from stereo to 7.1. where is before you only needed two of everything, now you need seven. So small differences in quality / price of things like output capacitors, digital audio converters Etc add up fast when you have to multiply each one x 7 in the final product.
What may seem like a small cost difference in high-end Electronics actually can make a huge difference in Mass Market. You can't just add one piece of quality to a receiver, you kind of have to have the quality of all the pieces be equal. Once you start adding little improvements here and little improvements there by the time you're done your product cost twice as much. And it's even gotten worse recently as things have gone from stereo to 7.1. where is before you only needed two of everything, now you need seven. So small differences in quality / price of things like output capacitors, digital audio converters Etc add up fast when you have to multiply each one x 7 in the final product.
"They had to be able to with stand a dead short."
This is why I always used Crown amps in PA work. They could play normally into close to a zero impedance load. Plus at that time a damping Factor way higher than just about any other amps. Although they weighed a fucking ton because of the massive heat sinks required due to high current output.
This is why I always used Crown amps in PA work. They could play normally into close to a zero impedance load. Plus at that time a damping Factor way higher than just about any other amps. Although they weighed a fucking ton because of the massive heat sinks required due to high current output.
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I never designed anything for the mass market. Performance, as in meeting quantified requirements ( including reliability, "Tube amps would break all the time" simply would not be acceptable), was primary concern and cost was secondary. Our customer told us what he wanted and we gave it to him. A large quantity would be 100 spread out over couple of years. Surely you all have heard of the $700 hammer — well that's what you get when you build things under those conditions; the $700 hammer simply was not the same as the $9.99 hammer you bought at Home Depot even though it performed essentially the same function.
Harmonics are multiplies of the fundamental frequency (as Slinky said "a "C" on a piano versus any other instrument is the overtones"). Since they are multiples they are higher in frequency. So what an 18 year old guy hears (if he isn't already hearing impaired from being subjected to ear shattering volumes) is different from that of older guys as the hearing of higher frequencies drop off as we age. So ironically, as we get older and typically can afford higher quality audio equipment, the perceived benefit of such is lost (life is a bitch — and then you die).
BTW, high fidelity (hi-fi), meant that the audio equipment would reproduce recorded sounds identically or faithfully to the original sounds that were recorded. So statements like "the sound was warmer with tubes vs solid state" would actually not be a positive feature example of such audio equipment.
Harmonics are multiplies of the fundamental frequency (as Slinky said "a "C" on a piano versus any other instrument is the overtones"). Since they are multiples they are higher in frequency. So what an 18 year old guy hears (if he isn't already hearing impaired from being subjected to ear shattering volumes) is different from that of older guys as the hearing of higher frequencies drop off as we age. So ironically, as we get older and typically can afford higher quality audio equipment, the perceived benefit of such is lost (life is a bitch — and then you die).
BTW, high fidelity (hi-fi), meant that the audio equipment would reproduce recorded sounds identically or faithfully to the original sounds that were recorded. So statements like "the sound was warmer with tubes vs solid state" would actually not be a positive feature example of such audio equipment.
For instruments, tube is definitely the way to go. I love my old '68 Sunn 200S (with mostly Dynaco innards) for my bass guitar, and it's the loudest amp rated for 50 watts (two 6550 or KT88) that I've ever heard, easily keeping up with Marshall stacks the rare times I play big venues. It drives two Aguilar bins, after my ridiculously heavy EV SRO 15s from the early '70s needed a recone, and OEM kits were no longer available, except substandard ones from China. We had a great run! The other 90% of the time, it's my workhorse Harke Kickback 12, which is just an awesome piece of kit. It improved greatly (and lost weight) when I blew the original driver at a gig one night, thankfully right at the end, and replaced it with an Eminence Basslite neo magnet speaker. Larry Hartke is a local Long Island boy who's not only a great guy, but really stands behind his stuff too.
On the audio side, I've always lusted after a Dynaco ST-70 tube amp, but have been quite happy with my Nakamichi Sr-4a from the late '80s. The STASIS circuitry in the amp section is particularly good, designed by living legend Nelson Pass. Not sure if my geezer ears (that have been playing and attending loud shows since the '70s) could tell the difference between my Nakamichi and the Dynaco anymore.
On the audio side, I've always lusted after a Dynaco ST-70 tube amp, but have been quite happy with my Nakamichi Sr-4a from the late '80s. The STASIS circuitry in the amp section is particularly good, designed by living legend Nelson Pass. Not sure if my geezer ears (that have been playing and attending loud shows since the '70s) could tell the difference between my Nakamichi and the Dynaco anymore.
As for parallel 4 ohm speakers, we found the stupid thing customer did, was limitless. We tried everything in the lab to blow them up, but never could, but the customer could. One of the techs in the lab, put a pencil across the output and maxed the volume. Within 5 seconds the pencil caught fire, very entertaining, but the amp survived. lol.
The concept of "High Fidelity" was and has been a marketing gimmick. This starts during the recording process: If people really wanted High Fidelity recordings would be made with one pair of stereo microphones (Crown actually came up with their "Boundary Condenser Microphone" based on this concept). But what really happens? Recordings are done in 24 or 48 track Studios and then in the mixing process the tracks are artificially placed across the imaginary stereo Spectrum. Almost everything is processed - like using autotune. So what is high fidelity? Is it a system which undoes the processing like auto-tune so you can hear the singers original voice before it hit the microphone?
You also see it in speakers - the market for studio monitors is very different then that for home speakers because studio monitors are actually supposed to be high fidelity. On the other hand home speakers are supposed to please the ear. So we can talk all we want about High Fidelity but very little about high end stereo equipment is actually about Faithfully reproducing the music that came before the recording process.
As far as guitar amps goes (which a couple of people have posted about below), it's a totally different animal. Electric guitar players try their best to induce distortion. It's one of the reasons you see much lower wattage in guitar amps than you might think someone who wanted to produce a "big sound" would want to use. But the higher the wattage, the harder it is to overdrive the amp on purpose and cause distortion without ear-splitting sound pressure levels. It's also why they prefer tube amps, because of the way they behave when they're over driven versus the way solid state amps behave when they are over driven.
You also see it in speakers - the market for studio monitors is very different then that for home speakers because studio monitors are actually supposed to be high fidelity. On the other hand home speakers are supposed to please the ear. So we can talk all we want about High Fidelity but very little about high end stereo equipment is actually about Faithfully reproducing the music that came before the recording process.
As far as guitar amps goes (which a couple of people have posted about below), it's a totally different animal. Electric guitar players try their best to induce distortion. It's one of the reasons you see much lower wattage in guitar amps than you might think someone who wanted to produce a "big sound" would want to use. But the higher the wattage, the harder it is to overdrive the amp on purpose and cause distortion without ear-splitting sound pressure levels. It's also why they prefer tube amps, because of the way they behave when they're over driven versus the way solid state amps behave when they are over driven.