Recent content by zchopper

Gain stage could be the output stage or not. At minimum the output stage provides current gain, but could be voltage as well. The answer is I don't know. I'm hypothesizing about why people still use tubes. I believe it's important that the amplifier be as linear as possible across the audible...

To be clear, I'm not a schill for the tube amp industry. I can't handle the cost and maintenance and cost of good tube amps. I just don't deny that there is something substantive to the tube sound. I don't think saying that tube lovers like listening to distortion machines is necessarily...

A change in amplitude is a linear distortion. Maybe it reproduces an input signal perfectly with 25db of gain. It doesn't show up in thd numbers, it's the purpose of the amplifier. One issue with gain devices is that from 0hz to 100khz, gain isn't constant. From 0 volts to 10 volts or...

All amplifiers are a series of "kluges" (engineering decisions) to corral issues of their own making, of the particular gain devices and topology chosen. In order to minimize linear and non-linear distortions, most popular tubes need to be run at 300-600 volts and relatively low current...

There are hundreds of them. But they aren't constrained by irrational insistence on single active devices. So they blithely design amplifiers with vanishingly low noise, distortion, and source impedance. Perhaps you can explain to them where they have gone wrong despite spectacularly good...

Disregarding noise, or microphonics, or psrr, or any other possible negative which tubes can be faulted for. Just looking for a single amplifying element which by itself provides the most linear gain function, ie 1 volt in = X volts out across the entire audible range, it could be strongly...