Are tubes more musical?

[Holmz]

IMO, the word "musical" is reserved for human beings. Neither guitar amps nor reproduction gear has the capacity for intelligence or creativity.

They can "at best" do an effect, and that's it. It's like saying a trumpet is more musical than a violin. Makes zero sense.

Enjoyable or soothing, sure. But the idea that some types of amplifiers possess musicality is absolutely bonkers.

I think I have heard people describe birds, whales, etc as having musical sounds.

 

[olieb]

It's like saying a trumpet is more musical than a violin. Makes zero sense.

Agreed, but then there are two violins. These must certainly be more musical than only one! ;-)

IMO, the word "musical" is reserved for human beings.

Yep, and it is a quality of something they do in the judgement of (other) humans.

 

[DanielT]

I think I have heard people describe birds, whales, etc as having musical sounds.

Well you know:

be music to someone's ears​

idiom

to be something that you are very pleased to hear:

The sound of her key in the lock was music to my ears.

be music to someone's ears

1. to be something that you are very pleased to hear: 2. to be something that…

dictionary.cambridge.org

Or along the lines of the thread:

The tube glow was music to my ears.

 

[mhardy6647]

I thought that musical referred to those motion pictures (sorry, it's 2024, I meant to type video media) in which actors suddenly and inexplicably stop acting and incomprehensibly start lip-synching.

 

[Flaesh]

Organoleptics is interesting

AWGII=As we get it Islay, 61 abv NAS (the price is about the same).
My DHT SE monoblocks are lying around in the closet for 10+ years, because the current digital active system is more musical. I'm sure it's more musical than the systems of the eight audiophiles who voted for CI 12 .

 

[Mikig]

I have to say that I've been listening to it since today with a tube amplifier with 5881 and it's very pleasant. It easily drove a pair of 82 dB sensitivity speakers without any particular problems. Is it musical? Yes, as is a SS amplifier that I usually use. Slightly different in the presentation that remains a little more on the mids. I would say more flattering. Maybe this makes it more "pleasing". It's very quiet, I didn't expect that. Compared to my tube integrated, it's another thing. It doesn't blow on the speakers and it doesn't have any particular power supply noises. I'll see if I'll keep it, in these days I'll listen and decide. It must be said that I rarely use this system at high volume so I'm not worried about the modest power.

 

[atmasphere]

How do you get consistant gain? Or do you mean zero global feedback? Bruno also says type of feedback dosnt matter, local, global, nested, the results are the same.

If you have the correct operating point set up, the gain is remarkably consistent. CCS circuits in the differential amplifiers are helpful for that. Our tube stuff is zero feedback, not loop, local or even degenerative.

 

[atmasphere]

Posting original and distorted versions of "Some Animals" and "Sandino" tracks, upsampled to 96k using Audacity.

The same DISTORT transfer function as before (GFA-565 bridged simulation from here) was applied to one of the tracks, A or B. You decide which one is which, and which one sounds brighter than the other in an ABX test.

Files included (shared under fair use doctrine):

01 Some Animals-A.wav
01 Some Animals-B.wav
04 Sandino-A.wav
04 Sandino-B.wav

@atmasphere, I believe you asked for these tracks, and @SIY provided the originals. This is a large zip file (1.2GB). The download link will stay around for 7 days, so please download it before it expires: https://we.tl/t-WWtHCXqxaR

Sorry- I just got back in town from doing fun stuff while it was still fairly warm. Can you repost?

 

[SIY]

Sorry- I just got back in town from doing fun stuff while it was still fairly warm. Can you repost?

I'll pink pkane. My disappointment is lessened.

 

[atmasphere]

Well, in the hifi world, unless they are specifically designed to avoid it (which most are not), tube amps suffer from blocking distortion when overloaded, a particularly ugly choking effect. Nothing even vaguely "musical" about it.

Blocking distortion can be avoided by direct-coupling the driver tube to the output tubes; thus the bias of the power tubes is adjusted at the grid of the driver tube. Instantaneous overload recovery.

 

[SIY]

Blocking distortion can be avoided by direct-coupling the driver tube to the output tubes; thus the bias of the power tubes is adjusted at the grid of the driver tube. Instantaneous overload recovery.

That's one way for sure, and most people don't do that. So blocking is the main distortion mechanism for nearly every commercial tube amp out there. I've done that in some of my designs (cathode or source followers driving the output stages), ditto the Crystal Palace amp described in Valve Amplifiers, but I took a somewhat different (and unusual) path for the Red Light District amp. Point is, "normal" RC coupling to the output grids is pretty much universal, and the clipping on most tube amps is pretty ugly.

 

[pkane]

Sorry- I just got back in town from doing fun stuff while it was still fairly warm. Can you repost?

Sure: https://we.tl/t-PL0DqFJyLd
---------
The same DISTORT transfer function as before (GFA-565 bridged simulation from here) was applied to one of the tracks, A or B. You decide which one is which, and which one sounds brighter than the other in an ABX test.

Files included (shared under fair use doctrine):

01 Some Animals-A.wav
01 Some Animals-B.wav
04 Sandino-A.wav
04 Sandino-B.wav

 

[atmasphere]

That's one way for sure, and most people don't do that. So blocking is the main distortion mechanism for nearly every commercial tube amp out there. I've done that in some of my designs (cathode or source followers driving the output stages), ditto the Crystal Palace amp described in Valve Amplifiers, but I took a somewhat different (and unusual) path for the Red Light District amp. Point is, "normal" RC coupling to the output grids is pretty much universal, and the clipping on most tube amps is pretty ugly.

I find that curious. What do you mean by 'ugly'? When I overdrive most tube amps all I see is a sinewave that slowly changes to a squarewave with rounded corners. I take it that's not what you are talking about.

Sure: https://we.tl/t-PL0DqFJyLd
---------
The same DISTORT transfer function as before (GFA-565 bridged simulation from here) was applied to one of the tracks, A or B. You decide which one is which, and which one sounds brighter than the other in an ABX test.

Files included (shared under fair use doctrine):

01 Some Animals-A.wav
01 Some Animals-B.wav
04 Sandino-A.wav
04 Sandino-B.wav

Thanks- downloading now.

 

[SIY]

What do you mean by 'ugly'?

Blocking, a phenomenon known for more than 60 years. If in an RC coupled output stage (nearly all commercial conventional tube amps) you clip and draw grid current, there's one or two RC time constants for the circuit to recover. So a small event gets dragged out into something much more audible. Feedback exacerbates the issue.

If an amp is designed to recover immediately from clipping, the clipping itself (unless sustained) may not even be noticed.

Here's two of Crowhurst's classic analyses from my childhood years.

Puzzled About Amplifiers?

Amplifier Defects Not In Specs

 

[atmasphere]

Blocking, a phenomenon known for more than 60 years. If in an RC coupled output stage (nearly all commercial conventional tube amps) you clip and draw grid current, there's one or two RC time constants for the circuit to recover. So a small event gets dragged out into something much more audible. Feedback exacerbates the issue.

If an amp is designed to recover immediately from clipping, the clipping itself (unless sustained) may not even be noticed.

Here's two of Crowhurst's classic analyses from my childhood years.

Puzzled About Amplifiers?

Amplifier Defects Not In Specs

Crowhurst is such a great resource. I keep quoting stuff from him and am often disappointed no-one knows who he was.
I know about blocking distortion
I've not seen it get ugly all that often. When it does, its an indication to me the designer was being sloppy about the timing constants in the bias network for the output tube grid. The worst behavior I saw do this (at RMAF) was a Joule Electra OTL. When overloaded, there was so much grid current (and nowhere for it to go) that the power tubes actually went into cutoff and the amp would stop playing for a second or two! Jud was trying to fudge as much as he could by using slightly too high resistor values in the bias circuit and also using a coupling cap large enough to make bass with those values. IMO simply doesn't work...

By direct-coupling (or maybe using a driver transformer, which rubs me the wrong way) there's no timing constant to deal with. The driver tube saturates only after the power tubes do so no worries about excess grid current. If the driver tube fails the power tubes move towards lower idle current or even cutoff, so its fail safe. The only tricky bit is you need a B- supply. But if you're running differential circuits that's a good idea anyway...

 

[SIY]

By direct-coupling (or maybe using a driver transformer, which rubs me the wrong way) there's no timing constant to deal with.

Driver transformers are pretty poor design choices, IMO. Direct coupling is a good one, Crowhurst suggests another one (pentode output with high value grid stopper resistors) that I used in conjunction with my novel biasing scheme in my EL84 p-p amp. There's likely more ways to do it, but every Audio Research, CJ, and Dynaco amp I've run overload tests on have shown significant blocking.

 

[mhardy6647]

Crowhurst's 3-volume Basic Audio books (Rider) are excellent (ahem, for tyros like me):
all three are available at WRH:

BOOKSHELF RIDER LIBRARY: John Rider Publisher books

The Rider library of books on electronics was published by John F. Rider who had previously been an editor of Hugo Gernsback's "Radio Craft" magazine. Rider created his "Perpetual Troubleshooter's Manual" series and published over 125 technical books on servicing and electronics theory.

www.worldradiohistory.com

and also at Pete Millett's site:

Technical books online

(just an image of Vol. 1's cover, FYI)

EDIT: Kind of ironic, I guess, that the image above shows a transformer phase splitter.

 

[atmasphere]

Pete Millet's site is a great resource.

Driver transformers are pretty poor design choices, IMO. Direct coupling is a good one, Crowhurst suggests another one (pentode output with high value grid stopper resistors) that I used in conjunction with my novel biasing scheme in my EL84 p-p amp. There's likely more ways to do it, but every Audio Research, CJ, and Dynaco amp I've run overload tests on have shown significant blocking.

It strikes me that early solid state amps (mostly germanium or early silicon that no-one takes seriously nowadays) that used significant coupling capacitors in the Voltage and driver circuits also suffer blocking distortion- IOW its a function of coupling capacitors rather than tube amps generally. Its far more common in tube amps because they were often built to a budget which precludes the B- supply you'd need if you were direct-coupling.

Just for fun I am building arguably the worst of any kind of amplifier technology, a pair of SETs. My plan is direct-coupling the driver to the output tube, the use of the Ultraphath circuit, and probably loop feedback fed to the grid of the input tube. I'm of the opinion that SETs have only about 20-25% usable power before distortion causes them to sound 'dynamic'; I'm also of the opinion that 90% of the time when audiophiles use the word 'dynamics' you can replace that word with 'distortion' without changing the meaning of the conversation. So I'm interested to see what happens when feedback is properly applied. Yeah, its silly, but I have the parts laying around and its fun.

Regarding that, IMO 'fun' is really what tubes are about when it comes down to it. More so if you are a DIY type...

 

[A Surfer]

I wonder if distortion and dynamic are interchangeable in this sense?

 

[atmasphere]

I wonder if distortion and dynamic are interchangeable in this sense?

If the distortion is only showing up on transients (where the power is) then it can, if the distortion is tending to be higher ordered harmonics. The ear uses higher ordered harmonics to sense sound pressure.