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Are tubes more musical?

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No. They can't be.

A tube is just a three-terminal device that can be placed in a number of different circuit designs that can enable gain (output voltage a multiple of input voltage) or act as a buffer etc.

All 3-terminal devices of this nature (tube, BJT, FET), have a domain in which they are almost totally linear (output is a predictable ratio of input). If the circuit design ensures they stay within that nearly perfect linear domain, there will be no musical differences between the three types.

If the circuit design allows the 3-terminal device to operate outside its substantially linear domain (and no NFB is used to minimize artefacts) then there may be differences between the device types. They will distort.

It seems to me that you are hearing distortion and liking it.
I gave this a “Like” because I believe it to be true. That said, DNA is just a bunch of complex math too, but hardly explains every human condition. I do realize this is a large stretch. But if you follow logic you’d maybe say human hearing may prefer how a tube sounds rather than just dismiss it as you like distortion and a crappy setup so you must be wrong.
 
You are taking my comment out of context. I guess it's the curse of a forum that it rarely works to have a conversation, where a later post builds on the immediate previous ones. Anyway, my post wasn't about amplifier harmonics per se. My post was part of an argument about what defines musicality. Without delving into the distinction between harmonies in the sense of overtones and harmonic theory according to conventional music theory, I want to return to my basic thesis in this discussion - namely that an amplifier cannot be described as musical based on the fact that an amplifier generates harmonics - i.e. distortion. My point was that musicality is a human trait and that only humans can be musical. This should be self-evident and I believe that the fact that it is not is the result of conceptual confusion.
Isn't there a difference between "being musical" and "performing music"? In the second sense, humans are organising sound: and with audio as we discuss it here, we are concerned with the recording and playback of organised sound. You can't really say that "only humans are musical" in the sense of Western music, because the sounds being organised have a strong relationship in most cases with sounds that occur in nature.

Rather, we should build up the argument as follows: only humans perform music (in the sense that is generally recorded). The sounds on the recording to be played back are the sounds allowed by some or all of the people performing the music and those involved in the subsequent production.

I'm sure that even this exposition is not semantically perfect, but it provides a starting point for debating playback and the role of a playback system. I hope that it also demonstrates the problem with describing a system as "musical" - because the term may mean that the playback system provides musical content, and that clearly should not be the case. The system should, I would say - trying to find a broad term - serve the music.
 
So more of a battle of semantics.
You are very consistent.

Thanks again.

Look at the thread title. Given the general attitude here towards audiophile subjective descriptions, of course this thread was going to involve discussion over what the term “ musical” would even mean. It naturally invites semantic issues.

From very early on people were leaping on the very use of the term “ musical” and started engaging in discussions about “ what does musical even mean?”

Plenty of people chimed in on this subject before I even got involved. So I didn’t start this.

And note that even before I posted, You were posting about semantics

Further, Mulder has been making a sustained semantic case - arguing about the meaning of “ musical” and “ musicality.” For some reason you were not taking digs at that.

But if I attempt to address the meaning of those terms as well, then it’s implied it’s a mark against me.

Could we just dial down our
“ double standards” knob a little bit, please?
 
Isn't there a difference between "being musical" and "performing music"? In the second sense, humans are organising sound: and with audio as we discuss it here, we are concerned with the recording and playback of organised sound. You can't really say that "only humans are musical" in the sense of Western music, because the sounds being organised have a strong relationship in most cases with sounds that occur in nature.

Rather, we should build up the argument as follows: only humans perform music (in the sense that is generally recorded). The sounds on the recording to be played back are the sounds allowed by some or all of the people performing the music and those involved in the subsequent production.

I'm sure that even this exposition is not semantically perfect, but it provides a starting point for debating playback and the role of a playback system. I hope that it also demonstrates the problem with describing a system as "musical" - because the term may mean that the playback system provides musical content, and that clearly should not be the case. The system should, I would say - trying to find a broad term - serve the music.
Agree with all of this. I’m not sure what “musical” is either. It’s a completely subjective term. But the question remains, do tubes sound better to human ears and not a debate about semantics
 
I agree with you. Musicality or musical is such vague word, that it has no use in a science forum.

I certainly wasn’t arguing the term for scientific use, or that anybody on this forum to adopt the term.

That’s a different discussion versus whether the term “ musical” applied to audio gear does, or could in principle, communicate any information.

And if you can define it in existing terms of FR tilt or distortion, might as well use those more precise terms.

You could say the same about absolutely every single subjective or descriptive term in audio - “ bright” “ dull” “ boomy” “ recessed” “ hollow” “ Distorted”….

All of them, presumably relate to real Sonic characteristics that could be described more precisely with measurements.

So your objection there doesn’t seem to make a particular case against the term “ musical.”

The issue then is what could “ musical” communicate about the sound character of a piece of gear or a system. If it’s understood as a type of frequency tilt described, then like “dull sounding” or “clear sounding” or whatever, it could communicate some information.

And infact, even tilt or distortion cannot be a synonym for musical. If that was the case, then more tilt and more distortion would never cease to be an improvement.

I don’t see how that follows. As I have stated, “musical” could relate to a specific type of sonic profile:
One that has some level of a rise in the warmth regions, and a mild tilt down (or lack of exaggeration) in the highs, in a way that may ameliorate some of the artificial or more coarse artefacts often found in recordings (e.g. vocal sibilance, thin or overly bright recordings etc), yet still allows engaging insight into the details of the music and recording.

Having been involved in the subjective forums for many years, that does seem to me to be the trend in terms of what type of gear that term is used for. But I don’t have any sort of hard data on that of course.

But anyway, if you just continued to add more distortion and rolling off the top end, you could end up with much more obviously distorted sound, obscuring the music, and a muffled/distorted sound would introduce its own distractingly artificial character. So it doesn’t make sense that it’s likely most audiophiles would think the term “ musical” could remain apt in such circumstances.


The same recording loopbacked through the same “musical” amp would turn more and more tilted and distortion, until there’s only one highly distorted bass note left. Is that audio nirvana?

Obviously not. Which should be a sign that your worry about a slippery slope isn’t well-founded.


I’m sorry Matt, but your linguistic pedantry makes no sense and helps nothing imo.

Hey, no problem if you disagree. Again, I’m not a fan of the term myself.

But on the “ pedantry” thing….

It’s funny to be accused of linguistic pedantry, when this thread is full of that. Think about it:
The reason the OP even used the term
“ musical” is that it’s a well known term used among audiophiles. And much of the objection here have come from members saying “ The term should not be used like that, it’s confusing, amplifiers cannot operate like musical instruments, the term should be reserved only to apply to actual music or musicians.” With much detailed back-and-forth on this.

But… somehow, I’m the one who is singled out as pedantic?

Sometimes this reminds me of the blindspot I find in the subjectivist forums, where a particular type of argumentation goes un-commented on so long as it is consistent with the views of most there, but if it’s coming from an opposing viewpoint, suddenly people are highly observant and start the negative characterizations.

*(with apologies if I misunderstood your intent with the “ pedantic” comment)

Cheers
 
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But the question remains, do tubes sound better to human ears and not a debate about semantics

but the answer to this question is spontaneous:
this statement that you make, that I subscribe to, however automatically contradicts hundreds of posts where you find written that all electronic devices have neither sound nor timbre.
So this discussion would be useless.
A tubes according to the theory would have the same timbre as an SS, a class D, a Dac or a CD,etc etc….since one of the most popular answers on the timbre or sound of devices is: in your imagination and in your prejudice, the only thing that sounds in a system are the speakers!!
so the question arises spontaneously: why a lot of People here, hate or denigrate tubes if there are no differences in sound and timbre between electronic devices?
 
but the answer to this question is spontaneous:
this statement that you make, that I subscribe to, however automatically contradicts hundreds of posts where you find written that all electronic devices have neither sound nor timbre.
So this discussion would be useless.
A tubes according to the theory would have the same timbre as an SS, a class D, a Dac or a CD,etc etc….since one of the most popular answers on the timbre or sound of devices is: in your imagination and in your prejudice, the only thing that sounds in a system are the speakers!!
so the question arises spontaneously: why a lot of People here, hate or denigrate tubes if there are no differences in sound and timbre between electronic devices?

There is something of an opposing dichotomy of views to be found on this forum.

When you bring up tube amplifiers on one hand, you’ll get people saying “ why would anybody use a tube amplifier? You shouldn’t place distortion at the amplifier - you’re not going to hear the recording accurately as the artist intended!”

And then on the other side, you have people who are more of the mindset “ it’s a myth that tube amps have a different sound, that’s usually just a bias effect.”

And then you’ll find views in between those views.

Which could certainly be confusing for the poor visiting tube amp using audiophile.
 
Agree with all of this. I’m not sure what “musical” is either. It’s a completely subjective term.
Being in tune, being in time, being able to read score - even better, being able to sight read. Also, the ability to hold down a paying gig.
Not a "subjective term".

Ultimately, the descriptor does not apply to playback gear unless said gear distorts to the point of warping pitch or rhythm. There's some audio gear capable of that sort of distortion. The more capable the gear is, the greater its ability to get out of the way of the musical event. Audio gear cannot make playback more "musical"; it can only make it less.
But the question remains, do tubes sound better to human ears
Depends on the ears, don't you think? These ears say no.
and not a debate about semantics
A little late for that.
 
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You shouldn’t place distortion at the amplifier - you’re not going to hear the recording accurately as the artist intended!”
yes but the dichotomy is also on distortion: when it suits one's own thesis or it is not audible or your ears will not recognize it, if instead it is against one's thesis, then it will ruin the entire musical experience....:)
 
but the answer to this question is spontaneous:
this statement that you make, that I subscribe to, however automatically contradicts hundreds of posts where you find written that all electronic devices have neither sound nor timbre.
So this discussion would be useless.
A tubes according to the theory would have the same timbre as an SS, a class D, a Dac or a CD,etc etc….since one of the most popular answers on the timbre or sound of devices is: in your imagination and in your prejudice, the only thing that sounds in a system are the speakers!!
so the question arises spontaneously: why a lot of People here, hate or denigrate tubes if there are no differences in sound and timbre between electronic devices?
Because tubes are often thought to have a sound. In amps they often do. In preamps not usually. Whether they do or not expectations make the belief they are different so easy to come by.
 
Because tubes are often thought to have a sound. In amps they often do. In preamps not usually. Whether they do or not expectations make the belief they are different so easy to come by.
I'd say when people refer to a "tube sound" it's more likely they're hearing a transformer sound.
 
I really liked her characteristics at the beginning but over time have grown tired of them

I'd be interested to know if you still like tubes in a year or so from now!

I first heard tubes in my dad's HiFi in the 1950s. Over the intervening 60+ years, I've flopped back and forth between SS & tubes, today running a hybrid 4 way system with Class D for the subs, Class G for the woofers and tubes for the mids and tweets.

In the 80's we ran clinics @ AES for people to choose between cables, tube / SS and polarity. The 'official' conclusion was there is no difference. However, before I wrote on my sheet "TOO TIRED TO TELL" - I had better that 84% accuracy. Including one cable session where I and some others wrote "neither". Turns out the DAT tape had too many errors for the EC to fix. A great many still picked A or B.

In the 90's when I worked for an English recording console manufacturer, we found that we could change the sound stage by adding odd [like SS] or even [like tubes] harmonic distortion at very low levels, more than 90dB below program. Even harmonic distortion gave a warmer more expansive sound with a wider and deeper sound stage while odd was more aggressive, narrowed and foreshortened. The funny thing was not all could hear the difference while others got it right 80%+.

My gear is behind the flat screen and no visitor gets to look before they listen and critique on music of their choosing.

To date, no visitor has had anything but the highest praise: "Joe Pass is sitting RIGHT THERE!" - "It sounds like the band [Albert King & Stevie Ray Vaughn] is HERE!" - "MAN, your system is SO PRECISE!!" - "Apart from the size, it's just as real as a concert hall!"

IMO, it's matter of mating technologies to your particular peccadilloes.

Done Right, It Don't Matter.
 
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I first heard tubes in my dad's HiFi in the 1950s. Over the intervening 60+ years, I've flopped back and forth between SS & tubes, today running a hybrid 4 way system with Class D for the subs, Class G for the woofers and tubes for the mids and tweets.

In the 80's we ran clinics @ AES for people to choose between cables, tube / SS and polarity. The 'official' conclusion was there is no difference. However, beforeI wrote on my sheet "TOO TIRED TO TELL" - I had better that 84% accuracy. Including one cable session where I and some others wrote "neither". Turns out the DAC tape had too many errors for the EC to fix. A great many still picked A or B.

In the 90's when I worked for an English recording console manufacturer, we found that we could change the sound stage by adding odd [like SS] or even [like tubes] harmonic distortion at very low levels, more than 90dB below program. Even harmonic distortion gave a warmer more expansive sound with a wider and deeper sound stage while odd was more aggressive, narrowed and foreshortened. The funny thing was not all could hear the difference while others got it right 80%+.

My gear is behind the flat screen and no visitor gets to look before they listen and critique on music of their choosing.

To date, no visitor has had anything but the highest praise: "Joe Pass is sitting RIGHT THERE!" - "It sounds like the band [Albert King & Stevie Ray Vaughn] is HERE!" - "MAN, your system is SO PRECISE!!" - "Apart from the size, it's just as real as a concert hall!"

IMO, it's matter of mating technologies to your particular peccadilloes.

Done Right, It Don't Matter.
Uh huh!
 
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Thanks again.

Look at the thread title. Given the general attitude here towards audiophile subjective descriptions, of course this thread was going to involve discussion over what the term “ musical” would even mean. It naturally invites semantic issues.

From very early on people were leaping on the very use of the term “ musical” and started engaging in discussions about “ what does musical even mean?”

Plenty of people chimed in on this subject before I even got involved. So I didn’t start this.

And note that even before I posted, You were posting about semantics

Further, Mulder has been making a sustained semantic case - arguing about the meaning of “ musical” and “ musicality.” For some reason you were not taking digs at that.

But if I attempt to address the meaning of those terms as well, then it’s implied it’s a mark against me.

Could we just dial down our
“ double standards” knob a little bit, please?
No. Telling me to "look at the title" is more semantics.
Also, I'm not trying to win an argument with you, since debate is your MO.

Please argue with Mulder over semantics. That is your battle, not mine.
 
That knob goes to “11” apparently…
 
I certainly wasn’t arguing the term for scientific use, or that anybody on this forum to adopt the term.

That’s a different discussion versus whether the term “ musical” applied to audio gear does, or could in principle, communicate any information.
Ok. I already covered that though. I said “musical” is too vague too convey useful information. You yourself said earlier that you’d need to find out what someone means by it. I covered that also, by stating that if the defininition depends on the person, then it isn’t useful either.

You could say the same about absolutely every single subjective or descriptive term in audio - “ bright” “ dull” “ boomy” “ recessed” “ hollow” “ Distorted”….

All of them, presumably relate to real Sonic characteristics that could be described more precisely with measurements.

So your objection there doesn’t seem to make a particular case against the term “ musical.”
Correct. The key difference is that I find “musical” too vague and too person-dependent, see the first paragraph.

The examples you gave, like Hollow, are physical phenomenons, as in objects can be hollow. Physical attributes have physical effects on sound waves. In contrast, Musical is a concept or idea, made even vaguer by being something subjectively ‘positive’.

The issue then is what could “ musical” communicate about the sound character of a piece of gear or a system. If it’s understood as a type of frequency tilt described, then like “dull sounding” or “clear sounding” or whatever, it could communicate some information.
It doesn’t communicate more or better than using the terms tilt or dull itself. It is at best a less accurate synonym. But it is much worse, see previous paragraph.

I don’t see how that follows. As I have stated, “musical” could relate to a specific type of sonic profile:
One that has some level of a rise in the warmth regions, and a mild tilt down (or lack of exaggeration) in the highs, in a way that may ameliorate some of the artificial or more coarse artefacts often found in recordings (e.g. vocal sibilance, thin or overly bright recordings etc), yet still allows engaging insight into the details of the music and recording.

The problem with describing a sonic profile is that it completely depends on the input.

If a sonic profile sounds good (ie. “is musical”) on certain material - such as a downward tilt on overbright vocals - then it follows that it inversely works on the opposite material: it sounds terrible on dull vocals. The sonic signature itself can never always be musical.

This is what my loop back example points out.

Having been involved in the subjective forums for many years, that does seem to me to be the trend in terms of what type of gear that term is used for. But I don’t have any sort of hard data on that of course.

But anyway, if you just continued to add more distortion and rolling off the top end, you could end up with much more obviously distorted sound, obscuring the music, and a muffled/distorted sound would introduce its own distractingly artificial character. So it doesn’t make sense that it’s likely most audiophiles would think the term “ musical” could remain apt in such circumstances.
Hey, exactly my point. So, in conclusion, using “musical” as a term for any audible effect makes no sense.

Obviously not. Which should be a sign that your worry about a slippery slope isn’t well-founded.
It’s not about a slippery slope, it’s illustrating that a sonic signature or audible effect in itself cannot be blanket statement something positive. And you agree on this.

Hey, no problem if you disagree. Again, I’m not a fan of the term myself.

But on the “ pedantry” thing….

It’s funny to be accused of linguistic pedantry, when this thread is full of that. Think about it:
The reason the OP even used the term
“ musical” is that it’s a well known term used among audiophiles. And much of the objection here have come from members saying “ The term should not be used like that, it’s confusing, amplifiers cannot operate like musical instruments, the term should be reserved only to apply to actual music or musicians.” With much detailed back-and-forth on this.

But… somehow, I’m the one who is singled out as pedantic?
Part of it is of course that you have a minority opinion. But I’ll give my view on other reasons why you’re getting the heat.

So just to be clear, I don’t think you are evil or something. You’re clearly passionate and respectful. You asked (though possibly retorically) and I answer.

First, you sometimes pull the debate far into the meta-philosophical, that at some point we end up debating “can the word musical ever, under perfect conditions, have a slight shimmer of usefulness”?
The rest seems to keep it in the practical realm - ie. “is the term musical useful or not?”
This can be seen as pedantic.

Then you have the tendency to agree with someone, even argue in favour, yet then reject that point without any supporting argument.

In the “loop back” example above, you first agree with me that a dull sound is “obviously not” audio nirvana, but then you turn it around on me that “thus my example wasn’t well founded”. If you have no argument to why it isn’t well founded, then the conclusion you should have drawn is that “thus musical isn’t a meaningful term”.

Or: you should’ve given an argument for why the argument was wrong. Calling it a slippery slope is a debate technique to invoke dismissal of the argument, without actually having to give an argument yourself.

So sometimes you go all the way with facts (dictionary screenshot), sometimes you rely on hand waving. That can be seen as pedantic.

If you really believe that musical is, or can be, a useful word, then the onus is on you on doing more research (interview audiophiles, measure what it is they like, etc). You need to have a case to be able to convince others. You are setting the cart before the horse, by trying to convince others you’re right, while your argument boils down to “audiophiles use this word”.

In a world where a 1dB louder playback is also considered positive - dare I say musical ;) - that argument just isn’t strong.
 
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