I have read this assertion many times as a supposed reason tube amps are great. I like tube amps and remember fondly a couple I got from my uncle, but this "gentler" thing has always bugged me. My recollection and now recent mini-survey of Stereophile measurements shows all amps' distortion zooms up very steeply at clipping. Here at ASR a bunch of solid-state amps all zoom up; I didn't find any tube amps. Not all amps distortion "zoom up" exactly the same, but they all hit a point where it goes up steeply. Some amps' distortion ramps up somewhat slowly before the zoom point however those ramps are below 1% so to me that does not count as "gentler."
Back to the asssertion that tube amps clip "more gently":
--> Is this truth? Or myth?
Note: in another thread @paulbottlehead asserts "Zero feedback SET amps clip softly enough that they would be an odd basis for comparison." Really? Maybe. I did find one test where the distortion while still zooming up does so not *quite* as fast as usual:
https://www.stereophile.com/content/line-magnetic-audio-lm-518ia-integrated-amplifier-measurements
Now I do have a degree in electrical engineering but as I specialized in loudspeakers I know just enough about amps to be dangerous ha ha. Makes me think:
- If clipping is gentler, doesn't that imply the power supply is soft? Because a true hard clip should always generate the same kind of harmonic signature in an idealized perfect amplifier I believe.
- In a tube amp can't the output transformers add a degree of softness?
- If there is a "gentler" thing wouldn't it be more about global feedback than tube versus solid state?
Back to the asssertion that tube amps clip "more gently":
--> Is this truth? Or myth?
Note: in another thread @paulbottlehead asserts "Zero feedback SET amps clip softly enough that they would be an odd basis for comparison." Really? Maybe. I did find one test where the distortion while still zooming up does so not *quite* as fast as usual:
https://www.stereophile.com/content/line-magnetic-audio-lm-518ia-integrated-amplifier-measurements
Now I do have a degree in electrical engineering but as I specialized in loudspeakers I know just enough about amps to be dangerous ha ha. Makes me think:
- If clipping is gentler, doesn't that imply the power supply is soft? Because a true hard clip should always generate the same kind of harmonic signature in an idealized perfect amplifier I believe.
- In a tube amp can't the output transformers add a degree of softness?
- If there is a "gentler" thing wouldn't it be more about global feedback than tube versus solid state?