You bring up an issue I find fascinating about the concept of amplifiers having an intrinsic tone or character.
As I’ve mentioned many times I still use some old school Conrad Johnson tube amplification - Premier 12 monoblocks and Premier 16LS2 preamp.
This was from the period when Conrad Johnson amplifiers had a well-known reputation for a certain type of sound which included what people would typically describe as “a golden glow” or a sort of “bronze” tone or sometimes depending on the amp a caramel tone.
I was long fascinated with this because it’s what I hear, or at least perceive, and it seems such an incredibly widespread perception among so many audiophiles (at least among those comfortable in describing amplifiers in such subjective terms).
Fremer wrote in his review of the Conrad Johnson premier 12 amplifiers:
“
The overall sound, driving either the Audio Physic Virgos or the Sonus Faber Concerto Grand Pianos, was finely detailed yet rich, open, and transparent, with a lush, mesmerizing midband; deep, well-developed, yet punchy bass; and high frequencies that were fast and sparkly but never bright or aggressive.
The difficult transitions between the frequency extremes and the midrange were carefully accomplished, though the upper midrange exhibited a rich, golden bloom—a sonic bouquet—too subtle to be called a coloration but sufficiently pronounced to enrich brass, strings, female voices, alto sax, and hall ambience with an intoxicating glow.”
I’d owned and tried various tube and solid state amplifiers and Fremer’s whole review is possibly the single most descriptive and accurate depiction of exactly what something sounds like to me (again in my perception I’m not making objective claims).
But here we get to what you are pointing out in terms of likely amplifier colorations.
If it’s purely an impedance interaction, then I would expect the amps to have a different character with different loudspeakers. But I’ve used the CJs with something like 20 different loudspeakers over the years, everything from easy to drive two ways, to low sensitivity MBLs to challenging impedances/power hungry speakers like various Thiels. And yet, especially when compared against solid state amplifiers I’d have on hand, the CJs always seem to bring the same characteristics to the sound: more rich, lush, rounded, textured, dense, smooth… everything sounds more “ organic” to me and less electronic and artificial. And there’s that slight “ golden glow” Fremer mentions that seems to sort of light up the timber and sound stage in a way that is really beautiful to my ears and actually sounds more realistic.
But why would there be such a persistent character if the main colorations are going to vary per speaker?
I’ve also seen it suggested that tube amplification softer clipping might be responsible for the character characteristic sound. But at least in my case that wouldn’t make sense since I’ve never played music very loud.
There’s the prospect of added harmonics. I’ve seen information that suggest that is plausible but other stuff that suggests it’s a bit of an overblown expectation in tube amplifiers.
The most obvious elephant in the room is simply some sort of bias or expectation effect. And though I’ve done blind tests down the years of equipment I have owned, a blind shootout between solid state and tube amplification with a sufficiently fast switching was something I pursued, but abandoned due to the complexity.
That’s why I was happy to realize when I bought a Benchmark LA4 solid state preamp to have as an extra preamp, that this would actually allow me to blind test my CJ tube preamp against the benchmark. Because in informal listening, that preamp also exhibited the tonal characteristics of the other CJ gear. (again something that I found kind of suspicious which is why I wanted to test my impressions).
So when I got around to the:
BLIND TEST DOCUMENTED HERE
…interestingly…yup… even under the blinded conditions when I would switch back-and-forth, there were all the CJ tuby characteristics…roundness of tone, lightened timbre/golden glow, added texture etc.
So that was fascinating. Not that I still know what it means.
Just tonight, informally, I was comparing many tracks with my Denon AVR driving my stereo speakers vs my CJ gear, and also quick switching between the Benchmark preamp and CJ. And every time the experience was: SS amplification - better grip on the bass, more precise in almost every way, slightly cleaner, sometimes seems a bit more dynamic. Yet there was always a slight “canned” presentation, the feeling of the artificiality of the recordings. As soon as I switched in the CJ gear every single time many aspects just seemed to be more relaxed, natural and organic with a timbre that sounded both more vivid and more relaxed in the highs. Exactly the type of characteristics I observe when I listen to real life sounds. In particular when I played a recording, which has a closely mic’d male vocal quietly singing out of the left speaker, on the SS amps it sounded remarkably clear, but also slightly artificial and not quite the right tone/timbre to convince me of the reality. But as soon as the tube gear took over, it was like “ damn that’s a real human being singing right there.” The timbre was that of the human voice. The vocal sibilance sat back more naturally in balance with the voice etc. (I often do a test where I compare the timber of the sound coming from the loudspeakers with me, just snapping my fingers lightly clapping my hands, even just rubbing my hands together.
This is what organic sounds like when it’s real and in the room. And it immediately shows up the difference between that and what’s coming out of the speakers. When I have both the CJ amplifier and preamp playing, the timber coming from the speakers becomes a very good match for those little sounds I make in the room).
Anyway…. Whatever it is… whether it’s real technical audible differences, or purely a biased expectation effect, or some mix… I enjoy the hell out of the perception and so I’m going with it.
