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Stereophile's Jim Austin disagrees w Atkinson; says tubes have something that can't be measured

mhardy6647

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You want to make a SET amp out of that. Don't you?
Heck, no!
I'm a fleapower kinda SET guy.
Unless...
hmm...
wonder how it would do running in space charge mode? You know, maybe 20 volts on the plate.
Of course, I'd need a dedicated substation to power the heater in it (35 V @ 435 A). :oops:
On the other hand... it is a power triode.

:cool:
 

mhardy6647

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The danger of electrocution has zero to do with the merits of tubes vs solid state semi in audio designs, though.

Anyone that doesn't respect their interaction with significant levels of electricity is playing with dangerous fire. And capacitance can kill very easily. I did my MSEE here: https://www.epe.ed.tum.de/en/hsa/equipment/professorship-hsa/

Mistakes were known to be very easily deadly, and the safety rules were top level. I just wrote software honestly. But very impressive stuff and still one of the top facilities for high voltage research on the planet. Only accident I ever heard about was because somehow a rat/rodent was in the facility and during a test it got turned inside out as it exploded. Facility was closed for a month to clean out any possible unpredictability.

PS: As always, I emphasize my degree was NOT in audio. I do not work in the audio field.
You know what they say:
It's the volts that jolts but the mills* that kills.

____________
* milliamperes
 

digicidal

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I'm hoping the correct spelling isn't eunuchs...
Not the correct spelling, but it is the direct result in many cases. :D
 

Sam Spade

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Not to mention the lack, into the 1960s, of reliable and affordable transistors for high frequency use. This resulted in some amusing products, such as the space charge tubes designed to run directly from low voltage (i.e., automobile) DC power supplies -- plates and all! :) Also, the early "solid state" FM tuners, with tubes in the front end (typically only listed in very fine print in the ad copy). ;)

In the latter case, the tubes used were often RCA's last-gasp NuVistors. And you know... I am kind of surprised that no one's mentioned the amphibian* of the active electronic components family tree -- the NuVistor :)

View attachment 286045

I am sure all y'all know that there've been a few "modern" hifi products that use NuVistors, too! ;)
_______________
* Or is it the Piltdown Man? ;)
I have a musical fidelity nuvista preamp feeding a rotel RB1080 power amp driving some top end Dali speakers. It is a sublime combination
 

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Chrispy

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Just looking at the first post and not much else....what else would he say to keep that sort of nonsense alive?
 

Sal1950

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Just looking at the first post and not much else....what else would he say to keep that sort of nonsense alive?
27 pages and 530+ posts and that's still the bottom line.
Stereophiles JA2 just lives to continue every BS piece of snake-oil myth that might bring in a buck or two in ad money. That's his job I guess but one I could never hold due to it's inherit dishonesty and lack of integrity. :facepalm:
 

Chrispy

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27 pages and 530+ posts and that's still the bottom line.
Stereophiles JA2 just lives to continue every BS piece of snake-oil myth that might bring in a buck or two in ad money. That's his job I guess but one I could never hold due to it's inherit dishonesty and lack of integrity. :facepalm:
When your main purpose is to continue bs in audio....
 

digicidal

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27 pages and 530+ posts and that's still the bottom line.
Stereophiles JA2 just lives to continue every BS piece of snake-oil myth that might bring in a buck or two in ad money. That's his job I guess but one I could never hold due to it's inherit dishonesty and lack of integrity. :facepalm:
To be fair, if Stereophile was more like ASR - there wouldn't be enough subscription revenue to print it, and the 10-12 companies still willing to pay for ad space wouldn't make up the difference. I bet cable and 'tweak' advertisement alone constitutes >30% of their revenue these days.

Although if it was... I wouldn't have canceled my subscription years ago.
 

fpitas

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Heck, no!
I'm a fleapower kinda SET guy.
Unless...
hmm...
wonder how it would do running in space charge mode? You know, maybe 20 volts on the plate.
Of course, I'd need a dedicated substation to power the heater in it (35 V @ 435 A). :oops:
On the other hand... it is a power triode.

:cool:
I think space charge for that thing might extend to 1kV on the anode.
 

mhardy6647

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Oh this guy was pretty near dead and was being resuscitated with CPR/mouth to mouth back in the day that when that was the method. It was my father a fireman paramedic that was administering industrial first aid to him and he convulsed, vomited in my father's mouth and then died. Horrible stuff. Industrial voltages coming from a hydroelectric dam that powered the facilities at a huge smelter and zinc fertilizer operation. I will never forget that.
I cannot, of couse, click "like" :( but thanks for the explanation. Terrible stuff to have to go through for participants or for witnesses. I misread and/or misunderstood your original post on the topic.
 

Balle Clorin

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No mystery here. The thing is that the distortions in a tube amp does not necessary sound bad, rather it may sound as a nice coloration. I heard this amplifier last week on a pair well known Italian speakers . It sounded just fine, actually really nice on some light jazz.
 

computer-audiophile

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...
No mystery here. The thing is that the distortions in a tube amp does not necessary sound bad, rather it may sound as a nice coloration. I heard this amplifier last week on a pair well known Italian speakers . It sounded just fine, actually really nice on some light jazz.
Interesting - was it the Mastersound amp tested by Stereophile?
Well known Italian speakers. What can this be?
 

Galliardist

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No mystery here. The thing is that the distortions in a tube amp does not necessary sound bad, rather it may sound as a nice coloration. I heard this amplifier last week on a pair well known Italian speakers . It sounded just fine, actually really nice on some light jazz.
They may not sound bad, they may sound nice, but to me at least they rarely sound right.

When a tube amp sounds right to me, it has reasonably low distortion - just like with any other type.

So I don’t see reason in chasing “perfection” by playing with components with higher distortion, whether bad, nice, or if any other description. I see no point in the lifetime of searching that Austin referred to.
 

Galliardist

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And now I’m going to suggest the “opposite case”. Let’s assume that there is, say, 1% of the male population that differ from the standard case, that is that even blind tested they don’t prefer low distortion sound. In the US that number would be around one million. Now, more controversially I could claim that five percent are driven by their preference not matching the norm, and have the income, to become hardcore subjective audiophiles. That gives us 50,000 people to be genuinely interested in the perfection chase: quite enough to form the core of current audiophilia.

I still don’t buy the lifetime chase, but is there something to this idea?
 
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