Why people still use tube amps when there are plenty of tubes already used in the making of music

[antcollinet]

I suppose similar to the mystery of why some like steam locomotives or vintage MGs, when modern trains and cars are so much more comfortable, reliable and clean.

There's something about the aesthetic, and not a little nostalgia, that appeals. It's a big part of why I play with turntables and valve amplifiers, the challenge of getting something acceptable from so unpromising a medium.

S.

Exactly - there is no mystery - and it is repeatedly over and over again (see what I did there) stated on the relevant threads. The reasons are not to do with absolute sound quality (as opposed to "the quality of the sound" which some people claim to like) it is all the other aspects that go along with it/them.

 

[antcollinet]

Anyway… how many audiophile actually often reaching for EQ or tone controls when they listen?

That's the point I'm making. Normally it is set up once to get the desired tonality - and then left like that.

And (at least IMO) the main reason for having an undesirable in room tonality is room interaction - Especially with all the complaints we hear about "harsh" "fatiguing" "clinical" etc. etc. which are nearly always due to a tonal imbalance. The bass related equivalents "muddy" "wooly" etc are also often tonal imbalance, but then often, need precisely targeted eq more difficult to achieve without measurements.

Though I'll accept there are personal preferences involved also. Looking at you, bass-heads.

 

[hvbias]

A question for your expertise. And I’m asking in the context that I’m pretty sure I know what you think about tube rolling.

As I’ve mentioned, I have the Conrad Johnson premiere 12 monoblocks. I’ve had them since somewhere around the late 90s..
And all that time I had never changed the driver tubes until they started cacking out a few years ago. I was replacing the two GE NOS 6FQ7 Driver tubes that originally came with the amplifiers.

I started looking up replacements and, admittedly, I got sucked into some good reviews for some NOS Mazda 6CG7 / 6FQ7.

Once those were installed in my amps the sound first struck me as more lush, but then it seemed more like “mush.” It just sounded too laid back and lacked punch, didn’t sound like the amps I “knew” but more like slightly underpowered amps for the speakers. I was quite bummed out by having lost the sound I liked, not to mention the money that felt wasted.

So I panicked and tracked down some NOS GE NOS 6FQ7 to hopefully replicate the original tube compliment. And once those were plugged in… bam… there it was. The amps sounded like themselves again. it was back to punchy powerful sound.

So my question is, sighted bias is an obvious plausible explanation, but if that wasn’t the case, might there be another technical explanation for the type of “ under driven mushy” performance with the MAZDA tubes?

I would imagine you can get some crappy results by putting the wrong tubes in an amp that it was not built around?

Is it possible that those were the wrong tubes?

Or since they were old tubes (claimed NOS) could they have been defective?

To piggy back off this, in a comparison of various 300B tubes JJ were shown to be the most linear among other 300B that cost several times more. I did a search trying to find this article or thread that I read about this on DIY Audio but I wasn't able to. @SIY do you know where this was published?

To add to your question some tubes labeled XY can have specs that deviate from the XY tube type.