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

[Bob from Florida]

During my development of the Red Light District tube amp, I used an oscilloscope to see the blocking effects in several amps I was testing. There was a cool little app which would generate sine waves at two levels, alternating, and after setting the gain so that the higher level one would clip, the effect of blocking on the lower level one was dramatically visible. The RLD recovered cleanly and, unsurprisingly, it sounded the cleanest at high levels. I note with amusement that a group of Irish audio geeks ran comparisons of several tube amps and ranked the RLD at the bottom because "it sounded just like solid state."

RLD is on my "bucket" build list once just for the fun of it. Your dissertation on the amp design was both insightful and entertaining!

 

[mhardy6647]

Well, dang -- now I've got FOMO.

 

[FINFET]

Forgive the stupid question, but - these are software plug-ins, but plug-ins to what? For example there are Photoshop plugins where other companies make 'plug ins' to Adobe Photoshop, are these like that and if so what's the master software they plug in to? The sweetwater website seemed to imply that these can be standalone apps on your PC, is that the case? Thanks!

Most examples are tube analog hardwares in the post, like you'll have to spend like thousands of dollars to get one.
As for those plugins emulating tube hardwares, they are VSTs used in a VST host on PC/Mac, mostly used in DAW software (like Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Ableton Live, etc.) by artists/audio engineers. For simple real-time playback you can use simpler VST host like one that's just called VSThost which is free, or some paid ones like Live Professor.

 

[boxerfan88]

Forgive the stupid question, but - these are software plug-ins, but plug-ins to what? For example there are Photoshop plugins where other companies make 'plug ins' to Adobe Photoshop, are these like that and if so what's the master software they plug in to? The sweetwater website seemed to imply that these can be standalone apps on your PC, is that the case? Thanks!

The host software I use is foobar2000.

foobar2000 supports its native plugins (meaning plugins built specifically for foobar), and foobar2000 also supports VST plugins which are mostly used in the music production world.

In foobar2000, we can choose which plugin(s) to use/activate during playback.

Hope this helps clarify a little bit.

 

[Keith_W]

Coming in a bit late to this party ... I thought I'd like to share my perspective.



I'm pretty much aligned with what you have shared. In my recent few years of active participation in the audiophile scene.
It is my personal view that in the audiophile scene, the participants generally fall under these 4 categories:

1. musicphiles - those who enjoy music as produced through a very good system (including collecting CDs, Vinyls, Reel Tapes)
2. audioequipmentphiles - those who enjoy playing with different equipment/component (including tube rolling, cartridges, cables, accessories, software plugins, multiple speaker sets, etc.)
3. audiojeweleryphiles - those who enjoy owning very nice looking equipment (beautiful VU meters, tube glow, nicely shaped speakers, classy looking equipment, cables the size of small snakes)
4. audioluxphiles - those who enjoy owning unique/statement pieces of equipment that are typically out of reach for most except the rich.

I started at category 1, and now living somewhere inside category 2, and hoping to migrate back to category 1.

Back to OP, my opinion is that majority of those playing with "tube flavors" are either in category 2 or category 3... that is my guess.

What about those of us who only listen to sine waves? I spent 4 hours doing measurements and making filters last night. Then spent 15 minutes listening to music (well, actually listening to my new filters). Then I went to bed, and today I am listening to sine waves again.

 

[boxerfan88]

What about those of us who only listen to sine waves? I spent 4 hours doing measurements and making filters last night. Then spent 15 minutes listening to music (well, actually listening to my new filters). Then I went to bed, and today I am listening to sine waves again.

Ha! Now I found a fellow software hobby friend!!
I'll consider this Category 2, the only difference is that it's not hardware "equipment", but software "equipment" like REW, IIR/FIR filters, VBMatrix, foobar/VST plugins... I was doing that a few months back ... I can spend 4hrs at a go, doing REW sweeps, studying FR, phase, step, impluse, waterfall; then tweaking PEQ filters; then redo REW sweeps to check; then listening to actual music to cross check. Every 4hr session can fly by so fast.
I've arrived at the "optimized" settings for my system around Dec 2023, so now I am trying to migrate back to Category 1.

 

[benanders]

... Most of the time transparent playback system is the best to show music's original intension and no new layers of "tube effects" needed.

…Most of the time transparent playback system is the best to show music's original intension and no but new layers of "tube effects" needed are still desired.

You were within five words of answering your own query there at the end

 

[pinger]

Nice!

I take advantage of non-audio influences as well. For instance between and behind my stereo speakers is my big projection screen, so I'm staring at that when listening. I have colored lights that I can control, from dark moody blue or purple to undulating colors. I find it can positively affect my perception of the sound.

Not sure if you knew this or not but Russian composer Scriabin explored and had theories on different sounds being associated with certain colors

 

[fredoamigo]

Not sure if you knew this or not but Russian composer Scriabin explored and had theories on different sounds being associated with certain colors

Nice!

I take advantage of non-audio influences as well. For instance between and behind my stereo speakers is my big projection screen, so I'm staring at that when listening. I have colored lights that I can control, from dark moody blue or purple to undulating colors. I find it can positively affect my perception of the sound.

I am not far from thinking so too, because out of our five senses of hearing, smell, taste, touch and sight, sight dominates and strongly influences all the others. So as long as a tube amp is pleasing to the eye and very expensive as is often the case, the placebo effect plays a significant role in perception. especially since this perception is actually and truly different.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I am not far from thinking so too, because out of our five senses of hearing, smell, taste, touch and sight, sight dominates and strongly influences all the others. So as long as a tube amp is pleasing to the eye and very expensive as is often the case, the placebo effect plays a significant role in perception. especially since this perception is actually and truly different.

Yes, roughly 90% of our perceptual bandwidth is visual, then maybe 8 % auditory, and the rest in that last couple of percent. Lava lamps, projected colors, glowing tubes. All probably help.

I've found I immensely enjoy good videos of concerts. It is a shame so many are not very good. I never mixed video and audio in seriousness for years. I should have sooner. Good sound does help and lousy enough sound can ruin it, but a good video with pretty good sound is very enjoyable. I wonder too if the ability to enjoy music when driving along isn't similar.

 

[fredoamigo]

Yes, roughly 90% of our perceptual bandwidth is visual, then maybe 8 % auditory, and the rest in that last couple of percent. Lava lamps, projected colors, glowing tubes. All probably help.

I've found I immensely enjoy good videos of concerts. It is a shame so many are not very good. I never mixed video and audio in seriousness for years. I should have sooner. Good sound does help and lousy enough sound can ruin it, but a good video with pretty good sound is very enjoyable. I wonder too if the ability to enjoy music when driving along isn't similar.

Paradoxically, when I listen, I only manage to "dive" into immersion (in the sense of a complete detachment from the physical world) with the music when I am in complete darkness...because sight does not has more importance and our auditory system (ear/brain) is no longer influenced, no longer has a defense mechanism and bias that sight imposes.

 

[MattHooper]

Not sure if you knew this or not but Russian composer Scriabin explored and had theories on different sounds being associated with certain colors

I didn't know that. (And I used to listen to a lot of Scriabin).

I wonder if he was subject to synesthesia or chromesthesia.

I did a thread about this a while back - the possible relationship between those phenomena and audiophiles:

Audiophiles and "Synesthesia / Chromesthesia"

Synesthesia: https://www.livescience.com/61930-synesthesia-hear-colors-genes.html About 4 percent of the people on Earth experience a mysterious phenomenon called synesthesia: They hear a sound and automatically see a color; or, they read a certain word, and a specific hue enters their mind's...

www.audiosciencereview.com

As I mention in that thread, lots of audiophiles have equated sonic attributes to "colors" and I tend to "see" color in sound. And since this thread is about tube sound, to detour in to a more controversial idea...

There is a coloration that I have always perceived from my CJ tube gear. It's a sort of golden glowy amber tone in the upper mids/lower treble. Every time, especially when using both my CJ tube and amp together, the sound just has this "golden slightly lit up glow." And when I go back and forth between solid state and my CJ amps, it's very much this "golden glow" that tips me off as to which is which (and it's what I heard when I blind tested my CJ tube amp against my Benchmark preamp).

Which makes it interesting to me to find other audiophiles trying to describe what they hear citing the same attribute in many of the older CJ reviews, for instance:

Fremer on the CJ Premier 12s:

....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.

Jonathan Valin reviewing a modern CJ amp, but contrasting it to the old CJ sound:

There is none of the “golden brown” coloration that tended to make c-j electronics sound the way bronzed baby shoes look,

Now of course I know that for many here that just goes in to the category of flowery b.s, and yes I understand that (please see my signature lin). But, man, those guys described precisely what I percieve in my old CJ amps - it's one of the defining characteristics that keeps them in my system. When I see other audiophiles or reviewers who manage to describe sound in a way that suggests they "hear it as I do" I find that really cool (and their reviews can lead me to discover other gear that I end up really liking too).
And it also, to my mind, speaks to the OPs question as to why I still use tube amps.

 

[MattHooper]

Paradoxically, when I listen, I only manage to "dive" into immersion (in the sense of a complete detachment from the physical world) with the music when I am in complete darkness...because sight does not has more importance and our auditory system (ear/brain) is no longer influenced, no longer has a defense mechanism and bias that sight imposes.

I used to listen with the lights off all the time. Sonic imaging can feel even more amazing that way. I still sometimes turn all pot lights/spot lights off in my listening room in front of me, with just a tiny bit of light over my listening sofa, so I'm staring in to blackness and the imaging just totally takes over. But overall I've found I enjoy the "mood" setting I created for music listening in my lighting pre-sets, very dim spot lights around the room, and the screen behind the speakers lit with not too bright undulating colored lights.

 

[egellings]

I hate disagreeing with Bob, but here I have to. With VERY few exceptions, tube amps have horrible overload recovery after clipping. Blocking distortion is far more audible than clipped peaks. Morgan Jones goes into this in great detail in his books; likewise, Norman Crowhurst wrote some excellent articles about it. Morgan and I both design our amps to avoid blocking, and as a result, they can play louder than their power would suggest. Most solid state amps I've tested have nearly instantaneous recovery from overload.

Typically, I never drive my tube- based system into clipping, so waiting for charged caps that louse up grid bias to discharge is not an issue for me.

 

[egellings]

Not only a tube head but a DIYer also, of two mono amps and a pre-amp, and winding your own iron, me thinks that is worthy of a 2x4 across the frontal lobe three times. Not only do you crave distortion but you create it with your own hands. Repent. Repent.

If it tickles my nun-handles, I'm good to go, however someone else may sniff at such goings on.

 

[egellings]

…Most of the time transparent playback system is the best to show music's original intension and no but new layers of "tube effects" needed are still desired.

You were within five words of answering your own query there at the end

View attachment 340628

I have a postcard sized image of columns of tube marching, soldier-like, with that slogan on it.

 

[fredoamigo]

Typically, I never drive my tube- based system into clipping, so waiting for charged caps that louse up grid bias to discharge is not an issue for me.

How do you know you are not in "clipping mode? Is there an LED indicator on your amp? on classical music therefore not electrified where the dynamic differences can reach 20db, all amps can clipp very easily here and particularly tube amps.

 

[Multicore]

So why simply add another tube amp in the playback make the sound "warm, rich, analog" and without the tube amp it's suddenly "cold, harsh, thin and digital"?

I think the operative word here is simply. The reason I don't add audio effects by selecting amplifiers that produce these effects is because they make it inconvenient to control the effect. In other words, this approach to seasoning the output of the production chain to my tastes is too simple.

There are recordings that are not quite to my taste and some of those could, I assume, be improved with adding effects. I really can't be bothered trying to do that but if I did I'd approach it in an adjustable way, perhaps using the same kind of technology you showed is used in production. But some recordings need no correction and others can't easily be fixed and are better left alone. So at least it needs to be defeat-able and I don't want to have to swap amps around for this.

 

[Chr1]

It need only be a case of muting and the simple switch/press of a button though. Not necessarily particularly difficult.

 

[SIY]

There is none of the “golden brown” coloration that tended to make c-j electronics sound the way bronzed baby shoes look,

...which has nothing to do with the light bronze finish of the front panels. Unpossible.