[TowerTalk] Tube vs Transistor

[Keith Dutson]

Agree with this assessment.  I use a McIntosh MA6100 amp/preamp and
Sennheiser headphones (to eliminate spousal complaints about loud music) at
home.  This amp is not offered now, going out of production many years ago.
It was the first all solid state and first amp/preamp offered by the
company.  THD is less than .01% at 70 watts per channel RMS into 8 ohms,
20Hz to 20KHz (as shown on chart produced by spectrum analyzer).  It sounds
as good or better than any tube equipment I have ever heard, with speakers
or headphones.  The setup is about as clean as you can get.  BTW, the MA6100
is very heavy, primarily due to use of massive auto transformers at the
speaker terminals which yield a damping factor 50.

Keith NM5G

-----Original Message-----
From: towertalk-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:towertalk-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Tom Rauch
Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2004 7:56 AM
To: towertalk at contesting.com
Subject: [TowerTalk] Tube vs Transistor

We took a "high end" tube stereo with low distortion and a fair quality
solid state stereo and did a blind test with a few people who claimed they
could hear the difference.

There wasn't the slightest indication anyone could tell any difference. The
minute we added distortion they called it "better"!

I worked on a small tube type amplifier "designed" by a tube lover, and it
had horrible distortion caused by improper resistor selection. It was very
easy to see the distortion on a scope, let alone measure it with distortion
meters.

When I corrected the bias and load resistor values, a tube audio guru had an
absolute fit. He claimed I "ruined" the fidelity and "warmth" of the
amplifier. Restoring resistor values so the tubes produced non-symmetrical
waveforms brought the "warmth" back into the sound.

Some people like distorted or non-linear audio.  Nothing wrong with that.
Let's just not paint it as being "cleaner".

73 Tom


_______________________________________________

See: http://www.mscomputer.com  for "Self Supporting Towers", "Wireless
Weather Stations", and lot's more.  Call Toll Free, 1-800-333-9041 with any
questions and ask for Sherman, W2FLA.

_______________________________________________
TowerTalk mailing list
TowerTalk at contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk