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Tubes vs Transistors: An Audible Difference?
cgenman writes "Are those vaccuum tubes worth the extra price? This paper, a transcript of a speech to the Audio Engineering Society of New York, indicates so, though the reason is surprising: Overloaded tubes behave better.
While the speech itself is from the early 70's, the paper takes on new importance with the recent trend in louder is better music."
It takes a "fucking idiot" to issue such blanket statements that completely ignore technological advances. But since you're just trolling both sides of the fence in true slashtemplate fashion, I'll throw in my 2 cents and make things interesting.
Just because we are bathed in electronics today, doesn't mean they were so easily incorporated 20 years ago. Heck, how long have personal computers even been around ? Roughly 25 years. How long have they been seriously used for processing music ? Less than 12 years, and in the beginning it was pretty basic stuff: plain multitrack, very little DSP.
Now then, would you say that the XBOX isn't worth a shit because Fifa Soccer 2004 doesn't have the smell of wet grass and sweat to make it exactly like "the real thing" ? Hey, it's the latest and greatest, and things keep evolving by leaps and bounds every few years.
Perhaps soon we will discover what it is that these "vacuumophiles" claim exists deep within the 7th dimension that makes their amps sound "better", because we will come up with a tool that can detect this mysterious attribute and allow us to study it. Science is, after all, a series of theories that just happen to hold together.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
> it contains exactly zero facts.
Facts, such as:
> > tubes have major downfalls: they have to warm up, they have to cool down before you move them around, they break easily, etc.
Stop flaming simply for the sake of flaming, cocksucker.
I don't know how you got an insightful mod, but those facts were in there, and are true. In fact, he puts forth pretty much the WHOLE difference between tubes & ICs, as far as the properties of the equipment go and what the enduser experiences.