Happy 100th To The Vacuum Tube

williamw83 writes "Today, November 16, 2004 has been declared as the centennial of the birth of modern electronics by the American Vacuum Society. As the AIP Physics News Update reports, this marks 'British scientist John Ambrose Fleming's 1904 invention of the first practical electronic device. Known as the thermionic diode, this first simple vacuum tube, containing only two electrodes, could be used to convert an alternating current (AC) to a direct current (DC).' Today's celebration takes place as part of the AVS's 51st Annual Symposium & Exhibition in Anaheim, CA. Being a guitar player myself, I've come to truly appreciate the technology of the vacuum tube every time I crank up my amplifier. This 100-year-old grandfather of electronics, used by musicians and audiophiles across the world, has proven that profound advances in technology do not always render old technologies obsolete."

Comments

Relays

[spike hay]

Vacuum tubes, as big as they were, were a huge improvement of the mechanical relay-powered early computers.

modern electronics?

[Jrod5000 at RPI]

i find it interesting that vacuum tubes are considered _modern_ electronics. wouldn't the transistor be a better first milestone in modern electronics? what sort of electronics existed before 1904 anyway?? i would suggest that vacuum tubes marked the beginning of electronics in general.

Re:Obsolete! Get a grip!

[Anonymous Coward]

Vacuum tubes in all forms are pretty much the base of our electronic world, from the tube inside your microwave oven, to the transmitter tubes in TV and radio stations, to the power tubes for radar, to the ceramic triode inside the Pioneer and Voyager probes (still working after 30 years, tubes: unreliable?), to the CRT you're probably staring at right now, to the electron microscopes and the vacuum deposition chambers that build your semiconductors, I'd say you need to open your mind a little bit.
Oh, and tube amps? Go to the closest audio shop you can find and go audition a Carver with some Totem Acoustics speakers...

Audiophile nonsense!

[Bilestoad]

Actually solid-state does render vacuum tubes obsolete, to the rational mind. Once you've admitted that the sound you really like just involves lots of second order distortion it's no big deal to make a processor using opamps or discrete transistors to add that distortion to a reliable, efficient, cheap amplifier. As many manufacturers have done! Boss, Line 6, and Roland to name just 3.

You're also forgetting that the biggest contribution to the sound comes from the cabinet, speaker and transformer. Like I say, the valve just adds some nice distortion.

You're not one of these people who believes in gold-plated connectors and $2500 power cables too are you?

Re:Audiophile nonsense!

[mveloso]

Funny, I remember someone doing a blind test with a tube amp and a solid state amp with a bit of distortion.

When they didn't know which was which, the group of audiophiles ranked them equally.

When they knew which one was the tube, they rated the tube higher...even if it was the solid state amp.

I wish I remembered where I read it. It was back in the early 90s, pre-web.

Re:Audiophile nonsense!

[Sycraft-fu]

Well, let's see. Given that I could get a used Hafler P1500 or P3000 for about 1/10th the price which has 0.2% THD at rated power (75 and 150 watts per channel in 8 ohms respectively) or a new Rotel RB-1080 for the same price with 0.03% distortion, I'm thinking solid state does look to be a bit better deal if we want to play the numbers game.

Of course the thing is, THD is talking about the average distortion, nothing about the shape. Generally speaking, tubes are more overall and a peak down in the 1khz range or so. Transistors are generally lowers with a peak more in the 10-20khz range. Thus the distortion, at a given THD, is usually more audible on a tube, if often plesant.

But just because a tube amp holds it's value doesn't mean it gives good bang for the buck. You can easily get cheaper, better perforing, more powerful, more rugged transistor amps.

It's kind of like a vintage car. An orignal Model-T restored and in excellent condition will sure as hell cost more than a new Subaru WRX. However it doesn't mean it's a better car for driving around in, the WRX will outperform it in basically every way. It's the fact that the Model-T is special, not better.

Re:Audiophile nonsense!

[Lisandro]

There's more to "amplifier sound" than just adding harmonics. If you like that sound, theres's a gadget called exciter that would do it for you. The distortion discussion is long and i feel, IMHO, than an amplfier that adds excessive unwanted distortion can't be called Hi-Fi to start with. But still...

Valve amplifiers have a number of design implementation characteristics that make them desirable for audio. For starters, almost every single valve amplifier is transformer-coupled at the output, which gives it a distinctive sound "coloration". Valves have much better slew rates and open-loop freq. response than transistors, which are desirable characteristics in audio devices. And, for a number of reasons, valve amps usally drive speakers much better, resulting in, yes, better sound. Class-A amplifiers (specially the so-called "single ended ones", where just one device energizes the speaker) exhibit a similar behaviour, which is why they are usually agreed to "sound more valveish" than regular ones.
Of course, valves have limited life, become microphonic over time and require manteinence. But that's part of the fun of it...

The truth is, most valve amps DO sound better. It might not be by much, but the difference is appreciable, and some people are willing to pay for it. A special case is instrument amplifiers, where valves are still unmatched. If you ever played an electric guitar, you'll know.

That being said, yes, i agree that a good set of speakers can make a bigger difference than a new amp. And the people who spend $2500 in interconnects and power cables (yes, they do) are insane, but don't think valves are obsolete. They have their place, even when in most areas transistors are more practical. For audio gear, instrument amplifiers, and power communications valve designs are still the norm. And, if you're using a CRT, you're pretty much looking at a huge device which works by the same principle as a vaccum valve.

Toronto Star Section

[tyman]

The Toronto Star did a front page write up in their @Biz section.

Re:The quality of music is dropping

[a whoabot]

Oh, get real! You "virtuoso" lovers who think the particular form of proficiency held by guys like Vai and Petrucci and Shawn Lane and whoever else is the only valid form are unreal. There's more than one way to play the instrument as everyone from Keith Rowe to Jimi Hendrix to Yngwie Malmsteen to Keiji Haino has showed us. Is Steve Vai amazing? Absolutely. Is Thurston Moore amazing? Just as. Are they amazing at different things? Yes. Keiji Haino could never play a Steve Vai song. And Vai could never play a Haino song. So who's better? Neither. They do different things even if they both play the electric guitar.

Re:The quality of music is dropping

[rco3]

I would disagree with that. Not that I'm a Cobain fan, but there's no reason that you should have to be a master of the Stratocaster in order to have a good-sounding amplifier. 0.001% is way too low a number. Maybe half or more of the people who own electrics are so hopeless that the amp doesn't matter, but not 9,999 out of 10,000.

Having worked as an amp tech at a guitar shop for 6+ years, I can tell you that I saw a lot of poor and mediocre players with nice amps... but I almost NEVER saw a good player with a crap amp or a crap guitar.

It's like saying that poor drivers shouldn't have good tires.

OTOH, I had a customer with a small-box Marshall 50W head that was ASTONISHING. You put it on about 3, and it was as if you were... I don't know, man, it was just beautiful. Tone, responsivity, everything. and then you pumped it up to about 7... Smoothest and creamiest, most perfect overdrive I've ever heard to this day. It was that 0.001% amplifier that cried out for a 0.001% player. When I played it for the guy who owned it (after I put new tubes in and biased it), I played it as God intended - and he was flabbergasted! He'd never actually let the amp do the dirty work, he was using some crappy ADA tube preamp! That Marshall was like Anna Kournikova in a nunnery - a complete waste of natural perfection.

Obviously I've got a bit of bias (HA! Bias! Get it? HA!) on the subject, but having two degrees in EE , 6+ years of guitar shop experience, and about a dozen albums recorded as musician or producer/engineer or both gives me what I consider to be a pretty good background in the science and art of guitar amplifier sound. However, it's all subjective. A good sound is the sound you like.

Re:Amplifiers...

[Wouter Van Hemel]

Clearly, you don't play guitar, or you would know that the raw, warm sound of a guitar crying through a tube amp close to meltdown is as sweet a sound as a woman close to orgasm.

But please, PLEASE, do tell us about those other undoubtedly equally interesting applications you had in mind. ;)

Tubes are still used...

[hpa]

... and not just for "the warm sound." They're used because they can be built arbitrarily large much easier than you can build power MOSFETs. You can build them to produce hundreds of megawatts of RF energy with a single klystron; a linear amplifier tube can easily be built to handle megawatts.

I haven't heard of any 1.22 GW vacuum tubes, but they certainly could be built. They'd be large.

Not as obsolete as you think....

[earthforce_1]

Despite the recent improvements in LCD technology, it is easy to forget that most of you are reading this off a vaccum tube CRT. Your household microwave contains a cavity magnetron tube. The niches for tube technology are diminishing but far from dead yet.

I have even heard of tiny tubes being etched out of silicon using the same photolithography techniques used to create other forms of nanotechnology. This is not as silly as it sounds, they could survive heat and radiation that would cook a transistor, and would be ideal in environments no solid state component could survive. (In a jet engine combustion chamber, a venus lander or on a space probe operating well inside Jupiter's radiation belts, or close to the sun)

Tube Amplifier Emulation != Actual Tube Sound

[TibbonZero]

This goes out to all of those that say there isn't a difference in tube amplification, and modelings of just extra 'distortion'. I offer two examples of such failures.

As proof of this, I offer the Vox AC30HW, which I have had plenty of experience playing. Now the same company, has created a Vox Valvetronix amp or whatever crap they call it. I'd only assume that the company the manufactures the AC30 would be able to emulate it the best, however they do a terrible job. Hook up an A/B amp switch, and try to achieve similar sounds. Now push the Solid state POS to higher levels, how does it react. Try different playing dynamics, etc... Now try the same with the Vox. The vox only gets better, and the emulation, doesn't act at all like the real deal, nor sound ANYWHERE as good in depth, tone, or musical dynamics. In other words, it sounds like shit.

Take a Cybertwin amp by Fender, and put that against a real 64 or 65 Fender Twin with great tubes in it, that has been maintained well. Not even in the same ballpark.

So if the manufactures themselves can't even get it right, who can? I'm sure at some point it can be done, but just the A/D and D/A conversion and poor clocking on these digital amps kills it from the start.

Re:Nuclear Proof?

[dasunt]

WHERE did you get that? Let's see... First satelite in orbit? Check. First dog in space? Check. First man in space? Check. First woman in space? Check. Shot down a U2 spyplane at 70,000 feet? Check. Lots of supersonic ultra-maneuvreable aircraft? Check.

Food for thought:

There is an interesting article by Robert Heinlein about his visit to the Soviet Union, which included the spy plane incident.

Heinlein was very skeptical about the Russian claims of shooting down the U-2 with a missile, noting that the Russians had recovered the plane intact.

That is probably an unfounded conspiracy theory, since we later learned that the Russians shot off a whole bunch of missiles, including one that shot down and killed one of their own pilots. According to the pilot's testimony, it appears that the U2 wasn't directly hit, but had an explosion near enough to it to damage it. [If you want to kill several hours, this is rather fascinating reading via the web and google's usenet archives -- both for the event itself, and the guesses/conspiracies what happened.]

Heinlein's account of Russia is also worth looking up, especially for the tinfoil hat crowd. He was under the impression that the USSR was purposely overstating the population of Moscow. He also considered the possibility that Russia had covered up the loss of a human pilot in a rocket accident. Look for "Worlds of Robert A Heinlien", c. 1980-ish or so, it includes the (non-fiction) article as well as other works by him, both fiction and non-fiction.

As for Russian technology, they whupped the US in several areas, including some aspects of the space program in addition to the ones you mentioned, as well as medical (e.i. laser-eye surgery), biological (biological weapons of terrifying effects, others), and military (certain planes, guns, etc, especially from a "ruggedness" perspective).

In the end, they seemed to have lost the cold war due to the US's economic might. Capital is a resource, and the US's less-managed economy[1] was better at generating capital then the USSR's more managed economy. I am of the opinion that the US also won because of its own openness. The security restrictions of the USSR was their own downfall[2]. The USSR's internal propaganda was worse then the US's, which was probably also a factor. Note which areas the USSR exceeded the US in -- those areas which was relatively cheap, yet had resources devoted to it (biological weapons, warfare), or those hard science that did not threaten communist dogma.

[1] And yes, the US's economy has been managed for many, many years now, through the gov't expansion/contraction of the money supply.

[2] Something I wish the Powers That Be would realize about the "War on Terror".