compare tubes w/ ss

leftwinger57

hello once again,
Is there any comparison between a tube amp and solid state or is it totally apples and oranges. I was looking at a mac 260 and well my amp has got the watts on this. Does less watts truely translate into less power or are tubes measured different.I've heard that Mac warm sound but I don't think a 60 watt is powerful enough.
h/t
Tosiba au37
Yamaha rx-v665
Yamaha ysd11 dock
Denon1910ci cdp
Klipsch500 spks
2-channel
Adcom-gfa555
Infinity sm112s
Denon1910ci cdp
Dual 1219 turntable

zingo

Do you have the opportunity to demo the amp and give it a listen for yourself?

cfrizz

Basically it is an apples to oranges comparison. Two totally different sounds. One sound SS will be consistent all the time. Tubes allow you to change them thereby changing the sound you end up hearing.

I prefer consistency to tweaking.

sda2mike

tube watts, i've heard go further than ss. your klipsch's should be very efficient spkrs. you'd be amazed what 10 watts of glass can do to your room. it's all a part of the journey

michaeljhsda2

My 52 watt EL34 based tube amp drives my SDA SRS 1.2 TL's to ear bleeding levels.

YMMV

michaeljhsda2

....

organ

hags wrote: »

I would say it's never about the quantity of power in this hobby.

After years of going tube, with low output SE, higher output P/P, triode, pentode etc... and with high efficiency speakers from Altec, Jensen, Tannoy, TAD, JBL, and Klipsch I can only say that I no longer own any tube gear or tubes for that matter.

I prefer good, high quality SS preferably 150/300/600 or 200/400/800. To me there is just no comparison, high quality/power SS loafing along with full range of frequency response, high resolution and high dynamic capability is what you want.

Tube and especially low power tube designs are nice to play around with and you can even DIY. Tube rolling is a subtle way to tweak the sound of your system. However, IMO, if you're looking for the best, full range sound without rolled off extremes or colorations and the highest resolution and most dynamic sound then SS is the way to go.

I think many will disagree with your statements. EVERY GEAR will color the sound. Only difference is, with tube rolling, you get to choose your color.
You mention about SS's high resolution and high dynamic capability. Are you saying tubes are not capable of this? Maybe you're listening to the wrong gear? You said you've used high eff speaks like Klipsch, JBL, etc, so you must know the kind of dynamics they're capable of producing with tube power, right? If you're getting rolled off high's and/or lows, your amp doesn't match your speakers. Can't blame the tube amps for that.

HB27

Keiko wrote: »

Which makes tube rolling so much fun and enjoyable. You don't need to spend x amount of $$$ on another component or swap gear. Just roll some tubes.

It's not always about the quantity of power, lw57. It's the quality of power. I've read where some of these guys have driven some fairly power hungry speakers with low watt tube amps.

I'm running RTA Monitor 12bs with a 12wpc HK trio EL84 amp and it's amazing the power on the 12s have. Deepest hardest hitting bass and midrange you could want. The volume level is way above what my ears can take without distorting one little bit.

It's a super musical combination and you couldn't hope for better sound.
The 260 will give you a lot of smooth power and with the right tubes in a properly working amp will send you to audio heaven.

leftwinger57

Thanks guys that quite informative. It did not make sense that a co. like Mac would make low watt amps and lose quality. They did not as I now know. This whole tube rolling
idea is so out of my leauge, even if I owned the amp I would'nt know which to switch or even what there function is . I guess start here and ask. thanks....LW

HB27

There may be a club member or audio store that will let you compare them side by side.
It is "apples and oranges" and both have their own personalities.
I'm tube spoiled and I no longer run SS systems as I'm all tube.
I'm an old **** though and don't do HT, powered subs, etc.
I've got some fantastic SS amps and receivers I keep on the side as "Plan B" just in case but I prefer tube personally.
The rolling of tubes is primarily "tone control" and with some reading and listening to people in the know you'll quickly pick up the general personalities of tubes and the sounds they have. There's some great tubes out there very cheap. Then again...there's the elusive tubes that require your paycheck, left nut, and first born at times. It's going to depend on how much you're into the music. AND....Tubes are music.
The Mac will put you on the path to burnt fingers, big grins, and wonder what took you so long to figure it out. Tubes are a simple hobby.

mhardy6647

even better is to meet up with someone (or a group) in your area with the kind of equipment you want to hear. Bring your own music (stuff that you know really well) and listen.

From my perspective, reading about hifi is like reading about sex. It's interesting, but it will all makes more sense experientially.

tonyb

I completely agree too....with the sex part that is.:p

organ

hags wrote: »

Sure, and I don't disagree, but what you want or what is considered "high end" or "hi-fi" is the least amount of coloration. IME you won't find that with tubes.

I dont' know about anybody else but I'm trying to listen to my recordings and not my equipment. It's good to have tone in a tube based guitar amp, but, IMO, not in home audio equipment. I'll leave the tone to the recording and the performance I'm listening to.

As far as dynamics, I would argue that any horn or horn loaded driver is colored, after years of listening to all kinds of transducers, IMO horns and high efficiency designs are the most colored. The coax designs are the worst, putting a tweeter in the center of a paper driver is fraught with problems.

Take a look at the distortion plots of most tube gear, rolled off at the frequency extremes. I'm not arguing subjective sound quality but look at all the crap that ends up with the original signal at the output. That is certain not high resolution.

As far as matching amps and speakers, that has not been a problem.

I have SS pre's and amps that have frequency ranges into the Mhz region. Anything with a transformer cannot come close. I've seen output transformers that are 1 db down at 20KHz or worse! It's been shown that even though you may not be able to hear over say 19KHz the information above that has an effect on subjective sound both pro and con.

To each his own. I'm not poo-pooing anyone's choices, I'm just offering arguments for my own.

If you like tube amps, their limitations and the high cost of quality tubes then great. I've heard outstanding tube based systems, I've even owned a few. However, none of them come close, IMO, to the sound of a quality SS rig.

Again, I haven't heard a single piece of equipments without coloration. I've heard some SS gear that have more coloration than tubes. Look at the curves of a good triode tube, it's linear which would indicate (going by measurements alone) that there is no coloration. Think of frequency curive of a good triode tube. It would suggest a neutral sound.

Find me any cone and dome speakers that can do dynamics like horns. Sure some may be colored, but that's the price you pay for efficiency and dynamics.
You go around preaching SS like it's the only thing worth listening to. There are a lot of tube users in this forum. Most of us prefer to let our ears decide for us instead of flat freq res charts and graphs.

If tubes are as bad as you say it is, there must be a lot of deaf people out there.

Face

The most transparent piece of gear I've ever heard had multiple tubes. So ignore the stereotypes of tube vs. SS, as it comes down to how well the product was designed vs. the parts used.

cfrizz wrote: »

Basically it is an apples to oranges comparison. Two totally different sounds. One sound SS will be consistent all the time. Tubes allow you to change them thereby changing the sound you end up hearing.

I prefer consistency to tweaking.

This doesn't make any sense. Tube amps as well as SS amps can be bright, neutral, or warm. And if you don't tube roll, you'll get the same sound every time.

megasat16

Tubes are Tubes and Transistors are Transistors. They sounds very different.

I love Transistors. I don't hate Tubes. But I love Transistors more! It's not only about Tubes gear vs. SS gears. It's the whole deal including how it is implemented to sound good.

megasat16

hags wrote: »

but what you want or what is considered "high end" or "hi-fi" is the least amount of coloration. IME you won't find that with tubes.

If High End of Hi-Fi means the most neutral gear on the planet, I probably want Lo-Fi only. I hate coloration and my gears are pretty much neutral (at least to me). Yeah, all flavors of color we described are pretty much related to our own world of Hi-Fi and not absolute. What sounds neutral to you would be a little warm sounding to me. Bottom line is that we do what we like to hear and that's about it.

I dont' know about anybody else but I'm trying to listen to my recordings and not my equipment. It's good to have tone in a tube based guitar amp, but, IMO, not in home audio equipment. I'll leave the tone to the recording and the performance I'm listening to.

Are you saying that you trust the recording guys to do most everything right? In recording studios, they use monitor speakers and reference headphones to listen to their editing. If something sounds good through them, it could usually sounds good through many other speakers. But when you measure it with better than the recording stuff, there are many things that could be revealing from the recording.

I have SS pre's and amps that have frequency ranges into the Mhz region. Anything with a transformer cannot come close. I've seen output transformers that are 1 db down at 20KHz or worse! It's been shown that even though you may not be able to hear over say 19KHz the information above that has an effect on subjective sound both pro and con.

As far as I know, only a very handful of SS pre and amps can can reproduce frequency from dc to the MHz region with -3db FR point. FM acoustics, Boulder and GoldMund being a few ones I know. Their gears made for such high frequency range are not affordable to many.

organ

I"m not taking it personally, just suggesting your posts comes off like I said it does. If it didn't, what does Megasat and Zero's response to you imply?

megasat16

hags wrote: »

I don't know what to say.

You don't want neutral equipment but your's is "pretty much neutral". What does that mean?

I meant mine is pretty much neutral sounding to me. But I doubt it'll be neutral to some other people. Simply put, the word neutral, and all kinds of flavor are related to one man's world. There is no absolute definition to gears.

If you want lo-fi go for it.

Who knows? My gear may be Lo-Fi to some but I couldn't care less. I enjoy mine is what is important to me and I made my rigs enjoyable for me alone.

I was speaking in terms of absolute to the recording or source you are listening to. Anything added to the signal from the input to the output is distortion.

What I'm saying is I want to hear what's on the recording I'm listening to. I don't want to hear something added by "gear" or "equipment".


I can't follow your second statement at all.

Have you heard how a person sings without microphone, wire, preamp, eq, tone control, amps, speakers in wide opens spaces in real life? I've heard mesmerizing voices of a real person and real instruments without the room effects, the electronics, and the recording engineers etc.

IMO, no recording engineers and instruments can create such neutrality.

Don't forget what you are calling recording sources are already been pass through Mic, wires, amps, a few instruments before it gets recorded, then edited and recorded again for the final release.

It's a hard thing to swallow for thinking what you hear is neutral and doesn't represent any coloration since it's been passed through many stages of recording, editing, releasing before it gets played in your rig. Even if your rig is 100% neutral to you, I bet the sound you heard might already been highly modified in a way or many.

Sure, most are frequency limited by an input filter or other method. My point was that an output transformer with a 30-20KHz frequency response (-1db) and an outpout impedance of 4-8 ohms is going to be highly reactive with many speakers. That will cause all sorts of phase and frequency issues.

I think you meant SS gears. Hardly, there are output transformers used in many SS gears nowadays. Most are DC coupled at output stage.

Input filters do not effect the high bandwidth of the gear but the use of Negative feedback limits the bandwidth of the output devices for better linearity. Negative Feedback is also used to correct phase, slew rate and frequency issue and bandwidth limiting. Your speakers can't play MHz range anyway. So, it's pointless in making gears capable of playing MHz range coz we simply can't hear.

I think most SS or Tube gears Engineered toward playing from 5Hz-150KHz at +1dB/-1dB should sounds as good as the ones that made to play from DC to MHz region.

Anyway, YMMV! This is just a Hobby! We do what we like to do and we simply think we are doing it right.

jrgoswick

It depends on two and ONLY two factors:
1)-How deep your pockets are
2)-What sounds good to you

With that said, get what you like and compare what you had to what you have and go from there. It's all about the combination, from sources to wires, interconnects to even(dare I say it) your cabinet/rack. Just my two cents. And from my sig, I've never owned tube gear. I've heard it, I like it, just can't afford it.

thsmith

Tubes Rule ! it had to be said.

HB27

thsmith wrote: »

tubes rule ! It had to be said.

yep!

leftwinger57

My God , what did I start here ,you guys are starting to get on each other. The response
has been mind blowing w/ possibly a 5o/50 split on wants and desires. The other day while trolling E-bay I came across in the amps section Carvers KT-88 monoblocks. These things were amazing looking w/a clean but very indutrial look and w/ pix showing them hand spooling the xformers.At $4,200 latest bid this well go for some serious cash.Any you guys see this amp and have any thing to say about Carvers stuff in general. I do get that it is not a compareable item and that it's a preference thing.Thanks again.

toucanet

I first purchased my Carver (and Polk) gear in the early 90's. My preamp and amps (and Polks) are still playing with no problems. Although I have added gear to my collection (most recently tube gear), I still use my Carver gear and do not have any problems or complaints. Additionally, I like the sound. If/when my Carver gear needs servicing, I will definitely spend the money to get them serviced, regardless of the age of the gear.

I will say that I prefer the sound coming from my tube gear; this is purely my personal preference. If you can swing the funds for the Carver tube amps that are currently on eBay, you will not be disappointed. A new owner of those amps raved about them on another forum. He is very satisfied with his purchase of those amps.

Good luck in whatever decision you make.

thsmith

leftwinger57 wrote: »

My God , what did I start here ,you guys are starting to get on each other. The response
has been mind blowing w/ possibly a 5o/50 split on wants and desires. The other day while trolling E-bay I came across in the amps section Carvers KT-88 monoblocks. These things were amazing looking w/a clean but very indutrial look and w/ pix showing them hand spooling the xformers.At $4,200 latest bid this well go for some serious cash.Any you guys see this amp and have any thing to say about Carvers stuff in general. I do get that it is not a compareable item and that it's a preference thing.Thanks again.

If you are not passionate about audio probably not much point coming here;)

fishbones

leftwinger57 wrote: »

My God , what did I start here ,you guys are starting to get on each other.

Yeah, starting a thread titled "tube vs solid state" started some bickering, crazy huh? :rolleyes:

As far as tube 'coloring' goes....I once decided to see what my Cary SLP30 (tube preamp) was 'doing' to the signal path in my system. I bypassed it, by hooking my CDP up directly to my SS mono-block amps* (per an audio shop's recommendation). I expected to hear a big difference by taking a major component out of the signal path, but I was amazed that it wasn't much better. Comparing it back and forth, I realized that hooked up directly - the music had more weight to the instruments, more detail and a blacker background....but, it wasn't much different. My little Cary was doing an excellent job of being quite transparent....I was pretty proud of my little tube pre! As far as 'tube' coloring...I noticed none. I did notice though that with the Cary in the mix, the top end was less edgy and ear fatiguing - a pleasant sound for me.

On the other hand, I once demoed a Conrad Johnson (solid state) preamp in my system, and it had a very colored sound that was warm and lush (a signature sound of theirs).

So, as has been stated already, generalizing a certain category of equipment as having a 'colored sound', is not accurate. They only way to generalize equipment accurately, would be to say - all equipment colors the sound. It's really just a matter of what 'color' you like!

*BTW, I don't recommend doing this exercise unless no one is home...cause it is LOUD!

Timothy Smith

I am convinced that there is a difference between SS and tubes (I have both and will likely always have both).

I particulary like Dahlquist DQ-10 speakers (at one time I had as many as 3 pairs). DQ-10's are notoriously inefficient. 100 SS watts (Quad 405-2) didn't seem like enough, 150 SS watts (HK Citation 16) seemed like it's getting there, 200-250 watts seemed good (Adcom GFA-555, Rotel 1080, Carver TFM-35).

Just for the heck of it, I hooked up the DQ-10's to my Cayin 30 wpc tube integrated, and was shocked at how good it sounded. With only 30 watts the DQ-10's played as loud as I wanted with room to spare.

If people turn up their noses at tube equipment, they are really missing out on something. Since I don't own a "good" tube pre, I ordered a Grant Fidelity tube buffer for about $150 to put between my Forte SS pre and the Adcom and/or Rotel. Right out of the box with the cheapie Chinese stock tubes it sounded pretty good, then I swapped in some inexpensive GE NOS tubes and it sounded better, than swapped in some NOS Mullards, sounded like "****" at first, then broke in over time and drifted to great.

I know I like the sound of my SS system better with the tube buffer, because several times I have settled down to listen to my system and it really sounded "blah", each time I figured out that I forgot to turn on the tube buffer, when I did, the "magic" returned.

Tube guys are not crazy (well maybe a little), there is a reason this equipment is coveted and people fall in love with the sound. The highest horsepower car or motorcycle is not aways the best, or the most fun, the largest caliber gun is not always the best or most fun, the biggest **** are.....well you know what I mean.

Tim

megasat16

hags wrote: »

Right, you also stated you didn't want neutral. ?????

I guess I didn't say it clearer in the first time? I wanted my rig to be neutral. I also wanted mine to be natural. Neutral is when there is nothing added or removed by your rig. Natural is when it sounds similar to what you could hear in a live venue.

I created my rigs to be both Neutral and Natural. But it's to my ears only. The definition of Neutral or Natural is correct to your ears and my ears only.

How can't I made you understand? If you like your food a bit salty and calling it your neutral taste, I probably might find it too salty.

The word Neutral, Natural is subjective to one man's taste.

Anyway, I wanted my to be neutral and natural for my ears and I made it that way. My friends won't likely agree with me that my rig is also neutral or natural to them.

Again, you stated you wanted lo-fi. ?????

Sure! I could be richer with Lo-Fi gears. You again missed what I said.

Ok, again, I mean colored as in the output looks signifacantly different than the input. I am talking about what you are listening to, not some pie in the sky absolute.

Sure if you know or are sure what you are looking on the oscilloscope relates directly to a good sounding natural gear, you might just hit a gold mine.

All equipments change the output more or less and it's only an indication of better design and better standards from input to output degradations. It does not ensure a good or better sounding equipment.

I was talking about tube amplifier output transformers and their problems. Input filters do indeed limit the frequency range of the following circuit hence the term input filter.

On the contrary, negative feedback increases the bandwidth as compared to OL bandwidth.

Ok! I thought you were saying about SS gears anyway. But NFB limits the bandwidth of the transistors in order to better utilize transistors in the linear region.

Again, in response to the OP, I prefer SS to tube equipment. Most of the tube equipment I've owned along with various tube friendly speakers/drivers has sounded incredible.
I am not poo-pooing tube audio. I've had tube set ups that have sounded airy, open, detailed, dynamic, and punchy with great soundstaging and presence.

I just prefer SS which has all that and more IMO. To me there is no substittue for quality power and headroom.

It's OK with me. You can poo-poo on the Tube Gears. I am not the ones you are upsetting here. I am a proud warrior of Sand Gears aka MEGA.

RT1 on the other hands might not be so pleased when you pissed on the Tube Gears. But it's OK and I kinda like it.