Anyone out there using Vacuum Tubes for HT?

what for?

what u are going to get?

are they quick? NO

do they produce a lot of heating YES

what for?

=======>All channels except sub bass.

what u are going to get?
More clarity and detialing than anything SS can do. I already own my amps. I built this system from the ground up.


are they quick? No

==========> Only when I use Telefunken 12AX7's in the preamp sections. Any other tube works fine.


Oh, and I played music for a halloween party with over 700 elementary (5 years to 10 years)students and quite a few parents in attendance, using a pair of Peavey SP1 with 15's and a horn, and a pair of SIXTY WATT Precison Electronics tube amplifers, it was loud and clear on the floor, so loud you couldn't talk and no distortion, no clipping.

Hey man, what's the point of $2000 vacuum tube cd players? Sounds like complete idiocy and a vast waste of money to boot. Ditto for tube driven anything else today.

Nothing is more beautiful than nothing.

Youre actually partially correct, it's the actual preamp that makes the difference, if the preamp is tube, you'll get the same sound. SO you can actually take pretty much ANY cd player, and preamp it with a tube preamp, and get the same sound.

I have run the entire gamut, from very high end audio, to 1960's console stereos.

The only advantage SS has is power from a smaller size and less heat. With 18 watts from a stereo tube amp, with inefficent speakers, I can drive people out of the house with no clipping and very little distortion.

Low quality SS amplifiers literally give me headaches. I refuse to listen to SS anymore, only exceptions are the monster receivers from the 1970's.

I have covered over 700 screaming elementary students (5-10 year olds)playing music at a Halloween party with only two monoblock 65 watt Precision Electronics tube amplifers matched with a pair of Peavey SP1. It was so loud you couldn't talk on the floor.

I am tired of the *beep* surrounding digital and how great it is. CD's cut off at around 17khz, and are intentionally compressed. In Dire Strait's Money for Nothing, there's a whole layer of sound effects missing from the beginning of the song because of that cut off.

I am tired of the *beep* surrounding digital and how great it is. CD's cut off at around 17khz, and are intentionally compressed. In Dire Strait's Money for Nothing, there's a whole layer of sound effects missing from the beginning of the song because of that cut off.

What on earth are you talking about? CD's do not cut off around 17kHz. The technical frequency response of CD's is to 22.05kHz, and the lowpass filter used in the mastering process is applied at no less than 20kHz... above the higher limit of adult human hearing, which rests around 17.5-18kHz.

Compression in mastering has nothing to do with digital compression. The former is a method of reducing the amplitude signature of the audio to keep it within the dynamic range of the format (which is 96.7dB for CD and only around 80dB for vinyl). The latter, digital compression, relates to the reduction of data which doesn't always correlate to a reduction in audio information, and does not apply to CD audio at all since the CDDA format is uncompressed 16-bit Linear PCM without exception.



Nature abhors a moron. -H.L. Mencken
http://www.cinemalogue.com

http://georgegraham.com/compress.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war


http://emusician.com/tutorials/emusic_masters_mastering/

http://www.audioholics.com/education/audio-formats-technology/issues-with-0dbfs-levels-on-digital-audio-playback-systems

http://www.cdmasteringservices.com/dynamicrange.htm


http://www.261.gr/CD%20loudenss%20war.html


http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17777619/the_death_of_high_fidelity/print
http://rockmusic.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_audio_loudness_wars

Sugarland's self titled album was unlistenable because of distortion.


If you want further proof, I am using a Shure V15 III cartridge with the correct needle. The preamp is vacuum tube. I can record Dire Strait's Money For Nothing, and you can compare it yourself.

Another example is Train's Drops of Jupiter, at 4:00 into the song, the drummer starts hitting the cymbals. On the all digital copy, the cymbals sound like static in the background, on the vinyl 45 copy, the seperate cymbals hits can clearly be heard.


I also run into the problems with audio levels when going from CD to an analog reel to reel.

This is an entirely different argument you're presenting now.

First you said that the frequency range is limited to 17kHz at the high end, which is false.

You also said that compression is the problem, which is false.

What you're describing and the links you NOW provide are not a problem with the frequency response OR dynamic range of the CD format.

They are a function of bad mastering. The loudness wars began actually in the 1950s, and kept escalating. Phil Spector used his "Wall of Sound" technique to increase the signal amplitude of tracks prepped for radio transmission... but since the 1970s there has been a worsening trend to master audio nearer to 0 dBFS than in the past. The result is that the larger dynamic range of CD is being wasted since the levels are mastered to a constant near the peak dynamic range.

If the audio engineers simply mastered recordings today actually knew what they were doing, CD's would all sound great... and a very few of them do.

But what you're encountering in the analog realm is a tradeoff... you're gaining a noise floor which also reduces the dynamic range, worse than CD's.

My personal preference, though, is 24-bit Linear PCM. This is also a digital format, and it is vastly superior to 16-bit Linear PCM. Where CD audio has 65,536 possible amplitude values per quantization interval, 24-bit LPCM has 12.7 *MILLION* possible amplitude values per quantization interval. This provides a degree of amplitude resolution and dynamic range that makes even the erratic amplitude of cymbals sound pristine, more so than any analog medium can handle.

Note that I say medium... this is very important. Analog is in theory without limit of dynamic range and has no amplitude resolution limits. But the formats that analog is fixed in, whether reel to reel, vinyl, etc. all have compromises whether a higher noise floor, groove width (vinyl) that limits dynamic range, magnetization of playback heads and wearing out of the recording on each successive playback... the available analog media are not up to the task of repeatedly providing the kind of dynamic range and amplitude resolution of digital past the first playback.

A properly mastered digital recording, one that hasn't been "pumped" for radio airplay, plays beautifully.... and even more so if it's 24-bit LPCM versus 16.



Nature abhors a moron. -H.L. Mencken
http://www.cinemalogue.com

Frequency response aside.

If you have heard a true analog to analog live recording of say a classical concert, if was mixed properly, there's a sense of extended range, or "air" or spaciouness that CD's cannot duplicate. It does slightly better when the source is analog.

PM me for the email address, I challenge you to compare the two distinct versions of the Train song I was talking about. If you are into country music, I have Jimmy Wayne's Do You Believe Me Now as a 45 also.

I agree with you about bad mastering, 90% of what's out there is unlistenable, half the time, it seems they can't even get stereo right.

I am using 1940's full range tube theater amplifiers rated @125 watts as my main source of amplification. These amps bring out EVERYTHING that is wrong with CD's today. I have run frequency sweeps on these amps, and my roommate's seven year old screams when it runs above 17khz because it hurts her ears. So I do know what they are capable of.