Question on NOS tubes bias doubt


I just put a New pair of NOS KEN RAD VT-231 in my CARY SLP-05 pre buffer stage, one for left and one for right, it sounds bias to the left for around say 10-15%, so I turn it off and swap them to confirm if it is not my room acoustic nature, as expected, it now bias to right for same amount. My question is, is it so called BIAS and that is why most tube gear has bias adjustment function? And should this be happening when seller says it is a matched pair NOS? I can compensate it with the balance feature on Cary SLP-05, but I doubt this pair is not matched. The testing figure in fact being declared slightly different while most of them are.
grandetech

Showing 4 responses by rodman99999

The Ken-Rads are some of the best VT-231's out there, but like anything else: They're not always perfect. You bought a pair of unmatched tubes. A slight mismatch shouldn't be noticable. That you have to compensate with a balance control says they're out quite a bit. Did the seller offer any satisfaction guarantee? BTW: Tube "biasing" is another story altogether(not related to your issue).
"Transconductance" IS how you measure the "gain" of an electronic device(tube, op-amp or transistor). You'll note that it is determined by finding the difference between the voltage at the input and the current at the output of the device in question: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transconductance) Tube pairs with matched transconductance are sought out to avoid system imbalances. If the tubes in question were matched as to triode balance and to one another: there should be no imbalance from channel to channel as a result of installing them. That's providing there is no imbalance elsewhere in the system that the installation of properly matched tubes happened to reveal.
The tube becoming noisy that quickly also confirms Mr N's response regarding it's being about to expire.