Dburdic, I agree with you about tube systems. I hear the tube amp. Some of the tube defenders call this continuous space. I call it glueon. I like black space. On the other hand, I have yet to hear, vinyl aside, an ss system sound pleasing. Like Tubegroover, I strive for a balance twixt the two. I use a transparent Pass X 150 for power, a Pass Aleph P for gentle switching; and a well tubed Jolida 100 controls the sound. As has been noted, solid state amp technology has progressed, so much so, that you won't hear any evil second order harmonics. Pass X and XA amps are foremost examples. Then again, the Pass amp can sound horrible if used in a poor sounding system. It is a slave to whatever is fed to it. I think we all understand that. |
It is my opinion that tubes, used sparingly, lend a sense of palpable liquidness to the sound. I like keeping the tube amplification in the primary step up station. After that, I think more tubes are superfluous, at best. After all, how much even harmonic distortion does one need?
I tried a Sonic Frontiers Line pre amp. It is, as you probably know, also generally considered ss sounding. I sold it in favor of the Pass Aleph P, mainly because tube rolling six tubes is pricey, but also because I sensed the extra bottles weren't needed. The Pass X and the P are clear conduits anyway, and are slaves to upstream components, allowing me to hear the full flavor offered by the front end.
The cd player is Jolida's newest, the JD-100. This is an all metal chasis player fit with a Phillips transport. It utilizes a linear 24/96 DAC and two output tubes. |
Kevziek, your response is refreshing. I need to restate my "blackness" preference. Most music's final sound is created in the production lab. There, things are separated, remixed, and immersed in new ambience. I prefer live music recordings. For instance, with Eva Cassidy, "Live at Blues Alley" I enjoy all the rawness of reverberations and reflections, crowd noise and incidentals.
What I DO NOT miss is the manufactured warmth of straight tube systems. It captivates the music in a pervasive web. AGREED, tube gear produces more believable stick on cymbals, human voices, string instruments etc. I use to use all tubes for the love of the music. I just wished I could have all the great sounds without the colored background. I found an inexpensive way to get just what I wanted. With the likes of the ingeniously clean Pass X amp I can capture the magic of tubes with my valve powered cd player.
I encourage you to try this real tube alternative instead of investing in a ss amp that merely mimics "tube sound." I taylor my system's sound by just rolling two little tubes.
I'm listening to my Apogees radiating Jim Brickman playing some sweet piano as I write, and it is soooo good. |
Unsound and 7p, Sonic Frontiers is a great company. My pre amp was great. With the right tubes, like with any other valve component, the SF Line amps, cd player (defunct), and Pre amps are world class. Using a valve pre amp in conjunction with an ss amp is a tried and proved way of doing things.
I just am taking a different tack that works better for me. |
TWL, I think you are putting too much emphasis on Unsound's mentioning specs. Asa, as has been pointed out to you, there are a great number of tube users switching to Pass solid states, class A amps, and hybrid amps. The same can be made of ss users crossing paths with the former.
I am wondering what definition of "space" we are discussing. Coming from a science background, I can only envision a "formless waste."
If it is that all that pervasive thickness that clings to you like a muggy summer day I left behind when I switched to Pass from what I admit wasn't the last word in valve technology, than I don't miss it. If it is the sense of performance ambience that is delineated by location acoustics you want, then what you need is a transparent amp. Secondly, also bare in mind, to reach that end, the choice of speaker is even more important.
I'm partial to both ss and tube camps. I have found a way to harness both's positive attributes, leaving behind negatives. It works for me. |
I'm with Twl; never even read the specs written in your amp manual - ooo6% is meaningless. It is the final sound that counts. Then again, just saying tubes rule, says nothing, except that of your personal experience.
Great tubes are expensive. I use to employ 22 tubes to do the job of powering my ribbons. I just spent $100 on a pair of small (5751) tubes for my cd player. At that rate, I would spend $1100 for the whole lot. Anybody who knows valve amps, know that what you tube it with is crucial. Most people I know use Telefunken and spend $80 - over $200 for each small 12AX7 tube. Now we are talking big money.
I enjoy all the benefits of tube sound with out all the expense. It's even better with vinyl....And no tubes.
|
Drubin, that's what I've been saying. What cd player are you using? The Pass X amp acts as a signal magnifying free flowing conduit. According to a professional audio system designer I know, the Pass X and XA stand alone. He says, "No one combines execution and sheer circuit-inspiration as completely as Nelson (Pass)"
A group of audiophiles witnessed my system change it's stripes completely, time after time, as we inserted many of currently available cd players. The Pass just got out of the way completely. Sounds swung from warm and wooly, to steely clinical. Among the auditioners, a Musical Fidelity got the nod as the most listenable. It sounded overly lush to me. I still liked best the clean tube sound of my Jolida 100.
Kevziek, I respectfully disagree with your generalization that all amps have a sound. I don't want my amp to have a "sound." Check out the literature concerning modern amp building. There is a small group of designers, led by Nelson Pass, that firmly believe simple circuits are better. Taking that mantra to the outer limits is how Nelson has been able to create the monster X 1000 (kilowatt) that preserves the sweetness, staging, and detail of very simple circuitry.
It is with his ingeniously invisible amp, the X-150, that I have been able to preserve the very best of the Sylvania tube sound coming from my cd player. |
Asa, thanks for the compliment about my writing skills. I accept that under protest because I think visually and writing is something of a disjunct from my real life. Don't presume that I am a duck out of water concerning myth and science, though, by reading my posts in an audio forum. Nuff said.
In your last post, you finally touched ground; something I can set my teeth into. I agree with you on the necessity of tubes. I will also agree that ss (I formally disdainly ID as SS) sounds less real than tubes. I loved my all tube setup. I converted a number of ss users over to tubes.
There was one thing missing though. One thing I knew was in my way of a believable stage image. One I knew was attainable based on my memory of the perfect audio moment fifteen years ago. The problem was the sound stretched from speaker to speaker. I can only think that is what you mean by air, Asa. I don't buy your definition. I want the performance to live on its own, divorced from speakers, sort of like fusion reaction suspended in a magnetic force field.
When I first witnessed Apogee magic fifteen years ago, I literally walked around the speakers - still I did not believe the music was connected to them. None the less, my perception of the piano and it's player was one within space, a room. This was due, no doubt, to the recital recording being made live, with all the natural reverberations, subtle as they are, carving out the confined space of a room.
Mind you, this whole image was due to the marriage of many factors: The live stage recording, a fine amp, glorious dipole speakers, and pristine vinyl.
Most music production is not so innocent. I won't go into that, as I am sure everyone knows studio works are as real as pictures of airbrushed centerfolds, after they get finished working it.
Asa, I don't hear you qualifying your music with air, except to say that it exists even in a noiseless room. You make no distinction between live events and manufactured events. I contend, you are merely perceiving noise floor.
The Pass is the cleanest ss around. That I know from my own wide experience. I can verify that with testimony from dependable sources, not reviewers. The ss difficulties you enumerated are minimized nearly completely. One gains dynamic range, simplicity, bass control and most important to me, very low noise floor. As I have written, placing tubes before the Pass forcefully tunes it's performance. Just the other day, a friend who is familiar with my audio journey, listening to my Sylvania tube substitution, exclaimed all dryness was gone. This particular tube's magic breathed life into voices and made high hats shimmer without loosing body and dynamics.
The cd media necessitates tubes. Vinyl is even better. |
Asa, I've read with interest both of your treatises. You sound like an old friend of mine, a Professor of Philosophy. I haven't heard such an emotional science versus art lecture since my friend bent my ear over Science's inhumanity in dealing with philosopher Velikovsky and his planetary theory.
I, for one, need to see or hear to believe. I will not rest my beliefs on traditional myths. For instance, I have found, to my satisfaction, the science of evolution triumphs over myth; truck loads of circumstantial evidence supports the seventeenth Earl of Oxford over Shaksper of Stratford, and, thanks to science, today's best of audio selection is better than that of fifty years ago. The scientific method is very important in these matters. However, as an artist, I can also tell you this. Scientists don't know everything. Art is just as important. Nelson Pass knows this too. That is why he continues to simplify his products, knowing customers hear the difference.
Like you, I have heard the Pass sound a little dry, nothing like Krell, but definitely supplanted in the ss clade. I expected better. After rolling some cd player tubes, finding Mullard was musical, but veiling, Phillips flat and dull, etc. I settled on a half century old Sylvania set. Gone is any hint of dryness. Now the delivery is sweet, dynamic, sensory airy, and with great body. I had to stop and think about all this for a while, because I just listen to the music these days.
When it comes to reproduced music, I just trust my ear/brain. I wouldn't be carrying on this discussion if I hadn't had a gestalt audiophile experience one day. I had walked into a audio listening room in an old brick store and office building. I had been there before where I listened to the best audio equipment of the day. This day was different. Keith Yates (check out his site) the proprietor of the shop was nowhere to be seen. As I entered, I became aware of someone, distinctly in a room somewhere, playing a piano. What appeared to be great room dividers were sitting in Keith's marvelous room. After some investigating, I came to the conclusion the big dividers were not the source of the piano playing. How could they be? I was hearing and thinking a real performance in a real place. Resuming my search through the building for the person playing, I finally stumbled on the answer. This utterly convincing image was a mirage. A first rate vinyl assemblage played no small part in this aural triumph. The amp, surprise, was an early model Levinson, probably no. 20s. The real magic of the day lay in the Apogee Scintilla full range ribbon speakers.
I have been chasing that experience ever since, with no small matter of success. I think I am lucky to have heard such convincing trickery.
Sorry about the off topic stuff. |
ISTT, the ML20 is cool looking, huh. |
Asa, your last post took the words right out of my fingers.
For your information, I only mentioned "other sources" because I am humble enough to know my word is as only good as the distance between my mouth and my ears when it comes to forum readers. It wasn't the sound of the Pass I made my pitch to outside sources for anyway, it was the fact it is technically the cleanest of all ss amps. Hearing, as you and I know, is subjective, as you and I demonstrate ad nauseum.
We will always disagree on the subject of noise floor, otherwise known as component distortion. Everything I want to hear is encoded in the medium. I don't want my circuitry second guessing my preferences. I'll do that at the record store.
After I exchanged my tube setup for the Pass, one long time friend exclaimed how much more extended my system sounded. I have off the chart hearing, and I notice the difference between the two is substantial. The music is more alive, to me.
I'm afraid I'll have to agree with Greg as well over the need to spend major bucks for a musical ss amp. I will trump Greg and announce the same goes for tube amps. I didn't get the sound right in my system until I had shelled out a hundred bucks for retubing my cd player. It costs exponentially greater for pre amps and amps. Just take a look at a Jadis. It is true that a budding listener will do much better on a limited budget buying a new sweet Jolida or older CJ and SF.
Kevziek, not so. I don't think Asa has given his Pass a fair shake yet. He doesn't believe me, but I know for a fact one can have the best of both worlds by initiating your best sounding tube signal through and amplified by a silky clean ss amp. Of course if you want the same noise floor/air imparted on the signal before speakers that Asa values then just ignore my advice.
I feel I need to remind everyone that my Holy Grail I am striving for was the product of ss mono blocks doing the work for what I consider the best speaker ever made, the Apogee Scintilla. In the same listening room I heard a fifty grand tube Jadis powering a plethora of 5k dynamic driver units and that never produced any magic for me. |
Wrong again. Jadis matches very well with most Apogees. The Scintilla stands alone as a beast for an amp. It does take lots of current, but not a powerful amp. I have a friend who is very happy with his Scintilla powered by an 80 watt class A amp of his own design.
I have never heard, under any circumstance, a more believable music system than what I had with the Scintilla. Much of my awe was due, no doubt, to being my first listen to a dipole. Any dipole will out stage a dynamic box speaker anyway. I get more air from the back wave from my dipoles than any tube can provide. Room acoustics even play more of a role in musical systems than tubes. I have a great room. Listening initiates always remark about the "ear phone" effect (meaning they are emersed in the music), and that the stage remains cohesive regardless to listener position.
As you pretend not to know, I have legs in both worlds, both valve and ss. I will drop my Pass in an instant when I hear a superior sounding tube amp in the same price range. I've done it before for a smaller system. With my present speakers, I have found listening to tubes in the first gain stage works for me. I'm dying to hear a pair of Margules on my Duettas.
Specs be damned. I am talking real world music reproduction using my ears (and mind, for those who can't make the semantic connection themselves).
I wish you would refrain from using divisive sarcasm. When you do, I can't shake the image I have of you as a hooded figure preaching from top a mountain. Sprinkling terms like "materialistic" into your writing imparts a dogmatic, "My way or the bye way" attitude.
I can't help that it was a Levinson amp, Scintilla, Koetzu, Goldmund, and the perfect room that was so real it fooled me and not the Jadis powering whatever. I'm sorry that it's such a pill for you to swallow. Before you move in and say, "You don't know real," I'll tell you my daughter is a principal string player, my son blows the trumpet, and there is often someone stretching their fingers on our old world piano.
I don't see what tubes and ss have to do with spirituality, so in your pet vein I have no recommendation for you, except this; while I listen to the band play in my house, you can as well listen reverantly to white noise, believing in your heart it is "space." |
Asa tell me. If your ear/mind were to catch the sound of a player and piano in a nearby room, and searching, you found the two, stopped awhile for a listen, would you spend the remainder of your life searching for a more real musical experience? Seems like you would. I stumbled on just that aural experience, only the ending was different. I knew then very well what a well played piano sounded like. And after countless concerts, I have found no way to improve on my enjoyment of hands on ivory. That I was fully snookered, for a prolonged time, has left me nothing more to do, than to recapture that experience. I'm a lucky guy. So far, my journey has taken me very close. It's comforting to know what I am after.
If there is a better speaker out there than the Apogee, none of the deep pockets Apogee owners I know around the world have found any. It isn't for not looking; there is nothing in audio more important to us than to find a worthy contender to replace our aging Apogees. Obviously you have never heard one in a great setup, or you wouldn't be so cavalier about Apogees. tch tch Mr. World Wise.
As for spirituality, I find the invocation of the material versus spiritual conundrum weaved into a light hearted audio discussion to be trivializing to the latter and inconsequential to the former.
It must be painful for you, a man of professed authority, to get a spanking. That would explain your sand box antics of striking out. 6chac has me thinking more than you'll ever. Certainly he is wiser, and a lot funnier. |
Tube Groover and Detlof, thankyou for the civil sanity. I shouldn't have stooped to the needling. I don't write here out of ego. I just get carried away with relating my successes.
It is a bit cruel of me to brag about Apogees, when most visitors here never will see one let alone hear one. It is my curse that I continue to try to recapture "the moment." My belief I can, urges me on.
For my enjoyment, the music my system provides is really without fault given my system and home parameters. Never can I justify the expense I would need to go the next five percent. My room, though very good, is a mortal's room, not the awesome dedicated room I heard the Scintillas. Neither can I afford a great turntable, arm, and cartridge (being frail, the first click or pop breaks my heart). I am looking for a pristine Scintilla.
Tubegroover, you are amazing. Were you a dealer? I owned the Stage too. I went through a lot of components looking for synergy with the Stage. It being the easiest of the Apogees to power, I settled on an able tube amp. When everything is zeroed in, the realism is eerie. You feel you can touch the face of a singer. Unfortunately, the Stage is a difficult brat to live with, it's positioning being so persnickety. The Duetta Sig is far more forgiving. I like it's loving sound. Major reviewer, Paul Bolin still uses one (last I saw) as his reference speaker.
Yes, more than tubes and/or ss, it is the system including room that makes or breaks a personally satisfying musical experience; things aren't black and white. Thankyou for that, tubegroover. I proved that to myself. With my Stage, I found happiness with tubes. With the Duetta it is with the Pass. Both systems are wonderful. As you can see, when it comes to types of ampliphiers, I offer no easy answer.
How things have calmed down.
|
I'm sorry, Asa, I didn't notice your invitation for a private dialogue. I think I might enjoy it, but I'm afraid I will have to decline at this time... Pressing responsibilities and all that, my good chap. Lets say we shake mouses, and move on.
I do want to stay in touch, though. I value your honest opinion. |
