Why so many tubes?

Seems like a complicated way to reproduce music. And yes a little bit of laziness involved, but electrical engineers make lousy writers as the subject is a difficult exposition.
So some of tubes are the same as the power transformers? And I am open to SS to being more complicated.

From this I get that tubes are complicated and transistors are moreso. That's correct. The alternative is no music. That makes me crazy and then it gets complicated :)

A V12 top fuel drag car (if they existed) will walk away from the V8 top fuel drag car. There’s no replacement for displacement...remember?

False. Cylinder count and displacement are not mutually exclusive. You can have a 4 liter 12 cylinder Ferrari and a 4 liter 6 cylinder. Exact same displacement. Depends on the designers goals and the desired torque and horsepower band and at what RPM. There is a reason you wont find a 12 cylinder top fuel dragster and it isnt because they cant figure it out.

There's a 50cc class of racing motorbikes. Back in the 50s and 60s it became all about how many cylinders you could get to displace only 50cc. Things got real small and because things really didn't weigh all that much revs were over 20,000! So they put a stop to it and 50cc is now limited to one cylinder.


In the audio world this would be akin to using a lot of really small tubes to make an amp but it would be a really poor analogy.

@ghasley

Yeah, you gearheads are too deep in the weeds on this.

The point...the general point...is that you can run a bunch of small tubes softly (small piston v-12 jaguar) vs fewer big tubes (big block American V8) run really hard. " Depends on the designers goals".

Do you get it now? It’s the general idea as an analogy.

It’s just a valid comparison...not the exact same thing.

Actually thats a great comparison, a v12 Jab vs a big block American v8. I know which one Id rather drive cross country!

A single output tube per channel is the best sound quality, each additional power tube thereafter introduces more and more audible tradeoffs.