Tubes vs. SS...
There's an old Stereophile test CD where they demonstrate how microphone placement and your seating position determine how a piano recorded in a church will sound. Their test begs the question "what does a real piano playing in a church sound like?" The original goal of "hi-fi" was to accurately reproduce sounds. This is what James B. Lansing, Avery Fisher, and Saul Marantz were trying to achieve. It all began when Western Electric began testing multi-channel audio back in the 1920's.
DIFFERENT, BETTER, AND ACCURATE
The term 'accuracy' gets tossed around a lot in hi-fi rags. It's usually backed-up by a plethora of technical terms and engineering specs -sometimes by nothing more than "audio alchemy". I would like to take a minute to define what I mean by "accuracy": Accurate sound reproduction occurs only when the copy is indistinguishable from the original sound. That means you hear Stereophile's piano in a church exactly as they did when they recorded it. The amplifiers and speakers are acoustically invisible. In short, it's impossible with existing technology.
Today's systems are a compromise that leaves us to choose between Different and Better. The on-going debate surrounding tubes vs. SS isn't about accurate sound reproduction, but what form of distortion we subjectively believe sounds better.
Having built and re-built many tube and transistor based amplifiers I have a little knowledge in this area.
Tubes introduce a few types of distortion that some people find pleasing. Envelope delay, microphonics, and phase drift (about 15 degrees). Anything that distorts the original signal is a form of distortion. All of these can be reproduced in the digital domain. The software from Diamond Cut Productions can provide you with hours of tube amp development without soldering a single wire.
Transistors have their own unique forms of distortion. The greatest distortion of the original sound in both tube and transistor based systems comes from the transducers.
If you take a Bryston 4B-ST (transistor) and a Carver Silver Seven (tube) and test them using a pair of studio reference JBL 4412As you will hear differences in the reproduced sound. These differences are not "audio alchemy" but measurable. Is one necessarily better than the other or just different? To me they are different but not better or worse. The Bryston's will always perform better when the demand for current and power are high, but the Carver's delay and microphonics creates a smoothing (cover-up) of the errors in accuracy at lower amplitudes.
If you want to use tube amps then transducer sensitivity and impedance will play a role in how your system sounds. Tubes don't do well with high current demand and they are slow to respond to dynamic changes in amplitude. Both of these are a part of the "warm tube sound". Originally tube amps were used with horn speakers. Thus, the JBL Hartsfield and Klipsch Klipschorn are favored by many tube amp users. For subs with tubes I would consider building smaller versions of the Western Electrics used in theaters back in the 1920's. They're very efficient and can rumble the room.
In the end I chose transistors because of maintenance and transducer selection variety. There are so many choices these days that there's pretty much something to please everyone. Tube amps can provides hours of tinkering fun, and can be a very addictive (and expensive) hobby.
There's an old Stereophile test CD where they demonstrate how microphone placement and your seating position determine how a piano recorded in a church will sound. Their test begs the question "what does a real piano playing in a church sound like?" The original goal of "hi-fi" was to accurately reproduce sounds. This is what James B. Lansing, Avery Fisher, and Saul Marantz were trying to achieve. It all began when Western Electric began testing multi-channel audio back in the 1920's.
DIFFERENT, BETTER, AND ACCURATE
The term 'accuracy' gets tossed around a lot in hi-fi rags. It's usually backed-up by a plethora of technical terms and engineering specs -sometimes by nothing more than "audio alchemy". I would like to take a minute to define what I mean by "accuracy": Accurate sound reproduction occurs only when the copy is indistinguishable from the original sound. That means you hear Stereophile's piano in a church exactly as they did when they recorded it. The amplifiers and speakers are acoustically invisible. In short, it's impossible with existing technology.
Today's systems are a compromise that leaves us to choose between Different and Better. The on-going debate surrounding tubes vs. SS isn't about accurate sound reproduction, but what form of distortion we subjectively believe sounds better.
Having built and re-built many tube and transistor based amplifiers I have a little knowledge in this area.
Tubes introduce a few types of distortion that some people find pleasing. Envelope delay, microphonics, and phase drift (about 15 degrees). Anything that distorts the original signal is a form of distortion. All of these can be reproduced in the digital domain. The software from Diamond Cut Productions can provide you with hours of tube amp development without soldering a single wire.
Transistors have their own unique forms of distortion. The greatest distortion of the original sound in both tube and transistor based systems comes from the transducers.
If you take a Bryston 4B-ST (transistor) and a Carver Silver Seven (tube) and test them using a pair of studio reference JBL 4412As you will hear differences in the reproduced sound. These differences are not "audio alchemy" but measurable. Is one necessarily better than the other or just different? To me they are different but not better or worse. The Bryston's will always perform better when the demand for current and power are high, but the Carver's delay and microphonics creates a smoothing (cover-up) of the errors in accuracy at lower amplitudes.
If you want to use tube amps then transducer sensitivity and impedance will play a role in how your system sounds. Tubes don't do well with high current demand and they are slow to respond to dynamic changes in amplitude. Both of these are a part of the "warm tube sound". Originally tube amps were used with horn speakers. Thus, the JBL Hartsfield and Klipsch Klipschorn are favored by many tube amp users. For subs with tubes I would consider building smaller versions of the Western Electrics used in theaters back in the 1920's. They're very efficient and can rumble the room.
In the end I chose transistors because of maintenance and transducer selection variety. There are so many choices these days that there's pretty much something to please everyone. Tube amps can provides hours of tinkering fun, and can be a very addictive (and expensive) hobby.