Valve sound versus solid state...

[Beechwoods]

Don't go casting nasturtions Mike

[Mike]

Ouch!

[Beechwoods]

It's a bit of a thorny one, I'll give you that

[Ali Tait]

Groan! Marco,trust me,the 813 will play any type of music well.Remember the zep at Owston?

[tfarney]

Ok, here goes...

I have been a guitar player for more than 40 years and I have never owned and would never own a solid state amp. In that endeavor, the attraction is clear: The manner in which valve amps clip is goooood. It even adds to the tactile experience of playing. With a small amp in a medium room, you can get the volume right on the cusp of heavy clipping and actually go from "clean" to "crunch" just by attacking the strings harder. You can take the next step, into creamy, sustained overdrive, with a bit of a boost of the guitar's volume control. Good stuff.

But theoretically, while all of that is wonderful for amping an electric guitar, it is less desireable in hifi, where we don't want pleasing harmonic distortion but no distortion. And, theoretically, the best way to reduce clipping, given good design in the first place, is to increase headroom. This can be done with valves, but two to three hundred watts per channel is an expensive proposition in a valve amp, and if the objective is to eliminate clipping - pleasant or otherwise - what would be the point?

Theoretically.

Fortunately, being primarily a headphone listener, I been able to test the theory at relatively little expense. A few hundred milliwatts, even into the difficult load of my Sennheisers, is a massive amount of headroom. Even at very high listening levels, clipping is not an issue. I've tried a few valve headphone amps through here for testing, and I've been very fortunate in that I've been able to keep them in my house for weeks, rather than listening to them in a store for a few minutes. The last, and one of the best, was 500 milliwatts, all valves, all point to point wired, lovely to look at and listen to. It would drive my Senns beautifully with so little of its volume control engaged, it breathed so easily under the weight of their 300 ohm, legendarily inconsistent load, that I'm as certain as I can be (without ABX testing ) that it was not clipping. Was there still a touch of audible harmonic distortion in there? I don't know, but there was something. And it was something pleasant. I almost kept that one. But after two weeks of listening to it exclusively, I went back to my headphone reference -- an old (bought new in about '72), dual mono, mosfet Harman Kardon integrated amp with a headphone jack that is just insanely good. I went back and forth and listened to some very well-recorded music I'm very familiar with and there was a difference. To put it all in positive terms, which isn't hard, the valve amp had a sweetness that was very attractive, the old SS had a speed of response and a sense of control that lent an open clarity to the presentation.

But it was a very subtle gap. I would have loved to have kept both, but in the end, I decided that the difference between them was too slight and it wasn't worth the investment, even though it was small. And those were, in my view, ideal conditions for the valves. 30 to 60 watt valve amps driving conventional speakers with conventional efficiency? It has its charms, but I remain unconvinced that it is anything I would describe as superior. Attractive clipping is still clipping. I'd rather keep it away from cymbals, voices, etc.

Then, there is digital amplification....

Tim

[Ali Tait]

Aye but the thing is Tim,Directly-Heated Triodes are the most linear amplifying devices ever constructed by Man.If distortion is the only story,how come a single-ended amp sounds so much better with no feedback than with,when with no feedback distortion is much higher?

[Marco]

Groan! Marco,trust me,the 813 will play any type of music well.Remember the zep at Owston?

Groan? LOL! Ali, I was referring to low-powered SET amps and small speakers, which I find somewhat restrictive - you've got neither, in fact your amp has got serious balls!

Marco.

[Ali Tait]

The groan was for the terrible puns in the previous few posts!

[Marco]

Ah, oi sees...

I shall get my teeth more into this rather intriguing discussion later, particularly Tim's last post

Marco.

[anthonyTD]

Ok, here goes...

I have been a guitar player for more than 40 years and I have never owned and would never own a solid state amp. In that endeavor, the attraction is clear: The manner in which valve amps clip is goooood. It even adds to the tactile experience of playing. With a small amp in a medium room, you can get the volume right on the cusp of heavy clipping and actually go from "clean" to "crunch" just by attacking the strings harder. You can take the next step, into creamy, sustained overdrive, with a bit of a boost of the guitar's volume control. Good stuff.

But theoretically, while all of that is wonderful for amping an electric guitar, it is less desireable in hifi, where we don't want pleasing harmonic distortion but no distortion. And, theoretically, the best way to reduce clipping, given good design in the first place, is to increase headroom. This can be done with valves, but two to three hundred watts per channel is an expensive proposition in a valve amp, and if the objective is to eliminate clipping - pleasant or otherwise - what would be the point?

Theoretically.

Fortunately, being primarily a headphone listener, I been able to test the theory at relatively little expense. A few hundred milliwatts, even into the difficult load of my Sennheisers, is a massive amount of headroom. Even at very high listening levels, clipping is not an issue. I've tried a few valve headphone amps through here for testing, and I've been very fortunate in that I've been able to keep them in my house for weeks, rather than listening to them in a store for a few minutes. The last, and one of the best, was 500 milliwatts, all valves, all point to point wired, lovely to look at and listen to. It would drive my Senns beautifully with so little of its volume control engaged, it breathed so easily under the weight of their 300 ohm, legendarily inconsistent load, that I'm as certain as I can be (without ABX testing ) that it was not clipping. Was there still a touch of audible harmonic distortion in there? I don't know, but there was something. And it was something pleasant. I almost kept that one. But after two weeks of listening to it exclusively, I went back to my headphone reference -- an old (bought new in about '72), dual mono, mosfet Harman Kardon integrated amp with a headphone jack that is just insanely good. I went back and forth and listened to some very well-recorded music I'm very familiar with and there was a difference. To put it all in positive terms, which isn't hard, the valve amp had a sweetness that was very attractive, the old SS had a speed of response and a sense of control that lent an open clarity to the presentation.

But it was a very subtle gap. I would have loved to have kept both, but in the end, I decided that the difference between them was too slight and it wasn't worth the investment, even though it was small. And those were, in my view, ideal conditions for the valves. 30 to 60 watt valve amps driving conventional speakers with conventional efficiency? It has its charms, but I remain unconvinced that it is anything I would describe as superior. Attractive clipping is still clipping. I'd rather keep it away from cymbals, voices, etc.

Then, there is digital amplification....

Tim

hi Tim,
i agree to a point, but the whole reason i started this thread was to get some constructive comments from people who own both valve and solid state amps, it was not as your post seems to indicate meant to just "big up" one technolgy over the other, i have been involved with both types of amp topologies a long time now, and i know that both technologies when done right can sound exceptionaly good, but what i have put forward here is a start concerning some of the main diffrences that people can relate to, i did not and do not condone clipping in any form in hi fi aplications, and i agree, to avoid it in both designs you need a lot of headroom, but with transistor amplifiers the onset of clipping is so brutal that distortion aspects become all to clear instantly, why valve amps win in my opinion on this score is because when they get near to clipping [or maximum dynamic range]they self compress/limit to a degree and therefore the higher order harmonics that would be present in solid state that are objectionable at the onset of clipping are not present...
this i suspect is the reason why most people who have lived with both technolgies find that to get the same percieved power and sound stage that they get from valve amps you would need a solid state amp with a power output of up to ten times higher.
anthony,TD...