Windor wrote, regarding tube amps:
>The big use of tubes is in power amplification which no one has ever
>demonstrated with any kind science or engineering to have signficant
>advantages over modern solid state designs. In fact just the opposite.
>There have been demonstrations of introducing non linear frequency response
>into solid state designs which will enable them to sound like tube
>amplifiers. Thus distorted the solid state amp will have a null output with
>the tube amp in a phase shifted sum and difference demonstration.
>you will have been listening to music
>for maybe six months with a higher amplifier distortion level than would
>ever be emitted from the cheapest Japanese mass market solid state stereo
>receiver.
I have no experience of valves in hifi or power amps; a couple of
manufacturers I have spoken to claim that using valves in hifi is selling a
sonic feature that they find to provide no real improvement - different, but
not better. The point to sound quality is not strictly about distortion
figures - this fallacy is something some manufacturers and CD marketeers
(charlatans, the lot of 'em) have been flogging for years.
However, the qualities a musician picks in an instrument amplifier is the
WAY it distorts and clips the signal. Guitarists know that even a good
transistor amp can never, ever simulate that feature. So, technically, it
is imperfect, but the imperfection is what makes it desirable. I have
played through any number of guitar amps, and the only ones worth paying
good money for use valves.
>Actually to say that an OM1 or OM4T is technically inferior is, I think, to
>confuse 'featuritis' with image making.
Friends who own autofocus auto-gizmo cameras find that the box of tricks
leads them too often to just "point and shoot" - No Brain Required. I am
trying to help them understand that the decisions made by the operator is
the key. Of course, I can't say that my OM1 will be better than an F5 in
certain conditions (eg auto fill-in flash on the hoof, sport & wildlife),
but for the uses I put it to, it does the job just as well. I like having
to make the decisions.
Simon E.
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