Degrees of Freedom vs. Hollywood Control Freaks

[Major Variola (ret)]

At 01:42 PM 6/6/02 -0700, Tim May wrote:
>Someone said something earlier about tube/valve amps giving a boost to
>the high end, for older, hearing-damaged rockers.

Mr. Elloi wrote first about the fashion for "valve" audio amps and then
mentioned that some yahoos listen with Dolby emphesis.  I commented that
the latter was
for the old deaf.  This is unrelated to the fashion for valves.

I don't think the
>frequency response has evern been an issue...tube amps are said to have

>a "warmer" sound, and to have more odd harmonic distortion than
>transistor amps, but the frequency response of _any_ transistor or tube

>amp is vastly beyond what even high-end speakers and headphones can
>typically deliver.
>
>A modern solid state amp is essentially "flat" from 20 Hz to 20 KHz.

Yes, in the linear part of their operation.  But its the *distortion*
(large signal
behavior) which differs ---tubes distort differently when "overdriven".
I believe
the difference when driven with a square wave is that tubes have a more
RC-like output function, vs. a sharper (faster slew) transistor
reproduction.

One little known fact is that humans actually prefer a small amount of
distortion
in their listening.  The THD of amps with a lot of decimal-zeroes, is a
good technical spec (easily
attainable, cheaply, nowadays), but is totally a marketing scam.  First
you can't hear the difference
between .01 and .001 % THD, and second you prefer ~ .1%

Now back to your regularly scheduled decay of civilization..