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RE: Distortion and Audibility...replay.

Morning!

Your post has been rattling 'round in my head all night. Guess I'm trying to sort out how much you blame global feedback and how much you blame 'highly non-linear devices' as the culprit for not enjoying solid state amplifiers as much as SET's. In another of your posts you mention that rather than enjoying the distortion of tubes that it's more the case that it's a tolerable price to pay for their low-level linearity. (My words, I'm too lazy to do a good clip and paste).

I'm curious if you have listened to, for lack of a better description, SET amplifiers where the 'T' stands for transistor rather than tube? Having never heard an SET, I'm really trying to learn vicariously why people like what. Since too many people that should know better prefer them, they can't be dismissed out of hand.

But what is the dominant factor?
-Ultra clean performance at low levels.
-"Built-in" peak compression.
-Mild signal 'enhancement'.
-Moderate damping factor.
-Natural sounding clipping.
-Low EMI susciptibility.
-No global feedback.
-Easy grid drive for preceding stages.
-The warm nostalgic flow of the filament.
-Watching the blue glow on the envelope.
-Being X-Rayed by the secondary emissions.

Now I don't expect you to have all the answers, but with your experience I'd settle for informed opinion.

Here's why I'm interested: I'm old enough that I come from the tube era, and I'm loath to go back for various and sundry reasons. I believe that there are no perfect devices, designs or systems and the best are those that have the highest strength/weakness ratio with respect to the user's requirements. Not only that but I don't regard transistors or op-amps as nasty little distortion generators and do believe in feedback. So there! Gotta get my biases clear. However I should clarify that it's the concept of feedback that I believe in. Whether it's a force for good or ill depends...

That being said, I find myself getting more and more interested in messing about with amplifiers which doesn't make much sense as I'm happy with the ones I have. Corrupted by AA? Probably. I'm starting to get the niggly notion that I might be missing something. It's also a matter of intellectual curiousity, Andy_c sucked me in with his wretched Spice models and now I keep noodling over how good of an amplifier can be built without any global feedback. Just because. I know many others have slid down this treacherous slope so I may be doomed to tinker.

Looking at all this from another angle, my main amplifier probably is similar to the Threshold that you had. It sounds good to me and measures as a serious, wide-bandwidth voltage source. But you have moved on because other designs sound more like "live music". In what manner?

Sorry for the rambling post, advice welcome.

Rick



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