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Vintage Asylum Classic gear from yesteryear; vintage audio standing the test of time. |
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Vintage Asylum Classic gear from yesteryear; vintage audio standing the test of time. |
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In Reply to: How well are vintage tube preamps suited for digital sources? posted by walter on October 13, 2002 at 16:56:46:
At best, "digital-ready" or "digital optimized" means that the equipment so labeled has transient response and/or power handling that is commensurate with the kind of instantaneous peak levels that digital sources are capable of generating. Most of the time, however, phrases like that are meaningless sales drivel.The binary "on/off" nature of digital sources can - in theory - produce sharper transients of greater amplitude than analog sources. That is why a CDP can reproduce a square wave with sharp corners, while a phono cartridge or tube amp almost always rounds the corners or overshoots.
However, most of us don't sit around listening to square waves, so the relatively minor transient flaws of tube equipment are seldom obvious. And the fact that a well-regulated tube amp has pretty significant power reserves means that it can handle peak levels more gracefully than solid-state amps that would probably clip.
I believe that a vintage amp in good shape is certainly capable of handling CDs just as well as any other sound source. Labeling new equipment as "digitaly optimized" is basically sales fluff, unless the amp has a built-in DAC, jitter filter, Dolby 5.1 decoder or some other cicuit that actually performs a useful function with digital equipment.
Regards,
Chuck
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- Re: How well are vintage tube preamps suited for digital sources? - PC Journalist 10/14/0209:24:50 10/14/02 (0)
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