ttocs,
Everything is a matter of liking. There is no better...a reason why I am always stating: this is my liking and not necessary yours. What I want you to know, is that you are repeating myths regarding tubes. I worked here in Costa Rica as an electronic engineer assistant to the service department for a broadcast TV station with the name TELETICA long time ago, circa 1975 to 1980. I did service the repeaters, three units on channel 5, then channel 11, and 12. Because Costa Rica is surrounded by mountains, we were able to use channel 5 (3 repeaters) at different locations without the problem of signal interact from the same frequency operation. The transmitters were all tubes. I had to keep a bandwidth of 4 MHz between the audio carrier and the video carrier. These transmitters were not very accurate and the weather did affect their performance, so at least once a month, they must be re-calibrated. On that period of time, I never changed a tube!!! and their operation was 24 hours every day!!!. Of course, part of the maintenance was to measure all tubes. All did measure good!. Now about tubes in audio...what matter for us.
On these days, the sensitivity of ML electrostatic speaker is very high. You do not need a lot of power to drive them at a real life unplugged music, this is for winds, strings a percussion music. The dynamics are reproduced with outstanding clarity and precision. Of course, still is not the real thing. Why? Because we are using linear signal on linear devices, and the musical instruments are logarithmic. Everybody talks about the dB, but no one talks about the SABIN.
The design of the tube amps on these days, using better components like teflon caps, metal foil resistors and using the SS regulators to bias the tubes is what we have. Why is this? If you read regarding the harmonic texture of the tube vs SS, the tube harmonic distortion is even, and SS is odd. Our ears detect the odd distortion faster than the even distortion. Even distortion makes to a piano to sound like that particular piano, or a guitar or any musical instrument. The even distortion is what makes my voice to sound like Roberto. Odd distortion makes to sound Roberto odd. I hope you can understand what I am trying to explain. Again, some of us like tubes, and other like SS. And this is right! We deserve what we like, we are paying for it, right? But myths are things that are very general and can be wrong. As an example, the KT-120 supposed to be OK for 2000 hours. If you use a proper SPL and will not drive them to a clipping level, you can extend their span life for 20 years or more. So, no big deal with bad tubes. I have to say that when you have a bad channel, on tube is very evident.
There are a lot of explanations to who is right or wrong. What I say is: trust what you like. Your ears will tell. They are the final judges. Sound quality is like food. I love this analogy. You might like your food with garlic and onion. Some of us might hate that kind of food. If you do a search of what the musicians sound like. Usually, they love tubes! The soft clipping of the signal is one thing, and the quality of the sound. There is a kind of sweetness on tubes that the transistors lacks...but again, this is a matter of liking. Both media on these days are in the same boat! Same thing. Same seek to reproduce the real world. I have a language barrier. I wish that I could express myself better...but I can not. If I sound rude or trying to impose myself, this is not my intention. If I did, please excuse me!
