Well, clearly an interest in tube audio gear is alive and well, if not a very profitible venture for today's manufacturers.
As this discussion demonstrates, there are several constituencies: among those, the 'purist', who sees the tube gear from the 60s as audio nirvana and wouldn't change a thing, even dried out electrolytics, in fear of altering the original concept,
and those who recognize that, as technology marches on, improvements, which may not have been possible in the 60s, are now available to 'cure' some of the sonic anomalies inherent in many, if not all, original tube designs.
Should some completely 'original' pieces be preserved, as in a museum... absolutely.
But does that mean, those of us, who believe this is all about the music, NOT just the hardware, should suffer with the sound of dried out caps or worse, just because the museum curator might cring at the thought of a non-original cap in his museum piece?
Don't get me wrong, the McIntosh MC275 was a very fine tube power amp, both then and now, but only if refurbed with QUALITY PARTS. And as good as it was, the Marantz 8B just sounded better. We're not talking Night and Day. Subtle differences. For the McIntosh owner who feels he'd like his MC275 to sound better, should he be discouraged from replacing a component or two, if that upper-midrange harshness can be made to go away?
It's true of all audio gear... modern QUALITY PARTS can frequently make a difference. The original designers never proposed that the components used to build their gear would last indefinitely, or that improved components would never become available in time.
In their day, they used the best available electronic components to create their audio treasures. Why should we do less when selecting appropriate components for a restoration. Further, for the non-museum pieces, if a circuit mod can improve the sonic quality and cure a known sonic anomaly... why not???
If a carefully modded Dynaco ST-70 can be made to more closely resemble the sonic qualities of the clearly superior Marantz Model 8B, isn't that a desirable goal?
In the end, any design improvement that allows the electronics to get out of the way of the music would seem to be desirable.
After all, it is about the music, right?
So, shouldn't fidelity to the original music be the absolute design goal for any piece of audio equipment,
rather than an attempt to mimic the sound of a 50 year old tube or dried out cap from years gone by?
As this discussion demonstrates, there are several constituencies: among those, the 'purist', who sees the tube gear from the 60s as audio nirvana and wouldn't change a thing, even dried out electrolytics, in fear of altering the original concept,
and those who recognize that, as technology marches on, improvements, which may not have been possible in the 60s, are now available to 'cure' some of the sonic anomalies inherent in many, if not all, original tube designs.
Should some completely 'original' pieces be preserved, as in a museum... absolutely.
But does that mean, those of us, who believe this is all about the music, NOT just the hardware, should suffer with the sound of dried out caps or worse, just because the museum curator might cring at the thought of a non-original cap in his museum piece?
Don't get me wrong, the McIntosh MC275 was a very fine tube power amp, both then and now, but only if refurbed with QUALITY PARTS. And as good as it was, the Marantz 8B just sounded better. We're not talking Night and Day. Subtle differences. For the McIntosh owner who feels he'd like his MC275 to sound better, should he be discouraged from replacing a component or two, if that upper-midrange harshness can be made to go away?
It's true of all audio gear... modern QUALITY PARTS can frequently make a difference. The original designers never proposed that the components used to build their gear would last indefinitely, or that improved components would never become available in time.
In their day, they used the best available electronic components to create their audio treasures. Why should we do less when selecting appropriate components for a restoration. Further, for the non-museum pieces, if a circuit mod can improve the sonic quality and cure a known sonic anomaly... why not???
If a carefully modded Dynaco ST-70 can be made to more closely resemble the sonic qualities of the clearly superior Marantz Model 8B, isn't that a desirable goal?
In the end, any design improvement that allows the electronics to get out of the way of the music would seem to be desirable.
After all, it is about the music, right?
So, shouldn't fidelity to the original music be the absolute design goal for any piece of audio equipment,
rather than an attempt to mimic the sound of a 50 year old tube or dried out cap from years gone by?
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