I agree that tubes can make Magico sound better. I use Jadis I50 with Magico S1 and it helps round out the otherwise dry sound. Recently I also got the Magicos running with a McIntosh MC2100 and MX119 combo and I like that too. Perhaps it’s the older voicing of the MC2100 or the darker voicing of McIntosh in general. In comparison, the Jadis has a more delicate quality and is more 3D. The McIntosh has more lower end punch.
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Article: Can Tube Amps Make Your Music Sound "Better"?
- Thread starter Mystic
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I agree that tubes can make Magico sound better. I use Jadis I50 with Magico S1 and it helps round out the otherwise dry sound. Recently I also got the Magicos running with a McIntosh MC2100 and MX119 combo and I like that too. Perhaps it’s the older voicing of the MC2100 or the darker voicing of McIntosh in general. In comparison, the Jadis has a more delicate quality and is more 3D. The McIntosh has more lower end punch.
the skipper
Professional Curmudgeon
Different, possibly. Better, well, that depends on your preferences. It can take nothing out of the signal but it can certainly add to it.
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Playing your music through a tube amp will definitely make it sound like music played through a tube amp. Whether that is better or not is up to the listener, there isn't any objective measure that I know of that strongly indicates "better" performance from tubes.
If they were so much better, why did all the tube equipment vanish from the market so fast?
If they were so much better, why did all the tube equipment vanish from the market so fast?
I suspect tube amps would be long, long gone except for the fact that electric guitar players like them better, precisely for all the reasons they don't make good audio amplifiers.
Other than that, all that's left is the radio broadcast ones rated 50,000 watts. Those have replaceable parts are aren't made of glass.
Other than that, all that's left is the radio broadcast ones rated 50,000 watts. Those have replaceable parts are aren't made of glass.
Lavane
Lunatic Member
Tube hi-fi is alive and well. In the last few years I've bought new tube preamps, amps and headphone amps. Along with that, amp builds from scratch and kits.
So many companies producing really nice tube gear can be found. It never disappeared and in the last few years has exploded with many more choices. If a tube amplifier sounds like a "tube amp", usually meaning flabby bass, rolled off highs and lows, midrange bloom, etc., chances are the equipment needs work, or it's just a poor design. Originally SS equipment was designed to sound like tube equipment. Some like Macintosh, Marantz, etc., didn't jump on the SS train until transistor technology got better and the equipment could be made to sound as good as tube gear. My main tube preamp is the cleanest, clearest and quitest preamp I've ever owned. None of the SS preamps I've owned previously were as quiet as it is. Harmonics have a lot to do with it also. Some prefere the harmonic distortion SS produces, some like the harmonics tubes produce. It's just a brain thing. There is a good reason some tube amplifiers, like the Dynaco ST-70, never went out of production, even after Dynaco went belly up.
Bill Ferris
Lunatic Member
Well I suspect you would be very, very wrong, about that statement..
I successfully repaired musical tube amplifiers for decades, and zero of them will ever sound right when over driven, if they won`t sound clean when set and played so, and when their circuits/speaker(s) are properly operating & played they can all can sound very clean, often less than 1% measured !
Cost. Dumping valves in favour of transistors saves the cost of high voltage capacitors, high voltage power supplies, output transformers etc., etc.
playittwice
Super Member
I can’t explain why it is that I prefer the tube sound better than SS, there’s just something about them tubes that my ears prefer. Every time I listen to SS for a half hour or so I want to go back to tubes. Is it “better”, I dont know, different? Yes, and it sure is sweet!
One Midwest tube amplifier company is 6 months behind on orders even after hiring more staff.
Lavane
Lunatic Member
The difference between odd and even order harmonicas produced between the two has something to do with it. I have some SS equipment that I listen to and like, but I do prefer tubes. I really like the earlier Marantz SS gear. It's very close to how tubes sound. The model 7T, 33 and 3300 preamps sound wonderful, along with the model 15, 16, and 16B amplifiers.
Lavane
Lunatic Member
Very true. The main cost of a tube amplifier is the power transformer and output transformers. Good heavy iron doesn't come cheap. The output transformers for the 300B I built were close to $200 each. And they weren't even close to being the best. That 7wpc amplifier was close to $1000 in parts and tubes to build. And it's a pretty simple circuit with only one dual triode and a single triode output tube per channel.
Yes .. tubes make the mids and highs sound more natural and harmonic .. and it's the harmonic ring of the voice and instruments that are being reproduced accurately, not a distortion although that is measurably present...
IMO .. Transistor amps truncate the instrumental harmonics but can have incredible bass power and control..
Bi-amp .;. use each for what they're good at ..
(And I'm with you .. the Aragon is a great bass amp) ..
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Mystic
We're all born mad
Guitarists, maybe also basssists, like this a lot re: the sounds they can caox from all-tube amplification. Hybrid schemes -- usually a tube pre-amp section w/ SS power section -- and all-SS amps do seem, to some but not all, less "responsive" to the touch and indeed somewhat lacking @ the harmonics. But then take a player -- a great effin' player -- like Albert King, who not only plays SS, but all-SS and a big ol' high-powered Acoustic head w/ a big ol' cabinet @ that and gets GOBS of richly satisfying (to we who love Albert's sound) tones of all kind-a "moods". Must be the "V" geetars. (-:
Lavane
Lunatic Member
Some of the best sounding systems I've listened to used tubes for the midrange and high end and SS power amps for the low end. Different tube types can make a difference also. One of my amps can use 6 different output tubes and 5 or 6 different driver tubes. I had fun trying various combinations. Some output tube types were very balanced and did a good job of controlling bass in that amp.
The monoblocks I built use a quad of KT-88's per amp. The bass is full and well controlled.
doctor fuse
Super Member
Do you have room to grab an old console stereo with a small tube amp/receiver in it? Usually an SE 6BQ5/12AX7 amp inside. They come up for free or dirt cheap often, in my neck o' the woods.
That's how I got started down this bunny's hole.
My 2 cents: I’m running a professionally tuned up Harman Kardon A230 amp to North American Sound Squire speakers and there is nothing rolled off or mellow about it. Sound is crystal clear. I have some nice solid state amps as well and they are no more “accurate” than the little tube amp.
I do think you need real efficient horn speakers for a low powered tube amp.
I do think you need real efficient horn speakers for a low powered tube amp.
doctor fuse
Super Member
I've been playing with an old RCA SE 6BQ5 tube amp the past few weeks, and I went to the basement to grab my most efficient speakers, a free 80s pair of Cerwin Vega D-2s. When I scored them, I tried them out in my main system, and they were LOUD (94dB sensitivity), but nothing else really, to write home about.
What a surprise, though, that with the little fleawatt SE amp, they sound very good. Almost refined.
So for those looking to enter the tube game on the cheap, score an old console amp, and a cheap or free pair of unpopular-with-the-audiophiles Cerwin Vegas, and you will have the tube experience for peanuts.
Lavane
Lunatic Member
Same here. Someone sent me a 6v6 pp amp out of a Magnavox console. That was it, I was hooked.