Tubes and Vinyl: An Often-Misunderstood Audiophile Debate

[UncleBingo]

I dunno... I have a tube amp here that say's "Harmonic distortion 0.5% at rated output 20hz-20khz Intermodulation Distortion 0.5% at TWICE the rated output 20hz to 20khz. I've never needed to get anywhere close to "rated output"...

 

[SB12345]

Tubes and vinyl can be wonderful, but they're about achieving a particular sound, a pleasing sound.

They're about achieving euphony, not accuracy.

Accuracy?

Now there's a loaded term!

I suppose that it all depends on what is the definition of "accuracy".

What's yours?

 

[nj pheonix]

This. I used to argue tube vs SS back in the 70's when I sold the stuff for a living. Tube was nice, but I told people that the weak link in any system was the parts that moved.: Speakers and turntable/cartridges.

So, if you can afford Tube and match it to good speakers, I would say back then, "go for it". But if you can only afford one, get the good speakers with good solid state.

But solid state got a LOT better. I then became a bass player in the 90's and was amazed tube was still popular with musicians (guitar players) because I firmly believe that tubes color the sound (I still do). But I found out that the reason tubes are good for guitars is because with your amp you are CREATING the music, not reproducing it. So coloring the sound is what you WANT to do. It's why an acoustic instrument depends on enclosed spaces and wood type, it all amplifies and colors the sound in a pleasing way.

So I realized that, although I thought tube was cool, but I want as flat a sound as possible from the electronics in my hi-fi because it is not creating the sound. Rather, it is REPRODUCING the sound.

But I've matured even from that. I realized one day that I should apply the same thinking to tube hi-fi that I apply to vinyl. That is, I LOVE listening to vinyl, but I also know that it is not as good as digital sources and adds a lot of "warmth" (AKA distortion) to the sound, but that "warmth" is pleasing. I LIKE the vinyl sound. So why can't the same be true of tube amps for hi-fi? Answer: It can.

If I am just listening to music, it is ALWAYS vinyl (unless it's live). I love the sound. But saying it sounds more accurate than digital from the same source is not being honest with myself.

Guitar amps are designed to distort.
Stereo amps are not .
Really an apples to oranges comparison.
You wouldn't want to run 2 Marshall heads as mono blocks

Also tube amps made for musical instruments only had to be able to reproduce the frequency of the instrument.
Not all instruments and voices.

 

[twiiii]

Like I say, we all love our distortions. Yes Vinyl is a flawed format. Even the direct to disc albums which can be mighty. fine are still flawed. Oh I thoroughly love to listen to a great performance presented on vinyl, but none of them are perfect. I don't mind going through the hassels to to use and care for a vinyl record. I have been doing it for the past 68 years and I have the time now so I don't complain that much. Because of my still oily complexion I have to treat digital disc with the same care, too. I always wash my hands now before playing discs or LP's. Its easier to keep things clean than having to clean them. When I had Laser discs the issue was even more pronounced.

I hope we don't need to discuss how vinyl or why vinyl is flawed. There are countless articles you can read. Everything about sound reproduction is flawed. It doesn't have to be the links in the audio production and capturing chain either. The Producer, or Conductor or Performer may want the recording to be an interpretation of his of the performance. Making the recording flawed in the first place. Its all a matter of choice and our preferences. Why else are there so many recordings of the same piece of music by many different artists?

 

[DaveVoorhis]

Accuracy?

Now there's a loaded term!

I suppose that it all depends on what is the definition of "accuracy".

What's yours?

The lower the distortion of the signal carrying device or signal transducer, the flatter the frequency response, and the lower the noise, the higher the accuracy.

Thus, by definition, a device with 0.5% THD is less accurate -- all other conditions being equal -- than a device with 0.05% THD. A device with a flatter response curve is more accurate -- all other conditions being equal -- than a device with a hilly response curve. A device with a higher noise floor, or more transient noise, is less accurate -- all other conditions being equal -- than a device with a lower noise floor or less transient noise.

However, we know that the device with lowest distortion, lowest noise, or flattest response curve is not necessarily the sound we prefer.

I think "accuracy" is sometimes incorrectly -- but with all good intentions -- used to mean "sound that I prefer", when it would be more accurate (!) to say, "(under these conditions), I prefer sound that is slightly less accurate."

That isn't a bad thing. It simply acknowledges that there's more to sound preference than accuracy.

 

[RobRoy]

Guitar amps are designed to distort.
Stereo amps are not .
Really an apples to oranges comparison.
You wouldn't want to run 2 Marshall heads as mono blocks

Yeah, that gets to the root of what I was saying. And I got more to the point when I pointed out that "warmth" is modifying the input signal and is, therefore, by definition, distortion. But just as a Mesa Blues tube amp distorts in a pleasing way, Tube hi-fi does the same thing. It's actually similar to when I use the "warmth" setting when using Photoshop to warm up a photo. The result is a modification of the original, but in a pleasing way.

 

[RobRoy]

However, we know that the device with lowest distortion, lowest noise, or flattest response curve is not necessarily the sound we prefer.

I think "accuracy" is sometimes incorrectly -- but with all good intentions -- used to mean "sound that I prefer", when it would be more accurate (!) to say, "(under these conditions), I prefer sound that is slightly less accurate."

That isn't a bad thing. It simply acknowledges that there's more to sound preference than accuracy.

Nailed it.

 

[nj pheonix]

I guess we're in a circle.
To be clear I have no beef with SS amplification

I've heard fine SS amps.
Perhaps I'm reading into your comments but I'm getting the impression you're implying all tube amps share this warm characteristic. Just as all SS amps don't sound alike. All tube amps don't sound alike.
In any event we'll have to agree to disagree.
Cheers

 

[RobRoy]

I guess we're in a circle.
To be clear I have no beef with SS amplification

I've heard fine SS amps.
Perhaps I'm reading into your comments but I'm getting the impression you're implying all tube amps share this warm characteristic. Just as all SS amps don't sound alike. All tube amps don't sound alike.
In any event we'll have to agree to disagree.
Cheers

Yeah. I thought I was agreeing with you.

 

[Ken Boyd]

I wouldn't argue that Digital is much more capable than Vinyl. The thing is I have so much great music on Vinyl, and when no one wanted vinyl you could get it for hardly nothing, while at the same time CD's were going for almost 10 dollars. I still bought plenty of CD's but grabbed every box full of vinyl that I could when it was for free or .25 cents a record. I can enjoy both, and do. Now things are reversing in that CD's are cheaper than good records. I have my share of CD's now. Each one music exclusive to their format, and yes a good amount of releases are on both.

As far as tubes, it is a closed cased for me, tubes hands down blows away any of the SS amps I have. So tubes it will be, and as for sources, I take them both.

 

[sqlsavior]

Generalizations are so much bullshit.

 

[Nixxuz]

Eh, I see this debate go back and forth all the time. While it's not as bad as it used to be, digital, for all it's capabilities, often lost out to vinyl for a few reasons. One was the fact that the people who did the mastering for vinyl knew that when you buy a record and put it on your TT, you were aware of all the ways it could end up sounding bad. People don't often lower the lights, and clean the stylus, and deep clean the new record, and check the RPM's, and bias the tubes, and adjust the sub, and so forth and so on, just to not care what the record sounds like. When it takes a least a minimum level of effort, much more so than just pressing a button, to play the music, you are obviously dealing with people who are a bit more concerned about sound quality. This is not to say that digital isn't capable of exceeding vinyl for measured reproduction. Obviously, on paper at least, it's capable of far better sound. Another possibility is something I liken to 60fps video vs 24fps. Obviously 60fps should, in theory, make for a better viewing experience. Yet when one looks at the reaction people had to The Hobbit trilogy in HFR, or high frame rate, they didn't care for it. 48fps was considered to be "fake" looking. All the special effects and so forth didn't seem real. It turns out that at 24fps the human brain fills the missing frames in with completely fabricated information that it thinks should be there. What looks amazing at 24fps is revealed as fake once the enhanced detail of 48fps shines a light, so to speak, on it's obvious flaws. It's certainly possible that this is also the case with vinyl in some manner.

 

[RobRoy]

Betamax was early PCM and set the standard for 44K sampling rates. So ya, they were very good. Professional R2R was no slouch though, it ran at 30 ips and was capable of full dynamic capture right to 20K without tape over saturation.

Because I sold the stuff back then, naturally I had a beta Hi-Fi vcr and most of my home recordings were actually music. It's interesting to me: The 70's were a major decade for Hi-Fi. Cassettes got GOOD. elcassettes were introduced, CD's were introduced. 8 tracks died as they should have - miserably. It was a time of thinking seriously outside the box. I even imagined a hi-fi BETA deck coming out some day for car dashboards.

 

[RobRoy]

Generalizations are so much bullshit.

Opinions vary on that, but I agree that if you are getting into the weeds it's time to dump the generalizations.

I'm a business analyst. My job is to identify actual customer needs and document them in a way that they can be realized by various technological solutions. The challenge is to ignore what the customer says they want and use the right questions to find out what they really need - what real problem they are trying to solve. It always "starts" with generalizations and floating high level solutions.

Interestingly, as I think about it, I brought those exact same skills to bear when I was a hi-fi salesman in the 70's. I was darned good at it and the customers learned to trust me BECAUSE of the thoughtful questions I asked. Often they would leave with something completely different than they came in for. The one exception was a certain TEAC cassette deck that was written up in Consumer Reports. If someone came in with a copy of that issue and wanted to look at that cassette deck, I simply sold it to them. It was one of the less reliable decks we sold, and it didn't sound as good as most other brands in an A/B test, but it was pointless to waste energy swimming up stream.

 

[RobRoy]

Eh, I see this debate go back and forth all the time. While it's not as bad as it used to be, digital, for all it's capabilities, often lost out to vinyl for a few reasons. One was the fact that the people who did the mastering for vinyl knew that when you buy a record and put it on your TT, you were aware of all the ways it could end up sounding bad. People don't often lower the lights, and clean the stylus, and deep clean the new record, and check the RPM's, and bias the tubes, and adjust the sub, and so forth and so on, just to not care what the record sounds like. When it takes a least a minimum level of effort, much more so than just pressing a button, to play the music, you are obviously dealing with people who are a bit more concerned about sound quality. This is not to say that digital isn't capable of exceeding vinyl for measured reproduction. Obviously, on paper at least, it's capable of far better sound. Another possibility is something I liken to 60fps video vs 24fps. Obviously 60fps should, in theory, make for a better viewing experience. Yet when one looks at the reaction people had to The Hobbit trilogy in HFR, or high frame rate, they didn't care for it. 48fps was considered to be "fake" looking. All the special effects and so forth didn't seem real. It turns out that at 24fps the human brain fills the missing frames in with completely fabricated information that it thinks should be there. What looks amazing at 24fps is revealed as fake once the enhanced detail of 48fps shines a light, so to speak, on it's obvious flaws. It's certainly possible that this is also the case with vinyl in some manner.

I'm completely with you on that.

One of the nuances for me regarding CD vs Vinyl, is that it is important that the "core assumption" in the debate is that the exact same master recording is put on the CD and the Vinyl. That is when the differences become obvious (CD is hands down better). But even that is not really fair because to even put the signal on vinyl a ton of compromises have to be made. I read an article a couple of years ago where a former recording engineer said that by the time the original master had been copied onto a master to be used to cut the original lacquer from which the vinyl stampers would be made, the difference in tone and dynamic range was enough to make you cry. To make the same final master for CD you would not really have to make those short cuts. But, sadly, they did even worse: They applied the "loudness wars" paradigm to the final master.

Most of us who have recorded with our own high quality mics and software have experienced that. The sound of an original recording with no processing (other than processing to enhance the music) rarely comes out in a final mix for vinyl OR digital. But in the end it's not really that important. It has all gotten so good, while so much of the music has gotten so bad, that it's mostly just fun to talk about, as opposed to do anything about.

And, at the end of the day, I still loves me my vinyl.

BTW, This is worth while on the subject:

And this youtube search is quite productive. It really is a real thing: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=modern+music+is+bad
It is really not just an "old fart" thing. And no, this is not about ALL newer music. Just a lot of it. It's why real music lovers, when you look at their record collection, have a lot of stuff most people have never heard of.

 

[DaveVoorhis]

And this youtube search is quite productive. It really is a real thing: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=modern+music+is+bad
It is really not just an "old fart" thing. And no, this is not about ALL newer music. Just a lot of it.

Of course, that's always been the case. Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap") applies to modern music made today, yesterday, the previous decade, the 1970's, 60's, 50's, 20's, 1800's, 1700's and so on.

Most of everything is crap.

It is, it was, and it always will be.

What happens over time is that the crap gets lost, forgotten, thrown away or ignored. The good stuff gets found, remembered, used, sold, bought, rediscovered and replayed. That inevitably makes the old stuff look better than the new stuff, but new stuff is really no worse than it ever was. It's simply that we haven't yet filtered out the good from the bad in the latest stuff.

But we will, and then we'll think today's new stuff -- which is tomorrow's old stuff -- is better than whatever the latest unfiltered stuff happens to be.

 

[infullview]

Of course, that's always been the case. Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap") applies to modern music made today, yesterday, the previous decade, the 1970's, 60's, 50's, 20's, 1800's, 1700's and so on.

Most of everything is crap.

It is, it was, and it always will be.

What happens over time is that the crap gets lost, forgotten, thrown away or ignored. The good stuff gets found, remembered, used, sold, bought, rediscovered and replayed. That inevitably makes the old stuff look better than the new stuff, but new stuff is really no worse than it ever was. It's simply that we haven't yet filtered out the good from the bad in the latest stuff.

But we will, and then we'll think today's new stuff -- which is tomorrow's old stuff -- is better than whatever the latest unfiltered stuff happens to be.

I vehemently disagree with that statement. There was much more experimentation back in the 50s, 60s, and early 70s with stereo as a medium. Most of the recordings were 'honest' in that they applied limiting as required to keep within spec on the cutting head for vinyl but f'ing with the dynamics by compressing the hell out of them still wasn't a practice. In the 50s compressors were not good, they were slow, and totally analog based. Attack and decay times were fixed by however they were designed at the time. Digital circuitry is to blame for making compression a 'thing' as these parameters could now easily be tweaked. Records cut in the 50s used very little processing and tended to have great dynamic range, the music was recorded live without multiple retakes because they didn't have a huge number of tracks, and you had to worry about tape hiss so over-tracking and remixing was very limited. I assert that the average stereo record recorded in the 50s was 1000% better than the modern crap produced today - and it was because they were forced to live within their technological means. It made the music honest and real. You have only to listen to Miles Davis, Kinda Blue to know what I'm saying is true.

 

[KentTeffeteller]

Guitar amps are designed to distort.
Stereo amps are not .
Really an apples to oranges comparison.
You wouldn't want to run 2 Marshall heads as mono blocks

Also tube amps made for musical instruments only had to be able to reproduce the frequency of the instrument.
Not all instruments and voices.

The keyboard amplifiers in musical instrument amplifiers, tend to be the widest frequency range, and the cleanest and least distorted of the musical instrument amplifiers due to being used with wide ranges of keyboard instruments.

 

[WaynerN]

Without compression, lots of music would be hard to listen to. If it has a mixture of loud and soft passages, the soft stuff would be perhaps, too low in volume, so the listener turns it up, only to have a near speaker destroying dynamic event somewhere in the recording. As the stylus and its capabilities to track such dynamics brought into being the RIAA curve which decreases the bass energy and increases the HF energy. When we use the phono preamp, it reverses the process.

On another note, what is reality or "true to the music" when 99% is canned, sampled and multi-tracked to death. We can't even be true to the master as we do not have the same room, the same speakers or any of the other, upstream equipment.

 

[infullview]

Without compression, lots of music would be hard to listen to. If it has a mixture of loud and soft passages, the soft stuff would be perhaps, too low in volume, so the listener turns it up, only to have a near speaker destroying dynamic event somewhere in the recording. As the stylus and its capabilities to track such dynamics brought into being the RIAA curve which decreases the bass energy and increases the HF energy. When we use the phono preamp, it reverses the process.

On another note, what is reality or "true to the music" when 99% is canned, sampled and multi-tracked to death. We can't even be true to the master as we do not have the same room, the same speakers or any of the other, upstream equipment.

Disagree. Dynamic limiting is just as effective and leaves a lot of the original dynamics in place. Have you ever done any live recording? The master is not good if the material on it is convoluted. You can't "undo" mistakes once the mix is done if you don't have the original unadulterated material.