Posted by akhilesh [ 129.244.123.50 ] on December 10, 2004 at 10:18:19:
In Reply to: Re: Some reasons why SETs sound different posted by thetubeguy1954 on December 10, 2004 at 09:22:58:
Hi Tom,
Any measure of accuracy is fine by me. IF we choose it as what a human hears, then it becomes psychoacoustical, and will vary from person to person. Also keep in mind, the recording one is hearing has already been miked, and encoded. So, maybe you are saying that somehow a SET undoes the effects of the mike-encoded signal, and makes it sound live. I think it simply does the 3 things I mentioned in my earlier post, and makes the music sound better. For example, exaggerated midrange leads to greater presence, lower damping factor leads to more bass (though less controlled) and the distortion leads to a "richness" or fatness in sound. All of these can be interpreted by us as sounding better, and so, by your definition of fidelity a SET is indeed better. I think it's semantics: essentially we are agreeing: a SET will not output the (transformed) input signal as accurately as a SS amp, but it does sound better.
BTW, Bob Carver's Sunfire amps actually did a pretty simple thing, his "Current" output speaker terminals simply had a 1 ohm resistor in series, to reduce damping factor. In his ads, he stated that the reduced damping factor accounted for 90% of the tube sound. I am not sure how he reached that conclusion...my own opinion is that increased distortion & frequency curve play a role as well.
You are right, one can use standard chips to do many of the things a SET does....including I guess introduce even order distortion. Since I am not an electrical enginner, I will not speculate how one can do that.
-akhilesh
PS: try having a civil discussion liek this in the asylum....ha