My definition of accuracy is; An accurate replication of music is the one that SOUNDS the closest to the original acoustic event as interpreted by the human ear. I do not believe we can define accuracy as the one that MEASURES closer to a microphones interpretation of the original event. I noticed you completely ignored this area of my post. If a microphone hears or interpets a musical signal differently than the human ear does, and I believe that is the case for reasons stated in my previous post. How or why would we use the microphones interpretation as the standard of accuarcy? For example: Humans hear differently than dogs. Granted in this case it's in areas of frequencey and sensitivity, but ihey hear differently. Could we then use a humans hearing to accurately determine what a dog hears? No, we cannot! Neither do I believe can we use a microphone to accurately determine what a human hears, for the exact same reasons. The "hear" differently. If we are to continue this discussion you'll need to address this issue. But I will not continue this discussion after this if you do not address the issue or whether or not; a) Humans & Mics hear differently and b) Why you choose a Mics interpretation over a humans as your basis for defining accurate.

Now to address some of your points.

A)You stated "I LIKE how they (SET's) alter the signal. But that they alter the signal can be easily proved.

The question my friend is not whether an SET alters a signal or not. I will readly admit that an SET will alter the electronic signal it receives. But, what we really need to know is how close does the signal fed to an SET accurately represent what a human hears? It's my belief that in altering the signal, the SET's output is actually closer to what a human hears. Hence, the output sounds more realistic because it's a more accurate replication of what we hear at an unamplifed acoustic event.

B)I think most people would define it as the measurable faithful reporoduction of an input signal at hte output...but hey....who cares? It's all semantics.

I think ENGINEERS would define accurate as the measurable faithful reproduction of an input signal at the output. Music lovers "should" define accurate as an output that replicates the original acoustic event as faithfully as possible to the human ear.

C)Anything a tube amp can do in terms of amplifying a signal, an SS amp can do.

I don't doubt this at all. I remember when Bob Carver did that famous experiment. If I remember correctly he fed the output of his amp and the amp he wanted his amp to sound like, to a common location. He then kept making adjustments to his amp until he got a "null" as the reading at this common location (or something like this) and when he got a null reading the amps sounded the same! However, I do believe that Solid State designers won't make their amps sound like a SET's Why? Because they are glued to specifications as their guide instead of their ears. Why else doesn't Bob buy a $5K or $10K SET and make a $1000 solid state amp that sounds like it? Trust me I'd buy it in a New York minute! I'd save 1000's of dollars, not have to deal with the heat of 845 in Class A, not have to pay BIG BUX for good NOS tubes, the amp wouldn't weigh a ton, I could afford to Tri-amp etc. But if it should happen that someone out there does make a solid state amp sound like a good SET, he'll just charge you $5000 for a $500 amp because it sounds like an SET. So I don't have much faith in that group of engineers. But you're correct they could do it "IF" they wanted too.

D)The reason why such a thng is not done, in my opinion, is becuase most amps today are based on commercial chips, and no chip designer will design an amplifier that would conform to the specs of a tube...they'd be laughed out of the business.

I disagree with this statement 100%. Bob did it with components back in what the 70's or 80's? It's not because of the commercial chips being used. Again I say it's because they are glued specifications as their guide to being accurate, when they should just use their ears.

Again, this is a very tough discussion. Until we agree on how we define accurate we cannot agree on anything else in the discussion. It's catch 22 Thanks for your thought and input.

Tom Scata (thetubeguy1954)

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

Now I'll grant you that not every person hears exactly the same amount of information, do to a variety of factors. However how we hear is the same. We all know when a Sax is live as opposed to recorded. I believe that somehow Mic's and 99.9% of solid state equipment adds or removes something to the signal that alters the original acoustic event. Then on a psychoacoustical level, when it played back our brain tells us "This is NOT real, it's a recording." I believe 2 of the major factors that contribute to this are: Greatly reduced dynamics as opposed a live event and two different sets of reflections existing at the same time. For example: When we play back music on any system (even an SET based system) we hear reflections of sound waves as they reflect off the floor, ceiling, walls, etc of the room the music was recorded in. Now when we play that recording in our homes we add to those reflections the reflections that occur in our room as the sound reflects off the floor, ceiling, walls, etc of our room. Hence again on a psychoacoustical level our brains cry out, this is NOT real!

Lastly when you mention "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." Akhilesh, to that I can only say that I know for a fact that his Sunfire amp doesn't sound like my SET does. I also know that it took him a hell of a lot more components and time then just adding a 1 ohm resistor in series to make his amp sound like the tube amps when he accepted the original challenge. I think it takes a lot to make a solid state amp sound like a $5K or $10K SET does, heck even $2K SET's don't sound like the $5K and more expensive SET's do, do they?

Please talking with you.

Tom Scata (thetubeguy1954)

• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/singleendedtriodes/

http://www.creativesound.ca/details.php?model=NEEDLES

Still like I said in an earlier post. "IF" I spend $3000 I want to get $3000 worth of equipment. I just cannot sanction the belief that because an amp sounds like a $3000 amp means it should cost $3000. If the amp only has a the same amount and quality of components as another company's $800 amp does, it should cost $800. I get sick when I see a good product come along, solid state or tubed, get a great review and then BAM!!!! it goes up in cost by 33% to 50%. The engineers that make solid state amps could go out buy a $10K SET amp and taylor their solid state amp to sound just like it. Bob Carver did that exact thing years ago. The fact that they don't proves either they truly believe their solid state gear sounds better. To which I say "Clean out your ears!" or they just don't care. I long for the day that I can get $10K SET tube amps sound in a $2000 solid state amp. I'll save on the intial expense of purchasing the amp, I'll save on energy bills as opposed to running paralleled 845 tubes in Class A, I'll save on the expense of NOS tubes, etc. So why don't they do it? Huh? OK guys speak up, because I really want to know the answer to that question.

Tom Scata (thetubeguy1954)
====================================================================
Music never makes you sick, but noise always annoys.

• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/singleendedtriodes/

If Bob Carver reads this, maybe he can tell us what he did... he knows a helluva lot more about amp design & acoustics than almost all of us, including almost all folk in the business.

BTW, the SETs i own cost me a LOT less than what you are saying. THe zen amp is hand made for you by Steve deckert at $499 (it comes with a 30 day back guarantee: you MUST try it & steve offers GREAT customer service), the Asusa amp i got online for far less than that, and the 45 set (which has pretty high end parts: blackgate caps, good resistors, stancor power tranny, james output trannies, jupiter coupling caps) also cost me under $1500.

I like them all. They are cheap & LOADS of fun.

What kind of system do you have, Tom?
-akhilesh

Tom Scata (thetubeguy1954)
====================================================================
If natuer abhors a vacuum, why does vacuum tube equipment sound so damn good?

My systems tend to be el cheapo with multiple components.
Here is a fun idea for you to thnk about: Get the 2 watt zen amp for $499 with a 30 day money back warranty, and also get steve deckert's high eff. speakers (single driver doped fostex) with eff of around 96 db i think. These go for around $1700. try the combo, and see if you liek it. I am not sure if he gives money back on the speakers, but the amp for sure. You'll need high eff speakers for a low pwer amp. try this combo if you ever get a chance. I thihnk you'll like it. I know John (manual block) has heard it. Maybe he can tell us what he feels.
Alternately, you can also try other high eff speakers: high eff speakers & low powered SETs are a good match.

My speakers are a pair of 104 db klipschorns (1978), and a pair of homemade speakers (vintage trusonic drivers & a tweeter) around 95 db. SOmetimes I run them in parallel, esp if I am listening to a symphony. Pretty dynamic!

My source is by museatex: transport, with a bidat dac (fully modded by john wright) and/or an unmodded bitstream dac (yes I use 2 dacs running out of 1 transport to my 2 sets of speakers).

This rig has certainly kept me happy, until i build my NEXT dream speaker project (this time using modern drivers) that is.
-akhilesh

Tom Scata (thetubeguy1954)

My friend has built amps that are great sounding. They have come up on audiogon for 500-600.

I started with a zen, then heard various diy set amps, some of which were very good.

But then by accident, my friend built a great amp, and with the formula almost every amp he built subsequently was great.

I posted about it a couple of years ago on audio asylum. The amps use a certain vintage transformer that for some reason gives a great sound.

For some reason, the price of these transformers has gone up a great deal on e-bay but i still think it is the only transformer I'm really interested in.