gofar99 Messages: 1909 Registered: May 2010 Location: Southern Arizona
Illuminati (5th Degree)
Hi, Yes I design things with tubes. Without getting into which is better tubes or SS, I will just state that they are different and I personally prefer the sound of tube audio. That all said... It is far easier to build powerful SS amps than tube ones. Also from a diy perspective a lot cheaper. Personally I have never found a need for more than 30-40 watts to drive any reasonable speaker system. So massive amounts of power are a non issue to me. My usual amps (as a designer and co-owner of an audio company I have many choices) are rated at 25 watts per channel. They drive my Martin Logan electrostatics quite well.
If you add a tube stage anywhere in a system it will introduce some "flavor" to the sound reproduction. The opposite is generally true if you add a SS stage to a tube system it will generally flavor it as well. Some designs for preamps with FETs are relatively benign. As you might guess there are no SS stages in my system with the exception of the power amps in a pair of sub woofers I am presently auditioning. They are set for response below 50 HZ and fortunately any artifacts they produce are largely innocuous. Normally I have more efficient subs and use tube amps on them.
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