No axes here. I like to listen to music, always have, and hopefully my ears will support me for the rest of my life. It’s nice to have decent music. I think it makes my day better.
One of my favorite rigs is my office system. I spend a lot of time working, and when I am not in meetings, I turn to my leftmost monitor and I fire up something on Roon. It helps that my desktop speakers are ProAc Tablette 10 Signatures. Those speakers are a great example of a long journey of buying and selling over a number of years until I could get to a place where I felt that I had something that I will be satisfied with for a long time. For me, that’s part of my journey. Finding some gear that’s part of my permanent collection. DAC’s can arguably fall into the category of needing replacement on a more frequent basis. But even they can be long-ish term if you start looking at DAC’s that have FPGA’s and the vendor is committed releasing updates. Just look at the PS Audio DirectStream DAC. It’s had seven upgrades over the past 5-6 years. Each one made the DAC sound better and in some cases added capabilities. I really dig gear like this.
Tubes can be looked at as an upgrade or enhancement to an existing rig. Tubes can and do change the sound of a system and help tune it to your liking. For some this is a hassle, or it’s so foreign to them that it’s hard to get started. Not much different then changing a cartridge on a turntable, or adjusting for a new turntable platter mat that’s a different height.
Sadly, some naysayers just lack experience and the inertia to try something new from fear of trying, but are willing to spend their time spewing vitriol. For some it may be a cost issue, I get that, I was a young engineer once and I had to make every penny count so there was no room for trial and error. But, I also didn’t spew nonsense.
Right now I’m listening to a newly released Fred Hersch album on Qobuz via Roon and I couldn’t be happier.
I do hope all of you can enjoy this journey. It’s a hobby and should be fun.
The first transistor was successfully demonstrated on December 23, 1947 at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey.
June 21, 1948 - Columbia’s Microgroove LP Makes Albums Sound Good. 1948: Columbia Records puts the needle down on history’s first successful microgroove plastic, 12-inch, 33-1/3 LPs in New York.
1943: Bell Telephone Laboratories develops the first PCM-based digital scrambled speech transmission system.
Thanks, I’ve had lots of practice writing. Not to dissimilar from learning how to hear audible changes in my rigs when I tweak them. Practice, practice, practice. There’s no shame in trying and failing. But to not try, well that’s another thing entirely.
I’m not sure what your point is. If you meant to say that current technology is actually old, I’ll point out that “obsolete” means “not used anymore/replaced by something newer”. Thus, transistors and PCM are not obsolete, while vinyl and tubes are.
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AceRimmer
(Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!)
74
No I had not…but now its bookmarked!
I really can see myself adding a piece from their collection to my collection!
Thank you indeed.
Both LPs and tubes are still in use and under development. It’s not like we are talking about cuneiform being replaced by a quill. There’s plenty of new gear being designed in conjunction with new tubes.
Just look at McIntosh or PrimaLuna for example. Still being developed, still being sold, still being used.
I personally love the options and the freedom to explore all facets of this hobby. It’s much like food, there are very few things that I won’t eat or at least try. Except for Balut, I couldn’t get past the smell.
I’ve had some fun messing with the Schiit Freya+ preamp this past year. It has a tube stage that you can switch on and off. The tubes give extra gain compared to without them, so it’s tricky to do A/B comparison. There’s some sort of 3D aspect to the difference. No idea if it’s something the tubes capture from the original recording or if it’s tube-based distortion messing with the phasing, but if my life depended on it I’d guess the latter. I like the sound, though. The power amp is solid state.
5 Likes
AceRimmer
(Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!)
77
Tweaking and tubes go together. I try to avoid too much tweaking (actually any tweaking) since it always leads to less money and more neurosis with, more often than not, minimal audible gains.
I generally make one change at a time and then I leave that system alone for a minimum of two months. I want to be able to hear and learn the difference so the next change can be judged from a baseline.
However,…oh man this was painful…I bought a new media cabinet for my main rig last November. Which meant not only a new layout for my gear, it meant changing out many cables. Power, RCA, XLR, I2S, USB, Ethernet, and fiber (that shouldn’t have made a difference). It was like starting all over with a whole new system. That rig isn’t going to see a change until late spring or even summer. It sounds fantastic, but is sooo different then it was before.
It’s so different it’s hard to explain. I highly recommend you find a way to get a loaner from a local dealer. When I switched, I couldn’t stop listening the first night. I sat down around 6 PM and really didn’t get up again except for the loo until 4 AM the next morning. Fortunately it was a weekend.
Thaks Jim! I can see this whole tube discussion leading to a new tubed headphone amp in my desktop system. DARKVOICE 336SE OTL HEADPHONE AMPXDUOO TA-30 TUBE DAC/AMP
And of course I’ll start there and soon after start looking for a balanced tube headphone amp. What a great hobby.
I am really enjoying the practice of tube rolling.
It is not better than SS, just different. One can argue until the cows have come home, chewed the cud, slept the night, and then gone back to whatever bovine-pursuit they follow the next day about which is better, but there is no answer. It’s a beautifully personal thing.
I run tube in the pre-amp stage and have a pair each of 12AX7s (ECC83) and 12AT7s (ECC81) in my McIntosh and have enjoyed the changes in signature that I get along the way. Modern tubes are consistent and easy to deal with, but the real fun has been using new old stock to flavour the playback to taste.
My latest roll has been with swapping out the first tube on each channel: the 12AX7 position. I just acquired some late 1940s manufactured GE tubes (Ken-Rad long charcoal pewter plate dimple D foil getter). They test to within 2% of each other, so I’m quite happy based upon the fact they are over 70 years of age.
My impressions are essentially that it is like I am in the studio when the tracks are being laid down. It is not like the anodyne one-stage-removed feeling that is the norm. The sound is somewhere in-between an intimate live performance, like a back room pub gig, and a first/early gen studio master. Is it accurate and faithful to what went on in the studio? Probably not as pure as it could be with SS, but it gives a realism flavour probably akin to what could be achieved with some DSP. Bottom-line is that it gives me immense pleasure, so I care not for the opinions of others about what I might be doing that is right or wrong. This is my party and nobody else is invited
Running a pair of Holland made for Valvo Cca pinched waist 6DJ8/6922 in my Pre. The best I’ve ever heard in our house. They hit the mark on what I was chasing. Every element of presentation is exactly what I was after. For the first time I can genuinely say that what I imagined in my head is realized.
