3 interesting articles from AES, Journal of Elect Engineers, Eric Barbour

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[QUOTE=mtrycraft]

Three articles, one from the Audio Engineering Society, one from Eric Barbour, and another from the Journal of Electrical Engineers:

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/select/0898/tube.html

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/select/0898/tubet1.html

Highly personal opinions only in the second link about the disadvantages of SS. Too bad I couldn't reprint it here.

You need to get better stuff to support your like for tubes, or, actually, you don't need any for you to like tubes, only when you make testable claims for it.

First off, the AES reviews the content of articles before printing. I am sure the Journal of Electrical Engineers also do the same. Don't want to soil their reputation.

Secondly, transistors haven't changed in their spectral distortion problems, or quantity. It is inherent. They are very similar to tetrode and pentode tubes in distortion products. Triodes are unique. I believe Eric Barbour clearly shows the spectral distortions of different devices, both tube and SS as does the AES article.

Thirdly, the reason for all those SS part numbers is that when manufacturing transistors, IC chips, the variations in hfe are so varied, they didn't want to throw them away as being out of spec. So they assigned different numbers to them.

Granted most of the population isn't that concerned with audio and replacing tubes every so many years. They just want music of reasonable quality, no hot spots for a child to get burned on and energy efficiency (bills are getting high).