pertinence of Valve Amplifiers

[vinodquilon]

Recently I have read Morgan Jones' Valve Amplifiers.

Does there exist any relevance for Valve Amplifiers in these days of semiconductors ?

 

[MikeMl]

Only in the minds of certain believers that worship that magical little glow inside a piece of glass. These believers also worship magical copper that lacks oxygen. Very similar to those that believe you can steal power from your engine to electrolyze water into Oxygen and Hydrogen, burn that, and get more power back than it took to separate the O and H in the first place.

 

[bychon]

I believe some very large valves are used in broadcast transmitters, but then radio and television engineers also believe in Leprechauns.

 

[crutschow]

Can a magnetron be considered a valve? You find those in microwave ovens.

 

[bychon]

Magnetrons use a filament which is heated, so it doesn't sound like a transistor to me.

 

[tvtech]

I am going to throw this in the air....see what happens here...

Valve amplifiers are Voltage driven. They have a coupling transformer to the speaker to drive the load. Depending on the speaker chosen, they can sound truly beautiful and accurate. Some speakers were built specifically to cater for Valve amps. The QUAD electrostatic speakers come to mind. Early Eighties stuff.

Some semiconductor amps on the other hand have the ability to push massive amounts of clean current through the driven speakers. Control them properly. And sound fantastic. Krell comes to mind. Their class A designs are awesome.

I witnessed/heard the original Krell KSA 50 in the early 80's in a Sound studio. Never heard JJ Cale sound so good ever to this day.

The debate about tube versus semiconductor amps will go on forever.

Traditionally it is valves for orchestral and semiconductors for everything else. Comments welcome.

 

[mneary]

What format of codec should be used to store music which will end up playing on a valve amplifier?

 

[Roff]

What format of codec should be used to store music which will end up playing on a valve amplifier?

Well, I don't think it would be called a codec, but for storage, I think core memory should be used to preserve the mellow sound. This will also help in room heating and in filling up space which would otherwise be wasted.

 

[audioguru]

My first exposure to digital circuits used RTL logic and millions of little ferrite donuts hanging on millions of wires in a matrix as "core" memory. The program was fed in as many punched cards.

 

[MRCecil]

well, i don't think it would be called a codec, but for storage, i think core memory should be used to preserve the mellow sound. This will also help in room heating and in filling up space which would otherwise be wasted.

lmao!!!!!!

 

[Roff]

Thanks, MRCecil.
I'm wondering how my capital "I"s got converted to lower case when you quoted me.

 

[MRCecil]

Roff,

My reply was all caps and they posted lower case too! Maybe my post was processed by a server using a butt-ton of 6AX5's in the logic and the caps shrunk on a hot "valve" plate. Or not!

Don'tcha just luv a mystery?