Andre Jute wrote:

You're entitled to your opinion, Iveson. We are entitled to say your
opinion sounds like ****. Always. The key word in the analogy is
"always". A SET which always sounded the same would be a performer and
therefore wrongly conceived, executed or applied.

What SET does for the oldtimers, who design SET amps and build them and
listen to them and *compare their sound to what they hear in concert
halls* is simply to sound, on any particular piece of music, more like
the sound one heard in the concert hall than other tube topologies
(except PP Class A) or any solid state amp.

You see, the key argument the silicon slime make is that their
responsibility stops at the point wher they can prove that their amps
reproduce the master tape perfectly. But that is never the sound one
heard in the concert hall. The argument then shifts to the master tape
and what it includes or does not include. SET or PP class A amps really
have nothing to do with this; it is quite incidental, if fortuitous,
that from the same master tape they are better at reproducing the sound
*heard in the concert hall* than silicon.

A SET amp is not a performer, it is a reproducer.

Exactly.

People in love with silicon can be ever so irrational about triode amps
because to know there is a better lover they could have but dare not
because modern logic
forbids it causes them deep and suppressed anxiety, and having an affair
with triodes
would have them question their dull marriage to frumpy solid state devices.

Some men love soiled state amplifiers and think soiled state must be the
focus of their love
and mind like those religious zealots must focus on God, and that the only
one true faith includes lashings of NFB.
They foam at the mouth when they talk of SET, like as if SET amps are the
work of the Devil;
they just can't let themselves delight in the pleasures of triodes, and
flagellate themselves
like St Augustine to curb the lust they supress.

I really don't care too much about the foamings and BS and lust supressions
these
emotionally dysfunctional ppl bung on which won't budge anyone who
discovers that a few triodes are still
the best way of reproducing the sound heard at a live performance after it
has been electronically recorded.

I have heard music through quite good sounding systems which have included
soiled state amplifiers,
but its never been better than what I have heard from a few triodes, and
the
best sound has been through triode amps that have a nice high power ceiling

compared to average power level used, and my many experiences with SE amps
confirm in my mind that serious
ppl designing decent SE amps using triodes, pentodes or beam tetrodes are
not wasting their time.

90% of the recorded music in the world is very electronically processed
during the performance
and following it in the studio, ( rather like meat is treated to produce
sausages
so that resemblance to meat is removed. ) So we have music being the result
of electric guitars
with added triode/tetrode/pentode/digital/soiled state distortions, so
triode amps
at home may not do much better than any other type of amp
since the music is crap anyway. What makes AC/DC or Meatloaf sound any good
at all?
Sorry, but I have no clue.
But what is the best amp to use for Dame Joan Sutherland recorded at her
best from vinyl
in 1963? I'll settle for the triodes thankyou.

What brings Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong singing together from about
1953 right into your lounge?
What gives the greater sense of emotional engagement? What produces the
greatest sense
of being there in the recording studio?
I don't need Krell or Mark Levinson for that, I am most happy if I have a
few triodes, with perhaps one exception,
the single j-fet in cascode with the first triode of the phono amp.

I trust a fet with a few millivolts, but after that I like to leave the
larger signals in the hands of triodes.

Patrick Turner.







By the way, quite contrary to your statement, real musicians are almost
without exception trying to reproduce a sound first heard in the
composer's head, or in a practice room several hundred years ago in the
presence of the composer. There is virtually no such thing in serious
music as a truly original performance, not even the premiere of a
brand-new composition; all you need to discover this is to sit in on
the rehearsals of a few new compositions and listen to the composer and
performers work on the rendition of the score, and then to follow the
premiere with auditions of other performers playing the same
composition in the same way as the performers who gave the premiere.
Originality in classical music proceeds by tiny accretions of
variation.

Andre Jute
Visit Jute on Amps at http://members.lycos.co.uk/fiultra/
"wonderfully well written and reasoned information
for the tube audio constructor"
John Broskie TubeCAD & GlassWare
"an unbelievably comprehensive web site
containing vital gems of wisdom"
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Ian Iveson wrote:
Just strayed to ukra, and tried this:

"...I believe you miss the point of the whole SET plot. The
"sound of real musicians playing" is never the result of
reproduction. Real musicians playing are not trying to reproduce a
previous performance by someone else. Neither is a typical
combination of a SET and its speakers. Such a system *is* a live
performer, and is optimised for that purpose."

Actually I haven't a clue...it's just a desperate guess and I've
never even heard a proper SET system, never mind designed one.

Is it true?

cheers, Ian



(To elucidate, maybe, I tried labouring this:

The "sound of real musicians playing" is never the result of
reproduction.

Therefore systems designed only for reproduction will never produce
the "sound of real musicians playing".

SET systems are not in general designed primarily for reproduction,
but rather for the "sound of real musicians playing".

Therefore it is possible that SET systems sound more like the "sound
of real musicians playing" than systems designed only for
reproduction.

Furthermore, some people who have listened say this is true.)