Andre Jute wrote:
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Judging by the many posts about SET etc designs on here there again seems
to be a wish to modify the incoming signal rather than just amplify it.

Do you really believe that, Dave? I thought you were in the recording
business. Surely you know that now amp whatsoever merely processes the
signal blamelessly. Those with negative feedback, for instance, add
artifacts to the music, higher order harmonics.


Yet still produce a vastly less distorted signal than any SET.

I don't actually want to modify the incoming signal.

Then why use an SET?

What I want is an
outcoming signal that sounds more like the concert hall than what the
engineers now give me.

What if the music was not recorded in a concert hall?

One way of doing that is by having a very
silent class A sound from devices operated along only the most linear
part of their transfer curve, and tilting the transfer so that the odd
and higher harmonics become a smaller part of the mix than before. Your
way of thinking appears to hold it axiomatic that a solid state device
is a paradigm of fine sound. If the paradigm doesn't satisfy, for
whatever reason, it is time to trade it in for one that works. The one
that works a lot better is Class A operated at high voltage and high
current into a high impedance with little or no negative feedback.

An opinion not supported by the facts.


Oh yes, the solid staties' bugbear of SET. I have SET amps, several,
just as I have solid state amps, several, but I can't see why that
causes your lot such pain. I don't even prefer SET above all other amps
(if you think I do, you've been listening to that idiot Pinkerton, who
lies a lot).

I get it, in Jute/McCoy world, truth is a lie.

I'm on record for years, repeatedly, ad nauseam, as saying
that the finest amp I ever designed is a Class A triode-linked EL34
push pull amp with adjustable negative feedback. I have PP amps too,
several. I've never even met a SETtie who had *only* a SET amp.


The question is why would anyone want an SET for anything more than
soldering practice?

It may suit the crude fanatics among your cohorts to type those who
don't fit their arid lowest common denominator pattern *exactly* as
Martians but real people don't fit neatly into pigeonholes. Real people
can even love more than one amp at a time.

Love what you like, but SET's are better suited to being doorstops and
paperweights than for reproducing audio signals.


Ah, but I forget, in an ideal world all amps will have the same arid
sound of big ali heatsinks expanding and contracting and be equally
unlovable...


Actually all amps should simply amplify and in no audible way change
the signal being amplified.

..