In article , Don Pearce
wrote:
On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:03:51 +0100, "Keith G"
wrote:



(If I'm wrong and SS amps do make valves 'retro' - how long before
*digital* amps make analogue SS amps retro?)

There ain't no such thing. To amplify digitally is a mathematical
operation - nothing to do with hardware.

I assume Keith is referring to the 'digital' amps as described in audio
mags. i.e. ones which use switching systems like PWM, Class-T, etc, etc.

I also wonder how these will fare. At present I'd have serious doubts about
them. But in a few years they may well displace 'conventional' SS designs
as they are potentially more efficient, and can avoid various snags of
'analogue' amp designs. At present, though, they are still trying to
overcome their own problems. But it would not surprise me if they displaced
Class AB, etc, in the coming decade or so.



Quite so, unlike modern valve amps. Look inside one of those and you
will find the identical circuits that were designed in the fifties. As I
said, the technology hasn't moved - just the cosmetics.

It may depend which amps you open. :-) I have seen various circuits for
some amps that are less familiar. e.g. being some of the hybrid or
'computer monitored and tweaked' approaches. One of these was reviewed in
Stereophile a while ago, but I've forgotten the name.


As are people who are buying valve amps and LPs - old and new, in both
cases....

But for vinyl it is fewer, and declining. I have vinyl and a record
player. I won't be buying new of either when they give up. I will
replace my bike if need be, though.

I can't tell if vinyl is still declining or not. Lack of reliable data. It
is clear it faded down in the decade or so after CDA. But it may have
reached a level where it wanders up and down year by year. Lack of data.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html

In article , Keith G
wrote:

"Don Pearce" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:03:51 +0100, "Keith G"
wrote:


No, you have that backwards. The crystal lattice is the natural home
of the electron. To make a valve work you have to create a vacuum,
boil an electrode and rip the electron out of its comfy home. No, the
transistor a far more natural amplifying device than the valve.


Can't really argue with that, other than to say the electrons *want* to
go flying off and do so with great glee, AFAIA... :-)

No. If anything, they want to hang around and return into the material.
Left to themselves, they do so. You generally have to apply a potential to
drive them away from their 'home'. Or make 'home' too hot to bear... :-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html

"Don Pearce" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:48:46 +0100, "Keith G"
wrote:



And quite a few amps to budge 'em almost no distance at all in a
transistor? How enthusiastic is that..??


Lazy gits - that's their natural habit. An electron in the bit of
copper wire feeding signal into your power amp is travelling at about
a ten millionth of a mile an hour. All that frantic rushing about in a
valve really isn't good for them.

If only it were DC instead of AC it would take about three months to
get from the CD player to your power amp. As it, they really aren't
going anywhere.


As I understand it, they only jump to the next atom in any case? The
trip across the valve is the high point in any electron's life - for the
lucky few that get the opportunity? The bit that gets me is the timings
of the proton-proton fusion stages in the sun - goes (without Googling)
summat like nanosecond, 150 million years, nanosecond...??

(Makes the trip in a triode a *walk in the park* by comparison, I
reckon!)



(Blue skies are appearing again - we've had everything but the *plague
of frogs* this morning!! :-)


******* weather blew my garden chair over. Do you know, I actually had
to go out and pick it up this morning!


It said on the news there's been 30 tornados in the country today?

(Still waiting for me Ghibli's to finish - on the last one now! :-)

82%....

On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 14:15:46 +0100, "Keith G"
wrote:


"Don Pearce" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:48:46 +0100, "Keith G"
wrote:



And quite a few amps to budge 'em almost no distance at all in a
transistor? How enthusiastic is that..??


Lazy gits - that's their natural habit. An electron in the bit of
copper wire feeding signal into your power amp is travelling at about
a ten millionth of a mile an hour. All that frantic rushing about in a
valve really isn't good for them.

If only it were DC instead of AC it would take about three months to
get from the CD player to your power amp. As it, they really aren't
going anywhere.


As I understand it, they only jump to the next atom in any case? The
trip across the valve is the high point in any electron's life - for the
lucky few that get the opportunity? The bit that gets me is the timings
of the proton-proton fusion stages in the sun - goes (without Googling)
summat like nanosecond, 150 million years, nanosecond...??

(Makes the trip in a triode a *walk in the park* by comparison, I
reckon!)

Now that's photons for you. It also takes about that long (many
millions of years) for a photon created at the centre of the sun to
reach the outside and escape towards us. The remainder of the trip is
9 minutes.


(Blue skies are appearing again - we've had everything but the *plague
of frogs* this morning!! :-)


******* weather blew my garden chair over. Do you know, I actually had
to go out and pick it up this morning!


It said on the news there's been 30 tornados in the country today?

We are the most tornadoed country in the world - we beat the USA
comfortably.

d
--
Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

"Keith G" wrote in message


Good old Jimbo - unfailingly reliable when it comes to
telling the *gourmet* occupants of this 'audio
restaurant' what tonnage of MacDonald's 'Beefburgers' and
'Turkey Twizzlers' are beiing shifted around the globe....

Who says that tubes and vinyl are gourmet fare? Virtually all of the tubes
and vinyl that were in use in the day of, have been scrapped on the grounds
of being inferior for practical use by music lovers.

In article , Don Pearce
wrote:
On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:38:06 +0100, "Keith G"
wrote:


Can't really argue with that, other than to say the electrons *want* to
go flying off and do so with great glee, AFAIA... :-)


No, you need several hundred volts on an anode to persuade them that
they "want" to go flying off.

Alternatively, you just ensure that their 'home' is hot, and place an
alternative fairly close nearby. If you do this, you can get a current even
with no externally applied potential difference.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html

"Keith G" wrote in message

!

(If I'm wrong and SS amps do make valves 'retro'

Keith, you're fighting a war that was decided more than 3 decades ago. SS
made all tubed audio gear effectively retro no later than 1975. It's just
like the fact that WW2 was decided in 1945, but there were a few (or at
least one) Japanese soldiers who didn't get it, until what the 1990s?

how long before *digital* amps make analogue SS amps retro?)

First we have to have some digital amps to talk about at all. Virtually
everything out there is switchmode, which is not the same as digital.

"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message


Hard to say. However my impression is that there are,
indeed, many 'young' people buying LP replay systems for
the first time - at least when 'many' is defined in a
context like visitors to audio shows, or readers of audio
mags, or 'enthusiasts'.

It's a big world, and there are *many* people who doing all sorts of things
that for all intents and purposes have long fallen out of interest to just
about everybody.

The only people in their 20s and teens that I know who are still playing
vinyl, are pestering me to transcribe their LPs to CDs.

My curiousity is that magazines, etc, sometimes speak of
a 'revivial' or behave as if vinyl (or valve) were coming
to dominate 'audio'. I doubt either idea - except again
withing a self-selected grouping.

Now that digital is making large inroads into the scratching (dance) market,
we can expect to see maybe half or more of all current new vinyl equipment
and media sales to disappear.

In article , Keith G
wrote:

"Don Pearce" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:48:46 +0100, "Keith G"
wrote:



And quite a few amps to budge 'em almost no distance at all in a
transistor? How enthusiastic is that..??


Lazy gits - that's their natural habit. An electron in the bit of
copper wire feeding signal into your power amp is travelling at about
a ten millionth of a mile an hour. All that frantic rushing about in a
valve really isn't good for them.

If only it were DC instead of AC it would take about three months to
get from the CD player to your power amp. As it, they really aren't
going anywhere.

The Scots Guide is your friend... :-)


As I understand it, they only jump to the next atom in any case?

Depends how you look at it. They move until caught by a 'hole' or scattered
and have to be re-accellerated. Can be one atom away, or many. You can work
out the typical path lengths from the conductivity, etc. IIRC it will
normally be rather more than one atom spacing. Indeed, it almost has to be
for a bipolar transistor to work. Otherwise they'd all end up emerging from
the base rather than the collector. :-)

Problem is that the little devils all look the same to me, so it is hard to
tell. ;-

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html

On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 14:09:04 +0100, Jim Lesurf
wrote:

In article , Don Pearce
wrote:
On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:03:51 +0100, "Keith G"
wrote:



(If I'm wrong and SS amps do make valves 'retro' - how long before
*digital* amps make analogue SS amps retro?)

There ain't no such thing. To amplify digitally is a mathematical
operation - nothing to do with hardware.

I assume Keith is referring to the 'digital' amps as described in audio
mags. i.e. ones which use switching systems like PWM, Class-T, etc, etc.

Well, certainly PWM amps aren't digital (signal represented in
numerical form), they are even fully analogue, despite being sampled.

I also wonder how these will fare. At present I'd have serious doubts about
them. But in a few years they may well displace 'conventional' SS designs
as they are potentially more efficient, and can avoid various snags of
'analogue' amp designs. At present, though, they are still trying to
overcome their own problems. But it would not surprise me if they displaced
Class AB, etc, in the coming decade or so.


There is a mainstream application of PWM (class D) already - the
subwoofer, and for that it works exceptionally well.



Quite so, unlike modern valve amps. Look inside one of those and you
will find the identical circuits that were designed in the fifties. As I
said, the technology hasn't moved - just the cosmetics.

It may depend which amps you open. :-) I have seen various circuits for
some amps that are less familiar. e.g. being some of the hybrid or
'computer monitored and tweaked' approaches. One of these was reviewed in
Stereophile a while ago, but I've forgotten the name.


But mostly, where you find a valve amp - however pretty - it is still
a very old configuration in there.


As are people who are buying valve amps and LPs - old and new, in both
cases....

But for vinyl it is fewer, and declining. I have vinyl and a record
player. I won't be buying new of either when they give up. I will
replace my bike if need be, though.

I can't tell if vinyl is still declining or not. Lack of reliable data. It
is clear it faded down in the decade or so after CDA. But it may have
reached a level where it wanders up and down year by year. Lack of data.

There is always going to be a residual interest. But entropy is slowly
going to do for even that.

d

--
Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com