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Electronically speaking, only stupid hi-fi has tubes. LCD TV with tubes ? Yes, says Mr. Fremer, a real color!
It was speaker technology last week, this week we go after amplifiers. What is your favorite amplifier technology and why?
Bi-amping with lower power, warmish tubes on top and SS on bass is the mode I seem to keep returning to. Easy level control of the more sensitive of the pair equals transparent tone control, and I have found, for my speakers at least, that the the same tube amp high output impedance that Mr. Atkinson frets so much about renders a tonal balance I truly love.
Solid-state or tubed, but single-ended, high-power. Basically, my ideal amp would be solid-state, single-ended, high voltage, and transformer-coupled. Low output, high-bandwidth. Yes, it can be done. And there are perfectly sound reasons for all aspects of my "ideal amp" to be valid. Signal is single-ended, no need to push pull or to mirror signal—at all. As well, the ear works via micro changes in signal, all correlated to one another and that is the kind of distortion seen in all those other amplifier types, specifically balanced signal and balanced designs. So they create a "hyper real" landscape that is based on overemphasizing and distorting the micro components, and thus render themselves "unreal" in the process. Single-ended amps get that micro part right, even if they have other flaws in the barely relevant objective technical measurement sense.
The current offerings of both tubes and solid-state has certainly closed the gaps of what one or the other used to have/lack to the point that you could live with one or the other with little, if any, regrets. I still lean toward the tube side of things, though.