With the advent of the internet, cable bandwidth, and development of internet based audio boards, and portals, such as this august audience, I subsequently was diagnosed with a rather aggressive form of high-rotation audiophilia nervosa. All it did in retrospect was to provide a disjointed, highly revealing sound that didnt' appeal to me at all. With further tweaking, I discovered the more I removed, the better the result. Symptoms of AN decreased with increased simplification. The best sound I have found in Thermionia is the straight wire with gain, the SET, and in SS, the only design I like is the T amp, and only when battery powered.
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When I was a kid, and all my friends with part time jobs had their shiny Technics and Pioneer integrated amplifiers, cassette decks, AR8 speakers and so on, for those of you who remember the era, I had to make do using the 6550 based tube amplifier in my Hammond C3 organ, and the only decent speakers I had access to unfortunately, were a pair of Altec Voice of the Theaters, in the garage, which were used for a practice PA, by my progressive rock band. Not having the cash for a cassette deck, I had to resort to using a Thorens turntable provided me by a neighbor, who was sympathetic to my plight. By the time I was 17, I realized what I did NOT want to listen to. Those shiny integrateds sounded like shit overall, and I didnt at the time understand why, and didnt investigate it much other than conclude the good stuff had tubes. I actually managed to forget this important lesson for a time.
