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When you're listening on a $4 set of ear buds - not much difference and the extra storage is great.
Back in the 50's, Western Electric built 300B amplifiers with a THD of 0.2% or less, which is well over an order of magnitude better than the vast majority of current designs and comparable with solidstate. Some are starting to figure out how to do this once again.
.....which brings us full circle. And the original poster has left the building. WEEZ
As for speakers, I agree the technology is a bit stagnant. It's surprising that after so many years no one has come up with a really convincing replacement for conventional drivers. Then again, we're still using internal combustion engines...
This thread started with the premise that hi-fi is dying due to the proliferation of low-fi formats. The idea was that since many people are deliberately choosing to listen to music with degraded fidelity, they apparently don't care about sound quality and therefore the hi-fi world is coming to an end. (Personally I think that's clearly a silly idea - if more people listen to more music there's no way that's bad for hifi - but back on topic.)
If you simply want low distortion and high power and good reliability, transistors are far superior. It seems to me that the whole point of tubes (these days) is as a kind of tone control - to add some coloration to the sound (and to look pretty). Don't get me wrong - I like that (I've owned tube pres in the past, and will probably add a new one to my system soon). But figuring out how to lower their distortion might be the wrong way to go...As for speakers, I agree the technology is a bit stagnant. It's surprising that after so many years no one has come up with a really convincing replacement for conventional drivers. Then again, we're still using internal combustion engines...
A slight misinterpretation IMO. The key stat that caught my eye was that, to repeat, one third of the music released last year was not even released on CD, only in lo-res, lo-bit-rate, downloadable formats. A third is a significant proportion!!! If it's two thirds five years from now- what then? My premise is that if there is little or no good quality source material...
PMC, ATC and Meridian have sold actives for many years (at a price) but not to the mainstream. However, Linkwitz Orion and Beolab 5 are high end active designs with some other innovations too - and I feel they point the way to future technical avenues which could trickle down. Also Blue Sky and other brands are selling actives into small studios and even as PC speakers now, so it's a pincer attack on regular hi-fi.
Transistors are superior only on the measurements that favor transistors. Scott Frankland once measured different output topologies under dynamic conditions and came to conclusions that were completely divergent from what the typical static measurements described. I seem to remember that the best behaved was an SE 300B. Now since I don't listen to sine waves, I'm much more interested in dynamic behavior. And tubes appear to be better there. As far as reliability, spend a couple of years working in an audio service center and then get back to me - tube equipment can take more abuse than solid state, and it's easier to fix, too.Perhaps the "coloration" that tubes impart is more "accurate" and transistors strip that away. Is that possible? If so, then transistors are actually the more colored devices. Funny thing, most freq. response measurements taken by Sphile don't show any differences in linearity between topologies for low level devices, yet they somehow sound different. So which really is the colored device?
According to a statistic cited by Steve Jobs at today's Apple media event, a third of all prerecorded music sold in the last year wasn't even released in CD format, but only in lo-res formats used to conserve download bandwidth and hard drive space. A third of prerecorded music.
But if you don't follow the technical stuff, just ask yourself why just about every piece of high-quality electronics on the planet (other than audiophile gear), including amplifiers, uses transistors. Or why they're regarded as one of the greatest technological advances of the 20th century (there's a reason for that!). The only serious applications I know of where tubes are still used are military (because tubes are resistant to the EMP from a nuclear attack) and space applications (because of cosmic rays).
But if you don't follow the technical stuff, just ask yourself why just about every piece of high-quality electronics on the planet (other than audiophile gear), including amplifiers, uses transistors. Or why they're regarded as one of the greatest technological advances of the 20th century (there's a reason for that!). The only serious applications I know of where tubes are still used are military (because tubes are resistant to the EMP from a nuclear attack) and space applications (because of cosmic rays). So unless you're planning on taking your stereo into orbit and/or want it for company during a nuclear winter, that's a good case of the exception that proves the rule.But who cares? I want to listen to music, not the most linear possible amplifier, and if I like tube sound or tube looks (and I do) I don't see any problem.
Transistor designs were responsible for high global feedback, the distortion wars, and a couple of other ills.
It was people responsible for all of that.
Guns don't kill people, People kill people.
