[woodsyi]

Music is like pancakes (flat).  All amps produce distortion.  Tube amps produce even order distortion (sweet), SS amps produce odd order distortion (sour).  So, tubes are like syrup, and SS is like vinegar.  Granted, SS amps have a lot less total distortion that tube amps, but what would you rather have on your pancakes - a lot of syrup, or a little vinegar?

 

SS is not all vinegar but I like your analogy.  I tell you I prefer all natural maple syrup over gooey Aunt Jemima. 

[martyo]

Music is like pancakes (flat).  All amps produce distortion.  Tube amps produce even order distortion (sweet), SS amps produce odd order distortion (sour).  So, tubes are like syrup, and SS is like vinegar.  Granted, SS amps have a lot less total distortion that tube amps, but what would you rather have on your pancakes - a lot of syrup, or a little vinegar?

 

SS is not all vinegar but I like your analogy.  I tell you I prefer all natural maple syrup over gooey Aunt Jemima. 

Make mine NATURAL maple syrup, that's where the Hybrid's come in. 

[PMAT]

Wayner made me feel fuzzy. I looked at my thumb and thought about sucking it. Nathanm made me feel stoned. Pancakes??? Conclusion:tubes make you feel stoned, hungry and bloomed.

[woodsyi]

Wayner made me feel fuzzy. I looked at my thumb and thought about sucking it. Nathanm made me feel stoned. Pancakes??? Conclusion:tubes make you feel stoned, hungry and bloomed.

Make mine all NATURAL weed. 

[martyo]

Wayner made me feel fuzzy. I looked at my thumb and thought about sucking it. Nathanm made me feel stoned. Pancakes??? Conclusion:tubes make you feel stoned, hungry and bloomed.

Make mine all NATURAL weed. 

Hmmmmmm...........and hemp speaker cables...............What's going on at AVA aa     

[Dan Kolton]

Tyson,
You haven't tried the solid state Insight, have you?  I don't hear any vinegar at all.

[Wayner]

The Insight is extremely tube like, without the tubes! I agree with Dan on this one, but remember, this is solid state done right. Maybe we'll have to coin a new term,

"Transistor bloom"   aa


Oh, yea, What happens to the "hemp" speaker cables when they get shorter and shorter? Less resistance...............man!

[Freo-1]

The best way to describe "tube bloom" is a slightly enhanced "presence region" , slightly rolled off treble, and a warm "elevated" midbass region, all of which many ears find to be more pleasant sounding.  This is the signature sound many of older "boomers" grew up with.

If you compare the tube system sound to, oh say a BOSE system, you will come away enjoying the sound of a old Scott 299 with decent speakers, and want to run the other direction when the Best Buy salesman turns up the sound on the BOSE. 

Suddenly, you will hear/recognize the distortion of the BOSE, the hard, ringing, metallic sound, and wonder how they manage to sell anything at all.   aa

[kyrill]

ah well define "quality", "objectivity"  and finally if you dare define "love"
so many ppl, so many meanings

My reason to completely REJECT that the positive kind of Tube bloom has anything to do with distortion is the fact that tubes sound much more lifelike to me than the best SS.( Krell, RW 30.2)  the more i am familiar how a sound sounds in life ( like the human voice) the more i recognise this life like property in a good tube amp.
 I would say life sounds ( not coming from a stereo setup) by definition are their own medium to reach the listener this medium is distortionless: zero distortion compared to the electronic medium of my setup who can never have zero distortion So how can I belief that exactly the more distortion of  tube amps is the very reason for sounding more faithful to distortionless life sound? More faithful i mean not making it sweeter, just more lifelike, less electronic. The RW30.2 not a real SS has this too, it sounds remarkably less electronic than SS but with ( slightly) less transparency than a good tube amp.
 

So the extra distortion of tubes which is a fact, is not a  fact in my experience of better natural lifelike sounds via tubes. It is something different in tubes that gives this wonderful bloom ( the positive kind of bloom!)

[kpetersonchicago]

I'm curious - we know or can measure that tubes have certain-order harmonics in their characterstics. We say that they introduce these as distortion; to some, tube distortion is pleasurable.

But, if the live event is - by definition - distortion-less, it must truly present more than our own limited constraint of recording or defining a range of 20-20 for the frequencies of most electronic playback or recording equipment [human hearing range, etc acknowledged]. Tube bloom vs SS 'fidelity' may truly be a case where errors of omission are in fact just as or more egregious than commission.

Some equipment today reproduces frequencies beyond the sacred 20-20. It may be that tube higher-order distortion introduces micro variations that present us with better approximations of real waveform complexity in the midrange - even though most only approach 'definition' in the higher and lower frequencies. why does a $1k 'table usually embarrass a $5k CDP? The devil is in the details.

Does anyone know of studies about the psychoacoustics of sounds or reproduction outside the 'normal' hearing range, and it's affect on perceived sound?

[TjMV3]

Thanks for all the replies and opinions!!  I enjoyed reading everyone's perspective.

[TjMV3]

ah well define "quality", "objectivity"  and finally if you dare define "love"
so many ppl, so many meanings

I would say life sounds ( not coming from a stereo setup) by definition are their own medium to reach the listener this medium is distortionless: zero distortion compared to the electronic medium of my setup who can never have zero distortion So how can I belief that exactly the more distortion of  tube amps is the very reason for sounding more faithful to distortionless life sound?

But aren't all sounds captured by our ears and relayed to our brains,  distorted (at least a wee-bit)?  I mean,  everything we hear arrives through reflections,  echo,  resonance and vibrations,  right?

[sueata1]

Hey kpetersonchicago,,,,

Or how about a 1K AVA DAC embarrassing a 1K-100K Turntable??

happy
listening  aa

Mel

[sueata1]

Or how about a 1K AVA DAC embarrassing a 1K-100K Turntable??

happy
listening  aa

Mel

[sueata1]

Or how about a 1K AVA DAC embarrassing a 1K-100K Turntable??

happy
listening  aa

Mel

[sueata1]

Or how about a 1K AVA DAC embarrassing a 1K-100K Turntable??

happy
listening  aa

Mel

ps,,,,sorry about the repeats one of these days i'll learn how to use this quote bit

[carusoracer]

"The best way to describe "tube bloom" is a slightly enhanced "presence region" , slightly rolled off treble, and a warm "elevated" midbass region, all of which many ears find to be more pleasant sounding."

Well said

I find my tastes reverting back from the latest SS to Hybrid and pure Tube designs. Still trying to match that sound of my Fathers system way back when.
I'll never forget the time I had my old Pioneer Integrated with 65/ch with the ol' Blue peak meters running hard through my Dads new Polk Audio Big 5's and Thoren's TT. He hated the fact that I switched out his Amp But he did comment that he loved the sound. That was until he brought back out his Heathkit Tube amp and blew that theory all to heck

[kyrill]

"The best way to describe "tube bloom" is a slightly enhanced "presence region" , slightly rolled off treble, and a warm "elevated" midbass region, all of which many ears find to be more pleasant sounding."

Still i wonder
this is solely a frequency description
I have a  digital DEQX and can play with any  frequency  with gradual or steep slopes ( parametric equalizer) within in 1/10th dB. This "magic of tube is still there if i do the opposite of above suggestion

[Airheads4Ever]

Does anyone know of studies about the psychoacoustics of sounds or reproduction outside the 'normal' hearing range, and it's affect on perceived sound?

There was a rec.audio report on the 1991 AES Convention where the following was stated:

Five Japanese researchers presented the results of a well-controlled
psychoacoustic study that showed that listeners perceive differences
between music signals in which 20 kHz to 100 kHz (yes!) frequency
content is present or missing.  The difference can be quantified as
changes in the listeners' EEGs, but are missed in traditional A/B
testing because the brain patterns "hang on" for a long time and
confuse the results when "A" and "B" alternate quickly.  This is
a hell of a fine piece of research, and the authors received many
appreciative comments from the assembled audience.

So according to this, the "inaudible" frequencies influence your brain somehow. The rec.audio post generated a lot of comments that you can read at the archive link above.

Mark - Berkeley

[stereocilia]

I've always understood "bloom" to mean increased gain for low-level inputs at low frequencies.  A frequency- dependent wide-dynamic-range compression, in other words.  I have no idea if this is what tubes actually do, by the way.

Okay, I discovered after searching I was a little off.  "The blooming effect" is a measurement artifact which happens when an amplifier with compression shows a different response from a pure-tone sweep input vs. a composite signal input.

I have no idea if this is the same thing as "tube bloom," but at least it's a description apart from just describing what it sounds like.  Maybe somebody from The Lab can back me up -- or, throw me off a cliff, I am open to being wrong, too.