Tubes vs. Solid-State

Tôi đã nghe cả tubes và solid-stage nhưng chưa thấy sự khác biệt lắm, nhờ Anh Audiọpile nói rõ sự khác biệt khi nghe và cảm nhận 2 loại ampli này, ví dụ tubes nên dùng với loại loa gì thì mới thấy sự khác biệt hẳn và thấm hơn so với solid-stage, và ngược lại đối với solid-stage, đọc báo thì thấy nói rất hay về tubes rồi nhưng nghe lại chưa thấy thế, và vai trò của dây dẫn, chân loa , kệ máy trong dàn máy ..Sự thay đổi, nâng cấp này có thấy hiệu quả rõ rệt không hay chỉ là cảm nhận vậy thôi, tôi thấy rằng để nghe solid-stage thì ai cũng có khả năng, còn tubes chắc rằng còn nhiều người cũng mới bắt đầu nghe, Để có thể thấy cái hay của tubes thì bắt đầu như thế nào, loại tubes gì, loa gì, thể loại nhạc gì, nhạc nước ngoài hay nhạc Việt nam... nhờ anh Audiophile nói rõ .
Mới đọc bài này nhưng tiếng Anh còn kém, nhờ các bạn dịch sang tiếng Việt giúp.
Tubes vs. Solid-State
In the first of a new series of colloquia, Wayne Garcia, Robert Harley, Harry Pearson, Paul Seydor, and Jonathan Valin weigh in on the merits of tube versus solid-state gear.
Robert Harley: Let?Ts start with Harry. How do you see the history of tubes and solid-state?
Harry Pearson: As you guys all know, when we started the magazine, it was almost an all-transistor world. There were plenty of things wrong with transistors, but people were having a hard time identifying what they were because there were new kinds of distortions?"the situation was much the same with digital when we started out. Along comes Bill Johnson [of Audio Research] with a tube unit, and in certain ways it sounded much better than any solid-state. Then a peculiar thing happened. The Levinson JC2 popped in and did some things that the Audio Research didn?Tt. As soon as Audio Research and other tube designers improved, solid-state got better, and as solid-state got better, tubes got better still. So there?Ts been a constant tug-of-war from the beginning. And the essential mystery, the big question behind the question, is why do they still sound different? Because they do. At first everybody said, well, tube circuits were different from solid-state, but that proved not to be so. There was a very popular argument, one that I sort of endorsed, about the characteristic of electron flow through tubes versus the flow of electrons through a transistor. It seems that, right now, in terms of retrieving information, particularly in the midrange, either ambient cues or harmonic information or just a sense of, let?Ts say, authentic space, a well-designed tube unit is still ahead. So the conflict exists to this day. The difference, I suppose, between then and now is that really well-designed solid-state sounds quite musical indeed, but if you want to go that extra step, if you want to try to break across the border into something approaching realism, I still think you have to use tubes.

Robert: Jon, do you want to weigh in on the question?

Jonathan Valin: Well, Harry just said it so succinctly. All of this electronic stuff, tubes or transistors, sounds ersatz to a certain extent?"to a large extent. But it seems to me that in the midband, as Harry said, tubes are more realistic. They have more bloom; they have more light; they have more body. They do that thing I call ?oaction,? which solid-state doesn?Tt. Solid-state is like a slide show. A really sharp, well-focused slide show. Tubes are more like looking at statues in a statue garden.

Harry: Or maybe like a movie, Jon.

Jon: Yes?continuousness! But they also have more body, more dimensionality. Another good way to analogize this is to talk about the duration of a note. Solid-state, it seems to me, is extremely good with the front half of the note, the transient. In fact, it?Ts superior to tubes in that regard. But on the back half, the steady-state tone and decay, tubes just eat solid-state alive.

Harry: I think Jonathan has a real point about the attack wave and the decay. See, solid-state is better on the attack, but, you know what? I think that the sense of body of an instrument is contained in the way it decays.

Jon: And much harmonic information, too. What makes solid-state sort of cool is that what is contained in the transient is information about where things are in space, how many of them there are, the way rhythms are being articulated?that?Ts all transient-related, and solid-state is extremely detailed in that sense. But it?Ts not detailed in the other sense. It doesn?Tt have the low-level dynamic and harmonic information, or the air.

Wayne Garcia: Which of course adds up to that sense of three-dimensionality.

Jon: It seems to me it adds up to music, really, although I know I?Tm going to get an argument on that.

Harry: Well, not from me. Your analogy at the beginning is an excellent one?"the difference between a slide show and a movie. It?Ts the difference between individual images and continuousness. And what you almost never get out of a solid-state piece of equipment is a sense of continuousness, whereas, with any good tube unit you?Tll get some degree of it. And I really believe that somehow that?Ts connected with the characteristics of the decay wave, although what do I know? I don?Tt know if anybody has ever really seriously looked into it.

Wayne: Well, Robert, you?Tre the most technical one here.

Robert: Electrons flow through a solid piece of semiconductor material in a transistor?"there?Ts a physical piece of matter. In a vacuum tube, the electrons travel through a vacuum. You have this boiling cloud of electrons above the cathode that get pulled towards the plate, and there?Ts nothing to impede them. I don?Tt know that this explains the difference in what we hear.

Jon: But by analogy the flow is more continuous.

Harry: What Robert just said is absolutely logical. Electrons have to travel through matter, and they?Tre doing electronic jumping, whereas when you have a stream of electrons going through a vacuum, that is entirely continuous. It?Ts like a waterfall, as opposed to water going through a sieve.

Wayne: Paul, you haven?Tt spoken up.

Paul Seydor: I was just hoping I might be able to slide by this one. The reality is I agree with almost everything that everybody has been saying, except that I rather steadfastly do not jump on the value judgment aspect of it, and I certainly give far greater emphasis to tonal neutrality and, from a certain point of view, literal accuracy to the signal. I don?Tt buy a lot of the arguments about electron flow because physiologically I?Tm told we actually hear digitally. I mean, that is to say the nerves go on and off, so that makes that argument a bit strange. Plus why do you hear those things from tubes when you?Tre listening to recordings that have been made with transistors and digital technology? I think the differences between tubes and solid-state are due to certain kinds of colorations and frequency-response operations, but whatever you want to call them, we?Tre all granting that there is a subtle but unmistakable sense of roundedness and soli***y that tubes have, and here I want to be very careful about this, that not all solid-state components have, or not all solid-state components have to the same degree. Where I part company, I think quite strongly, with Harry is in the assertion that no solid-state component can do any of this at all. I?Tve got four in the house that do it. I believe, as in most things with audio, we?Tre talking about continuums here; we?Tre not talking about black and white but shades of gray, degrees. No solid-state amplifier I?Tve ever heard, all other things being equal, can give you that sense of roundedness, that sense of what I call soli***y that a tube unit can. But, I have heard several solid-state units that do sound rounded. Interestingly enough, parenthetically, they are often solid-state units that do something specifically different from what the overall field of solid-state is doing. For example, the McIntoshes with their absolute eschewing of direct-coupling and autoformers, the Quad amplifier, which again, you know, is not a DC-to-light kind of circuit. Most of the time, I have noticed superiority from transistor units that don?Tt do, particularly with the output networks, what most of the transistor stuff does, and to that degree, to my ears, they are far closer to that one characteristic that I?Tm talking about with tubes, which, for me at least, is the thing that continues to provide the greatest pleasure from tubes. That said, often when I feel that I want to hear something that is literally accurate, I don?Tt think that I?Tm getting it from tubes, and I would respectfully disagree with Jon and Harry both about this business of the trailing ends of transients, because most of the time, I feel that I hear the ambience linger longer with good solid-state amplifiers than I do with tube amplifiers. I feel that there is simply a lower noise and distortion floor that is operating there. I can enjoy both for the various things that they do well, without feeling that I have to come down with a position on this.

Robert: I?Tve measured dozens of tubed and solid-state amplifiers, and if you look at the harmonic distortion spectra of them, tubes produce primarily second and third harmonic components, but transistor distortion is more upper order, such as seventh and ninth harmonic.

Jon: So, unlike most musical instruments, they emphasize odd-order upper harmonics. I think another thing that makes them sound ?otransistory? is the way they clip.

Robert: Absolutely. Tubes soft clip, much in the way magnetic tape saturates. In fact, tape saturation, which introduces second and third harmonic distortion, can be used as a studio effect to fatten up a sound.

Harry: And, you know, when tubes do that, they give you the sense of having much more power. A 60-watt solid-state and a 60-watt tube amp never sound equivalent in terms of power.

Jon: Getting back to something that Paul said earlier about sources nowadays being digital and therefore there should be no advantage to reproducing them via analog?"

Paul: I didn?Tt say ?ono advantage,? Jon. I?Tm merely saying that at some point in the signal we must freely grant that, if your argument is to hold up, there are things incapable of being continuous; so if you get something that is incapable of being continuous, how can you get that continuousness back? That?Ts something I don?Tt understand.

Jon: Well, I was going to make an analogy to video. Everything we watch on video nowadays, every DVD, is digital. That being the case, you would think that the most film-like experience would be through a digital display device, but that isn?Tt true. The most film-like picture comes via good old cathode-ray tubes, the analog solution. I don?Tt know whether something?Ts being added that we?Tre calling continuousness?"but there is more information there.

Paul: Well, but it?Ts all, it?Ts all a magic trick, because film doesn?Tt run continuously; it?Ts on and off, too.

Jon: It is, indeed, but you?Tre confusing the means with the end?"the way things come to ours senses and are processed by the ear/eye/brain with how the brain presents the processing of these different flows of information to consciousness. It seems to me that the density of information that?Ts being presented to you for perception is critical, and it also seems to me in some way or another you?Tre getting a greater density of certain kinds of information via analog, no matter what analog device you?Tre talking about, be it a visual device or an audio device, and, and if we?Tre making this analogy, this sort of dangerous analogy, to life, to the experience of hearing music or watching film, then it seems to me that whatever the density, the amount, the pace at which information comes to you, it ?oseems? more continuous with analog devices.

Paul: Well, actually, Jon, I might turn that argument about density of information on its head. I might just turn around and say?"I mean, if you want a really heretical notion, which I personally happen to believe on no other basis than just empiricism?"I would suggest that probably what tubes do is give you, in fact, less information, and what you get is a far more pleasing and even more realistic-sounding, what to your ears is a more realistic-sounding phenomenon, than you do from transistors. This in fact makes far more sense to me as an explanation as to why tubes sound the way they do.

Jon: So you?Tre, you?Tre saying that tubes smear detail? That they have lower densities of information?

Paul: Why don?Tt we just say smooth? I mean, you can use a more neutral word like ?osmooth,? which is in fact what I think is going on.

Jon: Well, it?Ts an interesting argument, and I?Tve actually never heard that one made before?"

Harry: You may never hear it again.

Jon: [Chuckles] But I?Tm not so sure I believe it.

Harry: I don?Tt.

Jon: On the basis of?"how did you say it??"just on the basis of empirical observation, I hear more stuff with tubes, at least in the midband. I?Tm not going to argue about the bass or extension in the treble.

Harry: Well, I think what?Ts possible here, Jonathan, is that he?Ts saying that tubes may give less information in terms of the entire frequency range, whereas in the midrange I think there is no doubt that tubes retrieve more harmonic information.

Jon: And not only that, but low-level dynamic information.

Harry: Oh, Lord, yes!

Jon: It?Ts almost as if there?Ts a resolution floor with transistors, and they just don?Tt go below it.

Robert: Like 16-bit digital.

Jon: Exactly! They just stop at a certain point, where tubes, for whatever reason, don?Tt. They keep going, and recover what psychoacousticians call ?ojitter??"very, very, very low-level detail about the way something is being played or sung. Little dynamics and harmonics. It seems to me that tubes do that unbelievably well.

Harry: Well, they do do it unbelievably well. I do think Paul has a case he wants to argue?"information across a wide bandwidth. But I think that, to me, that argument does not hold?"or rather, it holds, but it doesn?Tt hold if we concede that the central components of the music are mostly contained in the middle and upper-middle frequencies.

Jon: If you?Tre talking broadband, then, yes, I think transistors do have more information overall.

Harry: And I think you would say that is more accurate overall.

Jon: I would.

Harry: It?Ts just not more truthful.

Paul: I think you?Tre confusing reality with realism. Realism is an esthetic effect and there are a lot of things that can give the effect of realism without in fact being particularly realistic or even accurate. In fact, I would argue that accuracy as such in any number of contexts would militate against a realistic effect. One of the things that I think tube units can do is sometimes seem more realistic precisely because of their distortions and their limitations. There are certain things they don?Tt do that basically sound better. For example, none of us hears sibilance live. If I were standing an inch from your face and talking very angrily and assertively, you would not hear sibilance the way you hear it on recordings. Tubes rarely reproduce sibilance on recordings, and to that extent they actually sound more pleasingly natural than a transistor. That said, I think that the transistor is doing a more truthful job because that?Ts what the microphones are picking up, like it or not.

Jon: Well, yes and no. It seems to be that with transistors you?Tre also getting some added odd-order harmonic distortion that?Ts exaggerating sibilance. Nor would I grant that tubes ?orarely? reproduce sibilance on discs.

Paul: Well, I don?Tt know then how you can resolve this argument, because one of the things I feel I?Tm hearing is descriptions getting infused with value judgments, and I simply prefer not to wander into those kinds of things as such, which is why I don?Tt want to say intrinsically tubes are more musical. That kind of stuff makes me nervous.

Jon: [Laughs] Well, that?Ts what this magazine is about, Paul, making judgments on the basis of experience.

Harry: Listen. If you have listened to as many tube and solid-state units as Jonathan and I and Robert Harley have, it is incredible to say that we cannot reach general conclusions based on our observations. Given all the different systems, different speakers, different sources we?Tve heard, to say that our conclusions are merely value judgments, when they are really observational conclusions, just isn?Tt fair or right. I mean, we?Tre supposed to be talking about differences. Okay, take the Edge [solid-state] amp. What do I hear? I hear an incredible cleanness, a top-to-bottom harmonic accuracy that?Tll beat any kind of tube unit I know. Do I hear in the midband the harmonic and dynamic subtleties of the best tubes? Never. I think they subtract harmonic information and I don?Tt think it?Ts a matter of my hearing excessive second harmonics. Unless music itself has excessive harmonics, in which case we get into Paul?Ts argument about realism and reality and accuracy.
paul: All I can say is, I can cite equally experienced and knowledgeable people who would make the argument on the basis of measurements, perhaps more validly, that tubes add more pleasing harmonic information. That?Ts why I begin to feel like Northrop Frye here, talking about critics. Ultimately, when you make value judgments, that?Ts a kind of two-way mirror. It?Ts a two-way glass. You are talking as much about yourself if not more so than you are about the object.

Wayne: But there?Ts another factor here, too, and that is not only how something sounds but how that sound affects us emotionally. And I don?Tt see how you can separate those.

Harry: Wayne, just a second, can I just jump because when you talk about how something affects you emotionally, now there, to me, is a value judgment. And there to me is the true subjectivity of what we do. For Paul to say that I have made a value judgment because I hear more information out of tubes in the range I define is to me absurd. I would be perfectly happy if transistors beat the hell out of tubes because I don?Tt have an emotional investment in either technology.

Paul: I would be actually much more interested in trying to figure out, for example, why, on some kind of hard-edge, scientific basis, amplifiers sound the way they do. It would be really interesting, to me at least, to try to throw some things up, to get some good, rigorous measurement, and see if there?Ts some technical basis to this.
Tubes vs. Solid-State
Robert: I can tell you right now, Paul, that nothing in the conventional set of measurements in use today would give you a clue as to why the amplifier sounded like that.

Paul: Then let?Ts be pioneers, Robert.

Jon: We already are. I doubt very much whether any test would explain what critical listening explains.

Robert: It?Ts been my experience, after running the Stereophile test laboratory for eight years, that it does not. I?Td rather have ten minutes in the listening room with an amplifier than ten hours in a sophisticated test lab. You can tell some things from measurements, such as how an amplifier with a high output impedance will react with a loudspeaker load to change the frequency response, but that tells you nothing about how the amplifier communicates the music. You get that from listening.

Tubes vs. Solid-State

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