The other day I had the privilege of listening to a friends system The Tannoy Glenaires are properly located in a moderately treated room, the amps are Quicksilver 75w? valve mono blocks 2 x valve pre amps were auditioned and a number of sources. The owner played music that he listens to. Female vocals “hung in the air” (Apparently a well recorded CD) and his jazz and other music sounded beautiful. I had taken a sample of CDs from my own collection and it was with these that the surprises came. First up was the Audio Fidelity “Machine Head” – this sounded ghastly, in short order it was replaced with another A F - Bad Co, same result, tried the AF Carly Simon “No Secrets”, same result. It was like a thick covering of blankets were thrown over the speakers what music that was produced was very muffled. (I know these discs well and they are part of a number I use to reference audio components and systems.) By now I was rather embarrassed and handed over a copy of the poorly mastered, harsh and nasty Red Bullet Golden Earing “Moontan”. (This disc was present to better understand how this system would cope with a low quality recording)This disc sounded good perhaps better than I have ever heard it played before. As a counterpoint we then spun a few more of the owners discs and they sounded fine. I am a loss to understand what was happening. A week earlier we had spun the same discs into a similar system Tannoy Canterburys, fed by my SS Mac, controlled by an Eastern Electric Mini Mac which was fed a digital signal from the eye of a Bada HD 26. On this system the AF discs sounded ok and the Red Bullet rubbish. My guess is there are the music has been passed through too many valves between the artists playing and us listening. Your thoughts
Or, more likely, the valve amplifier/preamp combination has a rolled off top end. It's not necessarily hand in hand with valves, though.
Some rigs are better suited at playing certain types of music than others, I hear it all the time. It's not a matter of too many valves, rather the sum of the parts. You mentioned a similar system, but in reality they were very different.
that's interesting, you should have tried a few mp3's just for kicks did you try adjusting the eq at all? I have a couple records that sound awful but they come to life with a little adjustment ( Genesis: Nursery Cryme is one ) he's obviously tailored his system for the type of music he prefers, may not translate as well for Rock and Roll
Tubes can rock, tubes can suck, they are not the end all be all of audio, regardless of all the big name opinions out there and the $$$.
Ears and perception generally vary a lot from day to day, hour to hour. Well mine seem to. It's probably not actually sensory, probably the 'processing engine' upstairs that filters out rubbish, corrects for rooms/ambience/noise and helps us create an illusion of auditory life in general. I respect the skill of mastering engineers who have the consistancy to get through such things, or aren't affected to the extent I am. Suspect I'm not alone though, suspect most people are affected to an extent they may not even be aware of?
Overall I like having tubes in my system, but I went from 2 tubes to 22. Things would be a little easier if modern-production tubes actually sounded good with most modern tube equipment. Searching for vintage tubes I like that are at least affordable is a bit frustrating. Strange little tone controls these things are.
I think part of this is knowing the music well. And expectations. I have found we all overrepresent the subtle differences, and even more so for material we know extremely well.
I would suggest the music sounded like "rubbish" to you because you're used to listening to it on a big solid state system. You know the cd's well that you were playing, but only on a solid state system. Of course they're going to sound different on a tube system. Different strokes... I prefer tubes over ss in general, but there are times when I'll rotate in one of my Sansui receivers (6 or 8 Deluxe) and love the sound that they produce. There is no magic solution.
The system is fine on other music. The owner has spent many years assembling his system and the components blend together well. There was no top end roll off, all the other discs sounded fine. I had a couple of Blue Note discs and they sounded pretty much as normal. All the AF discs present sounded similar – heavily muffled. Turning up the gain just made the muffled sound louder. I have played the same AF discs on other valve front ends and they sound fine/ok. This was not a subtle change the AF CDs were awful on this rig. We tried a few tracks on each disc and they were all the same. Curious as to why and what could have been happening in this system. It was only the AF CDs that fell over all the others were normal. (I had 8 or so different CDs present to audition the system with) I have previously heard the same pre and another pair of the same amps feeding a pair of mid size Harbeths and that system sounded good. Happy to acknowledge the AF discs are never the crispest of masterings but they are universally enjoyable to listen to.
As I said, if those AF discs sound muffled, there is a top end roll off in his system. This will make the average bright disc sound better.
The are NOT tone controls. By definition if changing a tube results in a change in frequency response you have bad design, a bad tube, or are using the wrong type.
"AF" Audio Fidelity' Muffled in not always a rolled top end. They could just have way less general clarity. Now I an a nut for clarity and high frequencies.. And seriously HF and clarity are two different animals. Just usually one does not notice the difference in average systems.
Sometimes well mastered music is so because the hot moments are lowered to a normal level. If this pushes the valve system too far, it can flatten out/distort and sound poor. That's my experience at least.
I will put this another way I have played those AF discs on perhaps 30 or more systems. They are amongst the best masterings of those titles that I am able to purchase, On this system only the AF discs failed to play properly – we would have sampled perhaps 15 different discs over the course of the evening The others all played as expected. The sound of the AF discs is difficult to attribute to “high end roll off” as the other dozen of so discs sounded normal. The AF discs did not appear to roll off the range seemed ok – they were just very muddy/woolly/foggy. There was just a mushy indistinct unmusical sound. Again this was not a subtle difference For comparison if I switch my Eastern Electric Mini Mac from valve to SS the change is relatively subtle – on this system the AF discs were a factor of perhaps 40 times more subdued than all the other discs. Why – any ideas?
I wasn't trying to describe tubes as "tone controls' in the usual knob-twiddling, response-altering sense, but not all tubes of the same make sound the same. I don"t think this is big news around here.
No easy answer for this unless we know the system well, and I mean right down to the topology of the amplification stages, and more about the system. Just how I see it, and I don't think that the number of valves has any bearing in it.
Hard rock, rock per se ime sounds better on a transistor amp. Tube amp compliments acoustic music, jazz, folk, chamber, classic pop 'Pepper, Bookends ..... Well my system does anyway.
It depends on the amp in question I think, as you can build a tube amp that is pretty tight and fast, but also you can build one that is lush and slow......and every thing in between and variation of. Same with SS IMO. It's all generalizations otherwise.
