Nice Unit!!!

Interesting... I saw that Butler amp in the Adire booth, the A100.
(Adire and Final Sound were sharing a booth... Adire does all the low-end for Final Sound in fact)

Bobby... have you heard any really high-end tube amps?

To be honest, I haven't ever heard any inexpensive ones...
My first set was an $18,000-each pair of 50w monoblocks in the high-end demo room upstairs at a shop in Rochester, NY...

And I tried to listen to as much as I could in Alexis Park, at CES 2004... I was hunting down the unique technologies (like ESL's, planars, and horns), and the ultra-high-end...
And I'll tell you, I'd bet that 90% of the systems that I heard were powered by tube amps... whether the manufacturer was demo'ing flagship speakers, or interconnects, or high-end source units like $40,000 turntables...
No doubt they wouldn't compromise on making a good impression, particularly at a show like CES.

I have found all the tube amps that I've listened to (again.. bearing in mind that the cheapest tubes I've heard so far probably were those $18,000 monoblocks ) did have a very "live" sound to them, natural... I don't know if "warm" would be what I'd say, because they didn't mask or distort the detail of the music at all... it's not "distortion" in that respect. Very, very nice, high end sound.
I'd love a set for my house, believe me.

If you have a chance, Bobby... I'm wondering what you (or your well-connected dad and his friends.. they'd be interesting to ask) think about chip-amps (or "gainclones" as they call them on the DIYaudio.com forum, as they are clones of the 47 studio's 'gaincard' amp)?
Supposed to rival the sound quality of many of the high-end big-boys, with minimal parts content, and shortest possible electrical path...
I'm going to build some for my house (due to the sheer inexpense of such a simple project), but I'm curious if anyone you know has ever had experience with them?

 

I was looking at their website... and the CSS SX10" (the one with XBL^2)
looks strangely (i.e., exactly) like the Final Sound unit....


edit: whoops... maybe it's a diff version of the driver... but still probably has XBL in it... and the box is the same... amp - not sure

 

hehehe.... I spend one weekend a month at places like DLC designs, Tom Nouisanes house or Dave Clarks House...... Ive heard some pretty nice tube systems. However, almost my entire audio gorup have 100% given up on tubes(Dave and tom included). They still own the old ones they bought years and years ago, but they are all pretty sure tubes are, at the very least, slightly inferrior.



I dont know anything about gainclones. I could ask...



Hey chris.... lets not hijack the thread. We can PM

 

Good idea...
Or I could start another thread... Hmm...
Not really a car audio topic though...
(although, believe me... I envision a few experiments! )

 

Good info sandt..... If your ever in detroit, Id LOVE to get a listen!!

 

Ooh.. I want the "click to read" link!
Or is that the whole article?

 

Here ya' go, Seth. Another fascinating little article on tube amps... Tube or Boob?

 

btw that deck wont be out till like 2 more months. And i Can match or beat carmedia1's price

 

Interesting quote to ponder, from that article! :blink:

"When operated in a linear (or unclipped) mode, Murphy explained, tube amps sound the same as their solid-state counterparts, provided that their frequency response and group delay characteristics are well matched and their distortion levels are sufficiently low. The audible difference between tube and solid-state amps emerges only when they are clipped."

And the accompanying diagram goes along:

 

Geo I dont know if i could call that picture true. Unless that is a class A design then no its not true. Becasue of the Wave Form. I dont know to much about this but i do know what i learned in college. Class A is very ineffencent like 15% or so. And it is the only one with a true full wave. If you look towards a B class or even a C class they become more effencent due to cutting the wave. They will actually cut Signal off the top and the bottom. Doing this and keeping it Linear most people cant tell. Some people can though. Class D is more efficent than all the above. However it cuts most of the wave out. Hence it can be heard at higher freq. Which is why it took a while for class D to come out full range. Leaving these gaps leaves room for a truely rigid distortion. Hence again hearing the differnce. I can sure as hell see it on the o-scope. Class AB is an awesome design uses the a mix between A and B. It has the effeceny of the B with more of the "more True" wave, but still not quite a A signal.


Scott Stoner

 

what that picture is showing, is how a tube amp will clip the signal.
A transistor amp will simply lop it, whacking the top and bottom off, resulting in a squarer wave.
The tube amp, they are saying, will resist that square-shape top and bottom, retaining a curve-shape top and bottom, even when clipped.

And that picture is also showing how this "technology" that this guy developed to simulate how tube amps operate works... it lops/rounds the sine wave one half at a time... first the top, then the bottom. B)