In reply to:
The issue is not whether you are entitled to your opinion, Bren. I think the point is that you are offensive in your expression of your opinions. You are intolerant of the opinions of others and insulting to those who hold opinions which differ from your own.
Now, I have to admit, you've turned down your "thumb in the eye" knob in the past while (credit where credit is due!) so I don't mind rationally discussing topics now. I'm intolerant - I'll admit that. My tolerance level has been eroded away by all the sales & marketing hype, I'm 31 now and the youngest of all my friends so for about the past 18 years I've been involved (either as a consumer for home audio or a tech for pro/event audio) with this stuff, and heard every lame sales pitch and fell for most of them and I've been shown the error of my ways directly and indirectly. I don't know about offensive, though... take this post... I suggested that the poster should ask you... and that most of us SS guys would suggest a SS amp listened to from the inside of a barrel. Was more poking fun at the usual debate than anything. As for insulting... everyone here has been guilty of that sin at some point, I was recently called the worst expletive in the English language.
In reply to:
Folks who tell you, from their own experience, that tube amps can provide a wonderful musical experience, in some cases superior to the best solid states amps, are neither charlatans nor ignorant.
I'm not sure charlatan or ignorant are the right terms... the problem comes when the tube guys admit they hear a difference (we all do, not too many won't concede there is a "tube" sound) but it breaks down when the tube guys are asked to call a spade a spade... the tube sound comes from a form of distortion. Yes, it's distortion, but that's not an insult. The same way caviar is really sturgeon eggs and escargot is really snails.
So no one can say your tube stuff doesn't sound good to you. If you like the sound they make, giv'er. But the other problem comes from the elitist attitude that most tube guys exhibit - the novelty of having something besides the off-the-shelf amplification everyone else has, a way to be different and unique from the million Denon 2805 owners. And they're "tweakable"... hell, tube amps tweak
themselves.. over time, over heat, over barometric pressure, phases of the moon... from the SS guys' point of view, many (especially the younger ones) haven't heard tube amplification. I have, and I did a fair bit of dabbling with swapping tubes (Mr. Pang, my junior/senior high school electronics teacher - you were an evil man... "here's a box of tubes and a folder full of xeroxed copies of information about most of what's in there") but I've always had a preference for clean solid state stuff for final reproduction. It's more accurate, and isn't as fussy as tube amplification (don't like the sound, wait ten minutes!) and that's important to me. If someone prefers the tube sound, more power to them... if someone likes the sound a minnow hooked up in serial with their speakers makes, more power to them.
But it's a game for "fiddlers"... like owning a Panhead Harley-Davidson, it's got that cool factor but the Evolution engines just work.
Bren R.
