What is the Single Ended Triode thing?
- Thread starter Coda II
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awkwardbydesign
Officially Awesome
The best reproduction I have ever heard was at a show in Milan several years ago. The system used Trios with (I think) 4 of their bass horns, and halfway though the piece I was listening to I realised it was Massive Attack, and an album I had at home. Astonishing realism, hanging in the air, and totally unrecognisable compared to what I could hear at home. Bloody hi-fi shows!
topoxforddoc
pfm Member
Not enough for me to notice. It will be of course, but that’s true of any interaction with a room containing resonating musical instruments or furniture.
naimnut
Deep in the Mines of Soul
Been a while since I was on here and geez there have been a lot of responses on this thread. I agree with some of them.
Generalizations are always prone to be wrong, at least some of the time. (yes I know that was a generalization! so yeah, it's wrong too, some of the time.)
IMHO the SET thing doesn't have to be super expensive or complicated. And the criticisms I've read on this thread about harmonic distortions as you turn them up is not necessarily true. Yeah, it can be true. So, don't turn 'em up so loud that they distort.
How loud do you usually listen? When I go to the symphony, the orchestral peaks at my sitting position (typically first balcony) are at 95dB. When I go hear live, amplified music, the same thing is true. 95dB is (IMHO) very loud. I typically listen in the near or mid-field well below 80dB. So my Altec A7 Magnificents are never close to one watt. My 45 monoblocks put out about 1.6 watts. They sound superb. Of course, this is in my room with my listening preferences.
My primary comment (guess it has taken me long enough to get around to making it) is that people should TRY STUFF FOR THEMSELVES IN THEIR OWN LISTENING ROOM. On ebay you can find hand built 45 amplifiers built by Alan Eaton for less that $2000. IMHO they are the biggest bargain in hi-fi. Extremely robust circuit. High quality build. Low parts count. Yes they're made to work for US voltages and power plugs. What the heck - contact him and see if he can build one that will work in the UK.
All the comments and opinions on the world wide web quickly become irrelevant when you have your own direct personal experience.
Generalizations are always prone to be wrong, at least some of the time. (yes I know that was a generalization! so yeah, it's wrong too, some of the time.)
IMHO the SET thing doesn't have to be super expensive or complicated. And the criticisms I've read on this thread about harmonic distortions as you turn them up is not necessarily true. Yeah, it can be true. So, don't turn 'em up so loud that they distort.
How loud do you usually listen? When I go to the symphony, the orchestral peaks at my sitting position (typically first balcony) are at 95dB. When I go hear live, amplified music, the same thing is true. 95dB is (IMHO) very loud. I typically listen in the near or mid-field well below 80dB. So my Altec A7 Magnificents are never close to one watt. My 45 monoblocks put out about 1.6 watts. They sound superb. Of course, this is in my room with my listening preferences.
My primary comment (guess it has taken me long enough to get around to making it) is that people should TRY STUFF FOR THEMSELVES IN THEIR OWN LISTENING ROOM. On ebay you can find hand built 45 amplifiers built by Alan Eaton for less that $2000. IMHO they are the biggest bargain in hi-fi. Extremely robust circuit. High quality build. Low parts count. Yes they're made to work for US voltages and power plugs. What the heck - contact him and see if he can build one that will work in the UK.
All the comments and opinions on the world wide web quickly become irrelevant when you have your own direct personal experience.
tuga
Legal Alien
SET amplifiers have two downsides:
• high output impedance
• high levels of harmonic and intermodulation distortion
For this reason, and because they're generally low-powered, SETs should be used with high sensitivity speakers (>97dB) to avoid high harmonic and intermodulation distortion and preferably band-passed in active configurations to avoid the effects of impedance interaction which will mess up the frequency response.
Those downsides are well know and documented in Stereophile's techical assessment of the Prima Luna DiaLogue Seven (linked below) and many other SET amplifiers they've measured, but as JA indicates in his closing comments some people actually enjoy what is mainly signal-correlated euphonic distortions and even some of the changes to the frequency response:
When I measure amplifiers like PrimaLuna's DiaLogue Seven, my eyebrows always rise because the things they do wrong must be balanced against the possible sonic befits of the other things they do. Certainly, the designer's decision to use very high output impedances will drastically affect sound quality for reasons that are well understood. The DiaLogue Seven's measured performance in triode mode was notably worse than in ultralinear mode, yet Art Dudley ultimately preferred triode mode. A puzzle.
https://www.stereophile.com/content/primaluna-dialogue-seven-power-amplifier-measurements
Fourlegs
Trade: WAVE High Fidelity digital cables
Some of the distortion (and lack of bass frequency response) is caused by cheap and inadequate output transformers in some SET amps. I fell for the supposed charms of a pair of much lauded 845 SET power amps and knew that it wasn’t going to end well when I picked up the boxes that had been delivered by the courier and they were not really all that heavy. Those amplifiers had a thin and brittle sound and soon went back to be replaced by a different make that had sufficient iron. The difference was like chalk and cheese.
awkwardbydesign
Officially Awesome
However, if you use Tannoy Monitor Gold speakers, as I do, the low damping factor would actually be a benefit. And DHT SE preamps do not have to have high levels of distortion. Pick what suits.
irb
pfm Member
Just a small correction - the Primaluna amplifier you link to isn't actually an SET - it's push-pull. But it does have high output impedance, as SETs tend to.
gez
pfm Member
What I find most interesting about those measurements, which many would say are truly horrendous. Is that I've never seen anybody actually say they can hear obvious and clear distortion of SET amps. Yet the best they seem to achieve is around the 0.1 to 0.5% range. So if such distortion levels at worst lead to a perception of a "euphonic" sound, where does that leave claims by people that they can hear distortion artifacts when they're down at below the -100dB level I wonder (i.e. 0.001%)
The LP12 record deck is euphonic. Especially in the pre Cirkus form. I've listened to it against a reel to reel (studio, not home) recording, they both sound great, the R2R is more accurate but the LP12 has the magic. Is it hifi? Who cares? We all kid ourselves that it's about the music, the original recording, all that, but the recordings are tweaked at the studio.
If you only ever listen to acoustic music, then sure, to for accurate reproduction of acoustic instruments. But most of us listen to amplified music, guitars fed through valve amps turned up until they distort like hell. Hifi? Forget it. Sounds good? You bet.
I have been very lucky over the last 40 years. I have had through my workshop pretty much every amplifier known to man. I know because I used to service and repair for a few UK dealers and distributors. So I have had every type and make of solid state amplifiers as well as every type of valve/tube amplifier through my workshop. Not only that but I started my own brand (TRON) and have successfully made and sold amplifiers (Phono stages, Line stages, Preamplifiers, Power amplifiers [Valve SET, Valve Push-Pull and Solid-state] and headphone amps and D to A converters) for over 27 years. I have also exhibited in shows and with other top high end manufacturers (Avantgarde Acoustic, Cessaro) in the UK and in Germany (Frankfurt and Munich shows). In all these years my own system, one I constructed as a result of what I have found to be the best and nearest to the sound of live music is all single ended. Using signal ended triodes right the way through the whole system. People talk a lot about distortion but in many cases this has no bearing on what we hear. I have measured a push pull amplifier which produces less distortion than a SET amplifier. However when you listen to the two amplifiers you can hear the push pull is no where near as good or as natural as the SET amplifier. Not forgetting I only use high efficiency speakers in my system so at least 100dB and above. The push-pull amplifier is good, but it just doesn't sound real by comparison. There is a compression plus a hardness to the sound, mostly due to the amount of feedback needed in the PP design. The SET sounds great but also the music sounds real and as if the singer or musician is in the room with you. By comparison the music through a push pull amplifier just sounds like a recording. Really there needs to be a new set of meaning full measurements that reflect how equipment sounds because the current set is not sufficient to make a meaning full assessment of true audio fidelity. The human ear is still king here.
People reporting a euphonic sound from a SET amplifier is just BS. A good set amplifier will be cleaner and more detailed than any other type of amplifier assuming it has been designed and built correctly. Most people who report this euphonic sound are mostly using a low power SET amplifier with a conventional pair of speakers so this comment can just be ignored. That and those using a cheap SET amplifier with miniscule transformers, or poorly designed and constructed like most of what I have come across, can also be taken with a pinch of salt.
People reporting a euphonic sound from a SET amplifier is just BS. A good set amplifier will be cleaner and more detailed than any other type of amplifier assuming it has been designed and built correctly. Most people who report this euphonic sound are mostly using a low power SET amplifier with a conventional pair of speakers so this comment can just be ignored. That and those using a cheap SET amplifier with miniscule transformers, or poorly designed and constructed like most of what I have come across, can also be taken with a pinch of salt.
tuga
Legal Alien
This is one of those characterisations which, together 'musical' or 'realism', I find absolutely meaningless.
Another that's very much en vogue is 'as the artist intended'...
That's because you clearly have not heard a good system that reproduces music that sounds like the real thing. I am fortunate in that I had the means and the know how to create such a system. As I have said quite a few times in previous threads over the years, one of my daughters is a professional musician. She sings, plays the piano and guitar and surrounds herself with good musicians, so my house has always been full of live music, almost every day. I have had several of them here playing together in my listening studio and I have recorded them using my Studer 810, and played it back through my system and the recorded sound is extremely close to the live event. So close in fact it is hard to believe it is possible to get that close in sound reproduction. I also go to a lot of live music events including a lot of acoustic performances, almost one a week, so I know exactly what the sound of real live instruments and voices are and that is what I use as my reference. To me, there is no other reference.
Not really. Friend of mine was running 989s with a pair of SE 18wpc Ming Da 845s with no issues at all. He also had them driving the replacement 2905s for a while before a change to Line Magnetic 508i integrated.
Barrymagrec
pfm Member
I`m not sure of the relative efficiency of the 988 against an ESL57 but the 57 works very well with a 10 watt Linsley Hood and the Quad II was only 12 watts.
This is my findings too, I've been building various types of amplifiers and loudspeakers for close to 30 years, in my opinion nothing comes close to what a good Set amp does when coupled with good efficient loudspeakers.
My own opinion is that most commercial set amps have poorly designed power supplies, which in turn can affect reproduction from what's possible ..
My view is that most amplifiers actually cancel part of the signal, regardless of that some have low distortion (sticking plaster?) credentials, where as a good Set amp has a head start in respect of retaining the finer parts of the signal.
tuga
Legal Alien
I have also listened to live classical music regularly since as long as I can remember, lived surrounded by amateur musicians including my youngest, sing in amateur choirs and I have heard a few really good systems. These have been quasi-fullrange systems with low distortion and not necessarily horns driven by Class A amplification, and they sounded good because of the loudness and dynamic capabilities, the very wide bandwidth and no obvious unpleasant distortions. Besides, different microphone techniques produce different more or less realistic results.
tuga
Legal Alien
Should we listen to a recording of Elina Garanca or Adele through a piano's resonating soundboard or a cello's body?
awkwardbydesign
Officially Awesome
That is your deficiency, not the terms'.