valve amp?

[Joost Schuttelaar]

On Oct 19, 2011, at 23:39 , Tom Adam wrote:

> Guys,
> 
> A friend of mine asked me a music related question I know nothing about. 
> 
> He listens to blues and jazz all the time. Some time ago he was at a place where they were playing a CD he sais he knows by heart. He said that he was very impressed with the sound. It souned way better than at his place.  
> Now he is convinced that the only reason for the superb sound is that it was played through a valve amp. Room accoustics and such, he claims, is not the issue. 
> I now have a friend, apparently with lots of money, who's looking for a valve amp.
> So does anybody have any pointers to this kind of stuff?
> 
> I got him at least convinced to first try out the amp (and probably speakers) before buying ;-)


In my opinion the sound difference between (simply decent) amps is really small. The acoustics of the room, listener position and speaker quality have orders of magnitude more effect.

My setup at home: Onkyo A-9555 amp with Kef iQ9 speakers, and a couch where the conical tweeter/woofers are at ear height :) happy with that.

Did some A/B testing at the audio shop between multiple amps between 200€ and 1500€ and could not hear the difference. Difference between speakers was incredibly big. Note, even the difference between valve and decent transistor-based amps was practically undetectable to me.

-- 

Joost Schuttelaar
The Hague, NL