valve amp?

[The Dong]

On 20/10/2011 06:01, Peter Korsten wrote:
> A friend of mine had these super-sophisticated speakers, that are more
> or less the size of a small door (in width, height and particularly
> thickness) and which are supposedly the bee's knees. He was into jazz,
> or something similarly horrid, and whilst you could indeed hear a lot of
> detail in those speakers, they also had absolutely no bass presence
> worth mentioning.

Electrostatic speakers. And yes, once you've heard a pair, you can't say 
they are crap. But they are HUGE, WAF WARNING ;)
Tell your friend to buy a sub or two ;)

> In my opinion, this whole audiophile business is a load of tosh, but on
> the other hand, I've trouble telling the difference between an
> uncompressed audio file and an 128 bit MP3.

I dunno.
It's like dentistry.
Either you like a nice gob full of teeth, or never look in the mirror or 
anyone else's unnaturally healthy teeth.
If you do use a dentist to keep a nice smile, expect it to be expensive.
When you eventually get toothache, there's little choice but to do 
something about it.

Me? I do DIY dentistry, with the one filling lasting years now ;)
Even that filling was a recent dentist job that fell apart months after 
being done.
In fact, ever since I stopped going to the dentist, I have no problems!
Whereas before, there was always problems soon after visiting and 
getting the 'routine clean and scrape'. Of course, I combined that with 
stopping using Fluoride toothpaste and reducing raw sugar intake as much 
as possible.

There is something about transistor, mosfet and even class D amps that I 
find grating compared to a simple valve amp. Maybe it's all in my mind, 
maybe not. The appeal of a simple valve amp to me is that it is easy to 
fix or modify, and not one of those things that breaks down and becomes 
uneconomical or impossible to repair within a short time, so is thrown 
away for the 'next best replacement I can afford in the pile of rubbish 
going to landfill'.