I'd add that transistor amplifiers can be a right so-and-so to fix if they get blown up, so if you're going in to do any work, go slow and sure. I agree with the other stuff too (as long as we're not going to get into the sticky stuff over whether belief can make the listening experience better). But if all you wanted to do was to listen to music in a domestic environment then you could buy a valve amp in the early 60's which was good enough that you, as the listener, would never hear a better sounding solid-state one. The valve amps cost more to make (transformers), ran hotter, could be a bit prone to long-term drift and were individually power-limited which was a problem if your job was providing the PA for stadium rock. If by 'quite good' you mean good enough that no human on earth could distinguish them audibly from perfect at a distance of more than 500mm from the speakers (if you were crouched closer than that in the quietest of rooms then you might just be able to make out some amp noise) then I'd agree. If you wanted a good amplifier, you were forced to use valves.
At the same time, there was a full spectrum of valve amps available ranging all the way from quite good to total crap. Built like a rat's nest, but try telling the audio molecules that.Ī long time ago, some truly awful transistorised amplifiers were made and there weren't any particularly good ones around.
All fakery, I'm afraid, but it separated a lot of people from a lot of money, and a lot of people still believe it.ĭavid, you've kinda encompassed 'all' that I think about or have to say about the evolution of hifi in the past 60 years. Making hifi cables look like they could tow a ship or jump-start a main battle tank. Funnily enough, the bits inside that did the actual connecting were still the same size. The connectors got trivially thick gold flashing and swelled up in size to the point where they were in such fat housings that many amplifiers had sockets too close to take them. To make them look special, the wire got thickened, sorrounded by woven braiding etc. Prices skyrocketed for bits of wire with esoteric names. The folklore grew of them having amazing properties to change sound. Some years ago people started going on about 'interconnects' bits of cable to go to speakers and bits of cable with a phono plug at each end. It takes guts to believe your own ears, when what they're telling you goes against the pundits. You've broken out of the folklore bubble. So what you've discovered is that solid state amplifiers aren't the spawn of the devil, and that there are some quite good ones out there. The characteristics of transistors tend to need this more than valves did, but valve designers couldn't have it even if they wanted it, with the exception of some very peculiar and OTT designs. Without transformer phase shift at the high frequency end, you can employ large amounts of feedback.
This extends their low frequency response as far as you want to go, even down to DC if you really wanted. Transistor amplifiers can be made without output transformers and also without DC blocking capacitors on their outputs. Guitarists prefer them because they use this as a sound effect in their playing. Some people have a perfectly legitimate liking for the modest amount of low-order distortion they add, and if driven into their limits they limit fairly smoothly and don't sound too terrible. There is still a place for valve amplifiers. Further progress has been made in going beyond what the good valve amps could do in a number of respects. What was wrong with early transistor amplifiers has been studied, understood, and ways of avoiding it have been developed. But some people believe it and they keep repeating it to each other to the point which, for them, it is truth. This is not only a ridiculously sweeping statement, it is also long outdated. and now it survives in people who believe that any valve amplifier has to be better than any transistor one. If you wanted a good amplifier, you were forced to use valves.įrom this, folklore arose and evolved. A long time ago, some truly awful transistorised amplifiers were made and there weren't any particularly good ones around.