That doesn't mean tubes are in any way superior though.

Your absolutely right. I think it's going to come down to personal preference. I was just saying that if you look at the "high end" audiophile setup, they're often tube based. If you look at the top manufacturers such as McIntosh or Conrad Johnson, they're top end models are tube based.

While I believe Conrad Johnson actually believes tubes are superior, I've always gotten the impression that McIntosh had some tube gear in their line up just to appeal to the audiophile, a market that they havent gone after in the same way as companies like Conrad Johnson. McIntosh always has gone for rock solid engineering and quality with no nods to the more tweako elements of the high end. They are kind of like Bose in that they march to their own drummer and don't follow the trends and fads in A/V... PLEASE don't think I'm saying that Bose and McIntosh are the same in the quality of gear they make - they both just do their own thing. A possible bad review in Stereophile will not affect McIntosh's engineering choices, unlike many of the tweako high end companies who will jump on whatever bandwagon the high end mags are touting as this months newest path to sonic nirvana.

Sorry I misunderstood what you were saying. Those old tube theater amps were beautiful pieces of gear - although they were capable of only 50 to 75 watts, they drove such efficient and well engineered speakers, like the Altec Voice of The Theater's, that they filled auditoriums capable of seating 2000 people to ear splitting levels. Typically the amps were located right at each speaker so they didn't have to drive the horns over long lengths of wire.

Well I have the choice to look on eBay do some research on several brands and models for spare parts? Then buy one and give it listening chance for myself?

If your interested in used equipment, ebay is a good place to find McIntosh and Conrad Johnson Amps, you can also try Audiogon as they may have a better selection however.

While this started out as a list...there's discussion about tubes. I'll make up for it by listing my current "theater" after I talk/rant about tubes.

Tubes are highly inefficient ways of creating low to medium power. On the flipside, they are the only way we can reliably generate high amounts of RF. Transistors are great, to a point. You can't get 500kW of RF out of transistors. Maybe with a bank of MOSFETS...and I mean a BUNCH of MOSFETS, running all in parallel. Generating lots of RF with solid-state is beyond the point of diminishing return. So any high-power AM, FM, or DTV transmitter out there is using a really huge tube. One tube, tons of juice, loads of reliability. But I realize something; you guys aren't talking about generating 500kW at a couple hundred MHz, you're talking about a couple hundred watts of audio frequency. I just wanted to throw that in there.

But I happen to do know quite a bit about tubes. Prior to the development of the transistor, of course that's pretty much all we had. And tube engineering didn't just sharply stop because of the transistor. Not only did it take time for people to want to invest in new stuff, but there was still lots of tube stuff out there being used; not counting the military and industrial applications. It's also wrong to say they quit making audio tubes; many of them have been in continious production. There's also a few audio tubes that were discontinued in the 1940's that are now being made again due to demand in the audiophile market.

They're still a dirty, inefficient, magical piece of work. About 99% of the energy a tube consumes is simply to generate heat. Heat is required for thermionic emission, which is the basic principle of how tubes work in the first place. Also, from the flow of electrons bouncing around..and an AC heated filament...they can be a little noisy. But does a transistor's quiet nature and mere sipping of current compared to a tube make it superior? It's subjective. Let's just skip the whole thing about how it took a while for the design of transistor amps to mature and price of transistors to go down before adoption became common. Tubes were still around in the 60's, heck, a lot of TV's in the 70's still used tubes in portions of circuits they hadn't come up with solid-state replacements for or for price reasons. This isn't counting the CRT...which actually is just a specialized vacuum tube.

For the majority of people, solid state fits their sound amplification needs. Lots of power is good because they're no longer designing speakers that have high efficiency ratings...the whole nature has changed ever since people started to migrate to satellite speakers. Very rarely do I see full-size speakers in a setup, usually those people care a little more about audio...even if it is the most commercialized stuff they were marketed in to buying. A lot of time, it's satellites and a subwoofer...and their system puts out something like 200 watts a channel. If you need 200 watts a channel, and you have say...six or seven channels you have to drive...solid state is going to be the way to go. It's a sterile, clean, amplification medium. Does one need that much power? I don't know...serious audio guys like to bi-amp...Mangepan Planar speakers are Tri-amped. For some of the rigs I've seen, you can't go tube. You need serious amounts of power just to drive your speakers...and you need to make sure you've got headroom to get to what you need and not clip. Solid state does not clip well, your output just goes so far and then levels off. It sounds horrible.

Tubes, on the other hand, are an entirely different ballgame. I could go on for probably hours on how each one is subtly different; and how the very nature of their operations can be attributed to this. Tubes have different "tones"...or "textures". They also clip very well. This is why guitar players love their tubes. You can push a tube way in to distortion, and you won't get the harsh clipping sound you get with solid state; you wind up with that dirty, grungy guitar sound. Originally, distortion in an amp was seen as a bad thing; but it turned out to be a really great way to give your electric a signature sound. Sure, they have solid-state driven amps that can do it; a lot of them do it with digital processing.

As far as music reproduction goes; I honestly have to say it's kind of a mystery. Tubes usually have harmonic distortion in them...and a lot of times the harder you pushed a tube amp, the more harmonics you'd get. The brain likes even order harmonics; they add a "sweet, pleasing" tone to everything. From a design perspective, harmonics are bad. They're not part of the original source, and therefore should not be in the amplified reproduction. But man...can they sound sweet. Sold state amps are generally engineered to have as little harmonic distortion (THD) as possible. Tubes, as well, could be engineered to have low THD even at high power, but I think the average rating was as low as .1% where as most good solid states are .005% (or possibly lower these days). However, when you're driving your tube amp at close to it's max wattage; you're going to have more more THD than pushing a solid-state amp at close to it's max wattage. Even most of the datasheets for audio power tubes list high THD at a certain power rating. That's one of the reasons you hear tube guys say that solid-state sounds "sterile". I'm on that boat, it does sound kind of sterile.

But still, saying one is better than the other is subjective. Each one does something better than the other. Solid state excels at being efficient and clean; tubes excel at making lots of heat and clipping softly. Which one sounds better for music reproduction; it depends on you. Maybe you'll hear a difference, maybe you won't; maybe you heard a good system, maybe you heard something really cheap or badly engineered. Tons of variables...but the biggest is in how your brain perceives the sound. Let's not even get in to speakers.

I own tubes, I love my tubes. I think they sound outstanding and am on that "solid state doesn't come close" boat. I also know how to work on them and have built them. I'd much rather work on a tube amp than a solid state amp; although you can slap a solid-state amp together quickly.


Now I'll tell you that my home "theater" isn't really a theater because I never cared about 5.1 or anything. I can watch a movie on a really good 2.0 setup...and sometimes a quasi 4.0 setup. But I have a pile of gear sitting on a big rack in the front of my room. I'll list model numbers as best I can.


46" Dynex 1080p 60hz LCD
Key Digital iSync HD 1080p scaler
LG BD630 Blu-Ray Player
Motorola QIP STB
Pioneer CLD-D505 LD player
Sony NS-775 DVD/CD/SACD player
Yamaha PX-3 linear tracking turntable
Akai GX-365D Reel-to-reel tape deck
Onkyo Integra TA-207 3-head cassette (Dolby B/C/HX Pro)
dbx dbx-II Noise Reduction box (tape and disc)
Sansui SE-8 graphic equalizer
Denon PMA-770 Pre/Main amplifier (100 watts/channel)
Motorola HS-619 monoblock "integrated" tube amps (a pair, obviously. old console pulls. modified to run directly off line-level)
DCM TimeFrame TF400 (absolutely outstanding speakers)

This stuff isn't in the rack, but could be:

Polk Audio Monitor5Jr (back of room, not really used. one is connected to a clock radio)
Technics SL-Q200 Turntable
Sony TC-357 Reel-to-reel tape deck
Sanyo Betacord 4400 (Sanyo's last top-loading Beta unit)
Toshiba Beta VCR V-M30
Toshiba Beta VCR V-M41

For the Dolby Stereo CP65 I got it Donna Summer “Endless Summer” groovy moody Moog played by Giorgio Moroder on lyrics by Donna Summer “I feel Love” thou its a bit short at 00:03:47 I’m sure there is a longer version of the retro classic 70’s music/song.

Staying true to my posts and form: Biggest bang, digital, compact, on the go. If you can't fit it into the carry on, it's too big.

Labtop - HP Probook 4530s - HDMI output, 4 - usb 2.0 hubs, headphone audio output jack.
Software - VLC Media Player
Speakers - Bowers & Wilkins MM-1's (fantastic sound for close personal use, Stereo PCM or LPCM), if your like me on your labtop/pc all the time, these are your speakers.
Two external hard drives (3.0 compliant for home use and transfer)(carry my entire music video collection (over 10,000 vids, mostly in PCM, High quality MPEG 2, also all movies and LPCM music collection) - total of 6 TB
That's it, hook up to any plasma or LCD tv on the go with HDMI input, at home use a Samsung 51" Plasma.

Keep it simple, plenty of quality sound and video on the go, look forward to upgrades in video card's for faster refresh rates.


Elvis

Nice review and equipment list. If you have some time why not post some pictures, sounds like you have a pretty nice setup there!

Soon very soon...to be replaced is the crappy Lucasfilm THX Kenwood KRF-X9050D has serious dry solder joints, that I can not be asked to re-solder, so its due to be removed soon as it only serves as 4-zone surround amp. I have to really hit the amp hard even punched the front in several times as the relays keep tripping out on the amps for left/right sidewall only. Also the display goes dim or off due to dry soldering joint that, I re-solder a few years ago and no doubt has new dry joint? Worthless crap Lucasfilm consumer cheap THX amp! Home THX is rubbish!

Once I have removed it I will remove the top panel and re-solder all possible bad joints then hit as hard as I can with myh hand! I wonder does THX do that at their BS THX lab? I have to keep the sodden thing switched ON and switch OFF everything else that is how bad and crappy THX is! THX = Total Horrible XCrap! I will never buy anything that is THX consumer based again! The pro gear seems fine but its just rubber stamp badge at the end of the day.

I’m going to get some slim-line 1U and 2U frame Behringer amps as follows

Behringer Europower EPQ304...for the HF LCR horns
Behringer Europower EPQ450...for LF LCR and surround channels
(Maybe) Behringer Europower EPQ900...for LFE.1 and sub bass extension subs with LFE.1 amp bridge or maybe buy the EPQ2000 for same use.

All of the above are affordably cheap and come without the silly Lucasfilm THX badge.

I completely agree with you that the standard "THX" certification is completely meaningless. They slap that logo onto the cheapest of the cheap. I can say however that if you get something with the "THX Ultra2" certification it will be descent at minimum. I have yet to encounter a "THX Ultra2" certified piece that was garbage, so if you are looking for THX certifcation, don't go below "THX Ultra2" and you should be ok. But as for standard "THX", that is completely meaningless and usually garbage quality.

Its not bad. The scaled made a huge difference in picture quality for both laser discs and my cable box.

As far as pictures, I have two of my media rack, there's the old and new. The old is really old, after I got the room finished, I hadn't gotten tubes or an HDTV, and it was before my ADAT exploded. http://dewdu.de/mediarack.jpg

That TV is a 1989 RCA XL100. Its one of the few XL models that had a remote, but only had rf input. It only continued to work because I'd replaced all the electron gun drive transistors and rebuilt the chassis a bit. The tuner was garbage, apparently lots of cold/bad joints inside the thing. I ran it without the back because occasionally I had to reach in and flex the tuner so it'd work. I was like, five years past needing a new TV.

I bought my dynex on December second, I believe. I had to dismantle the shelves. This was taken right afterwards. I hadn't gotten the lg player and was using a broken Samsung for streaming. I also ha dent gi otten laser discs, he scaled, the sacd player, nor pulled my akai out of storage, and the dbx unit was also put away. But I did have the tubes. http://dewdu.de/mediarack-new.jpg

The other thing is that everything is rarely on the shelves anymore. My pioneer is sitting on a crate in the middle of the floor because I dint have a remote to the scaler, so I have to keep it close, but my HDMI cables are 15 ft long. The tubes are also sitting on the floor in the corner, pulled out when they're to be hooked up.

I also didn't list the Kenwood shelf system that's a daily user. Its an early 90s unit that I got from an ex, after fixing the CD player, it became a daily user because it has remote. Its not horrible, but its not anything to write home about either, it does drive the dcm speakers well. That's not in that photo either.

The betas need new belts, the akai is on the bench for a total overhaul. But, if I ever get everything arranged, I'll gladly take pics.

I also have pictures of just the tube amps. http://dewdu.de/moto-amps . You're quite astute if you noticed my cable box changed in the tube pictures, I swapped the old one out for an HD box because I knew I was going to be getting a TV around Christmas time.

Well, I got my new tube and installed it. Everything seems to be working excellent now! Here is what the the new tube looks like:

I don't think I want to ever again touch another (home consumer based THX equipment product) with 100 foot barge pole.

I would stay away from Kenwood in general. They don't make good equipment anyway. I would not hesitate from getting a high end Pioneer Elite or Onkyo Receiver which happens to be "THX Ultra2" certified however.

i felt lucky selling my Pioneer Elite VSX-55Txi receiver.
bought it new, only had the bose acoustimas 10 speakers hooked up.

decided that i was going to get large speakers and do a correct 5.1, started to get some good speakers, bought a klipsch KSW-10 for my apartment,
hooked it up and the sub was not working on my receiver.
and i was hooking this up right, the woofer worked fine but not with the Pioneer.

so i sold it, was very happy getting some money back and picked up a nice carver CM-1090 2 channel for the movies.
if i ever feel the need to get more gear for 5.1 i can always later on.

How is it that it didn't work "with the pioneer." Subs have a simple RCA input so it shouldn't matter what specific source it's connected to as long as it's a standard RCA interconnect signal.

no output or test output when i had it on, i called pioneer and they told me that something was wrong.

Ooooooh. I spy some ECC82/12AU7 tubes.

If it were me, I'd find some 5963 tubes to slap in there. The 5963 is a tube *very* similar to the 12AU7. Same pinout, same construction, same basic electrical properties. But they were designed for instrument/computer/industrial use; so they last a lot longer and have much less noise. They also sound like a dream. Of course, these can run like, $15 per tube.I also go on the assumption if one tube is at end-of-life, the other can't be far behind. I don't know what the single tube cost from where you ordered it from; matched pairs of 12AU7's can be had for not a whole lot of money. Of course you also get in to the world of NOS and rare tubes, like the 5814, which is another 12AU7 similar tube. The 12AU7 has an advantage of having been in constant production since it's introduction. But, like any tube, there's a lot of losers and a lot of winners back there.

I'm sure Conrad-Johnson is using good tubes....but kind of like trying different laserdisc players for best picture; different vintages and brands of tubes have different sounds.

Good eye. The actual new tube recommended from Conrad Johnson is a philips 6189 tube to replace the 12AU7 that was defective. So far I am very impressed. I completely agree with you about trying different tube configurations as the different tubes add their own unique "color" to the sound. I'll stick with these awhile and keep my eye out for other options and combinations.