Phoenix Gold Phorum

ok i see the talk about hte tube amp brandon posted.

i got how a regualr amp (ms, xenon ) works pretty good, but how does a tube amp work?

most tube amps are hybrid....only the preamp stage has the tubes w/ in them.

like this tru
http://ampguts.realmofexcursion.com/TRU ... nside1.jpg

a true tube amp runs class A from what I understand.
http://ampguts.realmofexcursion.com/TRU_C-7.2AT/


form what else I understand the tube amps have a colored sound, from distortion created by the tubes. Could be wrong I wouldnt listen to me 100% besides the amps I posted.

Ill leave it to 1moreamp and brett to do the real explaining.

I'll leave it Brett also

Real tube amps (I.E. all tubes ) I don't believe I have ever seen for the car, but i have lived a sheltered life. I do have a X-Butler /PPI engineer as a friend though.

All tubes would be real power hungary on the 12 system. And the power systems would be loaded fairly heavy to drive a tube output stage. Plus a 100 watt output stage would be large, and hot, also tube output stages require a load matching output transformer. ( no direct drive here)
Most hybrid's just use a single stage of tube gain to induce the sonics of the tube to the amps lower level signal, generally in the frontend buffer stage just after the input IC's.
Tubes can be fragile in the car environment. Afterall they are glass. And without shielding they do pick up other signals easily. I beleve BH referred to it as Microphonics. They also can sing when being driven. By sign I mean you can actually here the plates making noise under load.

Tubes were the real beginning of amplified sound. They impart a sonic quality to the music thats hard to describe. The terms I hear most applied are "pressure" and "depth" and "warmth" and others. The list runs on about tubes. Tubes also have plate capacitence. This is where the Emissing electrode and the collecting plate ack like a capacitor, So the entire tube has a imparted quality because of the internal capacitence between the elements inside the tube. Remember there are no direct connections inside of a tube, unlike transistors of Fets which have "junctions" where the signal pass's thru, The tube relies on "conductence between to plate like elements in a vacuum with no direct interconnections. So the music must travel thru this area of vacuum to reach the other collecting plate where it is "collected and then pass's thru the glass tube back out to the rest of the circuitry.

Another thing is the output teansformer. The tubes output in high levl and high impedence, so it must pass thru a load matching transformer to get to the speaker. this also has sonic impact on the Sq of the signal. So everything becomes critical. Tube guys even gain match there tubes so the amp has as best as possible balance internally.
Oh and tubes degrad with use and age, so they are expendables in the sonic world.

Tubes are still by far the Audiophile standard that all amps eventually get measured against. Its always been this way. And if you run across a Tube audio person, he most surely will dismiss us all as Deaf people that have no taste for quality sonics.
The do supply a trick light show when they pass music thru them, with all sorts of blueish plasma being visible on the plates.

There are other forums like DIY that have a whole section just for the Tube guys out there. And now that tubes are not made in the US anymore ( to my knowledge) they can cost a arm and a leg. That and the following that tube audiophiles have kept alive have kept tube amps in the statosphere price wise, $5K to $15K are very reasonable prices I have seen for a nice tube unit for the home.

I myself have had to make do with Adcoms in my search for tube like sonics, but even those amps can't produce the "sonic pressures" like tubes can.
You have to listen for yourself and compare tubes to any solid state amp, then and only then you will hear and know what these guys are talking about.
If your really into SQ and you want to know if your missing something I recommend you find a very High end stereo shop and go listen to their tube setups.
It will show you something new and of course you will also hear the difference tubes make in musical sonics.

As for tubes in cars, well the folks I know that have them, love them, and willl not consider anything else, pretty much.

Me, well I'm too poor to put tubes in my car. Plus I like it loud so I probably couldn't hear the difference anyway Ok i'm BSing here I can here the differnce, but Solid state in much more reliable than tubes. plus i sold my tube tester a long time ago

Hope some of this helps you guys

1moreamp wrote:I do have a X-Butler /PPI engineer as a friend though.

What are the initials of the guy you know? I know three guys that fit this build... Two of them now work for JL Audio and the other works for JBL Professional. Does this sound like the guys you know?

Microphonics is the tendency for tubes to tick when moved. Essentially when you bump a tube that moves the filaments in them (they work like freakin light bulbs) and when you shake a light bulb its ungood. You've got a thinner than hair piece of metal that is beyond red hot and then you shake it you can expect crap to break. Thats why tubes can't be turned on fully when in a car... You want the filament to be less than hotter than shit (in layman's terms).

Microphonics sounds like someone tapping on a microphone (thus the reason its called what it is)... So essentially as you hit bumps in the road you'd get ticks and pops in your output audio.

The Butler "Hybrid" amps actually have tubes and FET's sharing the load and they have a stupid knob to allow you to select how much drive you want from each section. Honestly the Butler design is pretty piss poor electrically from what I've heard of people who had to clean up the mess that is in the amps that I use! hehe.. They sound really good but they are easy to destroy if you drive them into smaller loads. Thus the reason why my sub is a dual 4 wired to 8 ohms. Tubes like to drive loads in voltage mode and are not designed to drive heavy currents. Like butler says... His amplifiers are high end audio systems.... Not welders.

Tubes were not only the real beginning of amplified sound they were the real beginning of electronics period. Essentially a tube is an old school transistor. "Or an old school diode depending on the tube"....

Fets don't have any direct connections either. They have junctions yes but these are just wells of silicon which are doped heavily P or N type. Essentially you'll have two wells of happiness with a barren area between them. That the hapiness wells are placed into. The gate is a plate which is capacitively coupled to this barren area. And what happens is when you do something happy to the gate you attract a bunch of either "holes" or electrons into the barren area between the two wells of happiness. The Source and Drain are connected to the wells of happiness and when you bring the "channel" of holes or electrons between the wells of happiness current is then allowed to flow. Wow thats hard to put into layman's terms with out being able to draw pictures.

Often tubes only glow orange and there isn't really any sort of blue plasma show... haha but that was funny to read.

There are a lot of tubes made in Russia these days. And often times the good standards can be pretty cheap... Down in the 6 to 15 bucks realm. Big power tubes are NOT cheap though... Most of the ones in guitar amps and what not (in the output section) are more in the lower 3 digit numbers.

Tubes are notorious for not having very good response in the lower frequencies. This is why my sub amp is turned more toward the FET output of its function. A FET output has a stiffer bottom end and is usually much more efficient. The reason tubes have a different sound to them is because of the way they clip. When a transistor clips it flat tops. When you clip a high frequency signal you end up with a square wave. When you clip a tube it travels into its headroom and still provides you with a rounded top. The difference between this results in different harmonics being present in the audio.

If you play a tone and you play its odd harmonics it will sound brassy and harsh to the ear. You know that sound that your stereo makes when you turn it up too loud and it sounds like shit is breaking? That is what a group of odd harmonics sounds like.... Now even harmonics sound like reinforcing notes. If you play a note and then add the note one octave down it sounds like a nice reinforcing undertone and sounds quite pleasant and melodic to the ear. When a tube distorts it creates pleasant colorations.

This is the very reason that when you are looking at a transistor amp you want the distortion to be as low as possible but when you look at a tube amp you just ignore the THD spec because that THD actually sounds good. Often times you'll see people who don't know look at the THD on a tube amp and see something like 2% and they say screw that my transistor amp only has .01% or whatever. (My fiance's car has an amp in it w/ a THD of .008% one of the lowest I've EVER seen) It ends up with a clean sounding signal but if you think you can hear the diff between .01 and .001 you're probably mistaken and hearing something else about the amplifiers.

Anyway thats a lot of rambling and I'm about half asleep so I'd be surprised if I didn't stop mid thought a few times but there is a bit of info to chew on and go look at google to get some more...

Yeah well I was seeing colors that night anyway I was in my late teens and was at a country club with my friends and they were the Band that night... is this beginning to sound familiar to any of you guys yet ??? early 70's stuff ya know?

I found myself stareing at the back of a Tubed marshall amp stack, and the tubes were Blue Man...

I was alot younger and wilder then.

as for my butler friend he requests to stay unidentified, by his own request. So I can't say anymore about him. I'm getting in hot water with a friend and thats a no-no

As i stated to all before if you have never heard tubed equipment, try it. Then you will know what up with tubes. 2 % percent distortion and all
Oh Nelson Pass says the same about his amps. " not the cleanest, but at least listenable for long periods of time".

I would like to thank BH for chiming in with his experiance and knowledge.
Oh BH sorry about using the term plasma. I live and work in Silicon valley
and i have seen a lot of lights inside vacuum in my time. Blue for Chlorine, Blue green for Boron trichloride, Purple ish for Argon, white for pure Oxygen.
You can see colors based on any contaminating gas inside a vacuum tube including blue plasma. all depends on what the impurities were when they sealed it up, and any contaminants on the tubes surface. I have seen power tubes that had a pool of mercury in then (thyratrons).. Heck look at low pressure sodium vapour street lights, now they are yellow orange.
Oh don't the filaments of the tube get coated with Boron as a electron emitter surface? just a thought....
Thanks for the help BH, two heads are always better than one

Goodnight all, rest well.

there are at least 2 true tube car amps out there. The Milbert and some funky italian job (Winslow has one).

The 'sound' of a tube amp comes mostly from the output impedence.... and can actually be mimicked in a solid state amp with the proper application of resistors.

Heck we've modeled it before with a DSP in a transistor amp too!

my friend impact has two tru tech copper series amps
and one of them is a tube style amp.

its a really nice sounidng amp but its not justfied to me for the price he spent.

but again they sound sweet.

just give me an older ms amp andim happy.

I've never seen a tuber for cars. I would suggest the tubes are too fragile or cost prohibitive if made to mil specs. I do remember that Alpine dabbled with a home amp with tubes. They had a small plexi window in the front of the case where the tubes could be seen glowing.

Tubes generate so much heat. Raw power. You'd need 13 alternators to provide the current demand needed to achieve today's power standards.

Bitta trivia - The Russians used tubes in their aircraft right up to the end of the Cold War. That was one reason their aircraft couldn't perform to what the rest of the world was putting out. Weight. The West used solid state components, saving huge tonnage. However, in the event of nuclear attack, tubes will work, solid state will not. Silicon wafers don't like nukes.

HSS Fidelity



Milbert



Tru



IIRC, these are the the only 3 pure tube amps available for a car.

There are a few hybrids as well...



there are PPI/Phaze versions of this amp.

Planet audio hybrid



US amps also made a hybrid.

Is that a BLUE glow in them tubes used on the TRU amp ???


Nice selection of money, I mean tube amps, Saweet !

I'd bet its blue LEDs backlighting them!

Could be