Liberty's Blog: What's Old is New

Sunday, May 14, 2006

What's Old is New

Occasionally I work on professional audio equipment, PA's amps, mixers,and stage speakers. Its always struck me as strange that so many musicians are so fond about vacuum tubes. I look at such things through an engineers perspective. Tubes are noisy, hot, need coupling. and are non-linear. Besides that the things require voltages that tend to bite the poor soul working on them. My hearing is pretty crappy though, and I don't have the ears of a true audiophile or musician. There can be no doubt though that tubes trend to "shape" a sound, whereas good semiconductor equipment duplicicates at the output what goes in more accurately. Tubes for home stereo equipment has a following, and may be even having a resurgence in popularity.

But tubes never disappeared completely, particularly when it came to stereo equipment. Hi-fi fans will tell you that nothing sounds as sweet as equipment that allows tubes to shape the sound. That’s why hundreds of happy tube fanatics flocked to the first annual Vacuum Tube Valley Expo in Piscataway, N.J., this past weekend to see old — and new — designs.
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On display at the show were Kevin’s new Dynakit amplifiers — the new Mark IV (40-watt monoblock, $425-450 depending on the capacitors), the ST-35 (17.5 watts/channel stereo amp, $450-480) and the ST-70 (35 watts/channel stereo amp, $625-650).
The famous brown metal tube cage is optional. So are the tubes. Since tube gear fans have their favorite tubes, Kevin decided to leave that up to the hobbyists.

Yeah, $625. for a 35 watt per channel, amp without tubes or covers for by todays standards a modest perfomming amp. There is no accounting for taste, but if someone wanted to explain it to me I'm willing to listen.