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Up until the early sixties, all power amplifiers were tube-based. With the advent of the acoustic suspension box, however, loudspeaker efficiency took a nose dive and transistors supplanted tubes.
Transistors sacrificed musically acceptable distortion, but brought the high power levels needed by the new loudspeaker designs. If you've gone to the trouble of hunting down a pair of vintage speakers, take the next step and drive them with a vacuum tube amplifier that they were designed for. You won't be sorry!
Bull feathers! There are measures of frequency response, harmonic distortion, noise etc. and these apply to ALL amplifiers. Vac tube amplifiers have some intrinsic noise that some find pleasant and this is partly due to their function as a chaotic oscillator - aka a "warm sound". Change the tubes (manufacturer/age) and this chaotic nature changes.
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Jolyn Wells-Moran |