If you have built a vacuum tube amp, or considered building one, and want to share info with others who have had experience in the field - or you have a nice big screen TV, and / or a great DVD or CD collection , and now would like to have a great sound . . .

If you have built a vacuum tube amp, or considered building one, and want to share info with others who have had experience in the field - or you have a nice big screen TV, and / or a great DVD or CD collection , and now would like to have a great sound system-you might be surprised how good vacuum tubes sound.
Transistors, and solid state devices operate largely on current and current amplification. Vacuum tubes are a high voltage operation - namely from 250 volts DC to over 500 vots DC on the plate of the tube. These voltages are built up with huge transformers that can cause your amp to weigh in th neigborhood of 50 pounds or more.
All that voltage creates what can be compared favourably to a "Particle Accelerator", or Atom Smasher...small elemental particles accelerated by enormous electromagnets. The vauum tubes are like miniature particle accelerators...the electron oscillations from your music source-namely a CD player-are fed to a "grid" on the tube. The high voltage on the plate of the tube draws electrons to it from the "cathode", or a different source of electrons. The back and forth oscillations of the music signal do not cause back and forth movement between cathode and plate- but rather act as a "valve" which rapidly increases, or decreases the constant flow of electrons across that powerful magnetic field, much the way water would spurt by rapidly squeezing the handle of your water hose.

The massive amount of iron in the transformers tend to behave like a large flywheel...this is evident when you turn off the amp, and the sound continues gradually fading down, spinning down, if you will, for another ten seconds or so.
The result of this is that an amazing amount of power can be built up quickly and fed directly to the speakers. These electrons flow so easily, that extremely fast and complex musical sounds carry through from source to speaker with "Effortless Ease"...and of course, Lighning speed.

This big power in a short space provides what is known as the "Short Signal Path"...the shorter the path the sweeter the sound...meaning the less chance it has to degrade. Thus you get a more pure sound...which is called "Transparency"...meaning it seems to the ear that the musician is "In the room with you". A well designed system, and a well engineered speaker system can do what is known as create the "Sound Stage"...or a "Three dimensional illusion of musician presence " in the room with you. One final thing that tubes do that Solid State doesn't do, is to encourage the presence of "2nd Harmonics"...these are the side harmonies of every musical sound...sounds that are normally heard from, say a wooden stringed instrument. In this way, it "seems" somehow more pleasant to the ear.

Thus the tremendous resrgence in popularity of tube amplifiers...both for CD playing , and for guitar or musical instrument amplification to a large room.