"Clyde Slick" wrote in message
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"Robert Morein" wrote in message
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wrote in message
oups.com...
Some people really do not like the vacuum tube, or the fact that some
audiophiles really like them and persist in still building tube
equipment or buying it from "boutique" or high end vendors. You know
who they are.

The thing is, what motivates this obsession with denigrating and
deterring users of vacuum tubes? Are unhealthy, often destructive
pathologies at work here?

Yes, if one considers such a pathology an inability to separate the
subjective and objective.

Music + solid state = Music
Music + tubes = Modified Music

Modified Music is held to be more enjoyable than Music by many
listeners.

And don't forget, your so-called modified music, to some people,
sounds more like live music, and your so-called solid state 'music'
just doesn't soud quite real.

This is true, and very plausible. Music is seldom miked from the POV of an
actual audience. And how could the extreme example, a synthetic multitrack
recording, have any resemblance to an actual physical space? Long before
synthesized surround sound, listeners yearned for something to close the gap
with reality. For many people, tubes do this.

On the other hand, I find the absolute refusal of most tube and vinyl
enthusiasts to explore synthetic surround sound the reverse form of bigotry.
I actually do find a lot more reality in my twelve year old Sony TA-E1000ESD
digital surround preamp than I do in my buddy Larry's Sonic Frontiers gear.
My Sony's cold fluorescent display and rotary digital encoders give me
access to Beranek's monumental work, "Concert Halls and How they Sound",
which is still the fundamental reference to modern venue design. The tube
lovers take cheer in their rituals: voicing and biasing of tubes, cleaning
the records, measuring stylus force, and appreciating what to me is the
inappropriate use of fine wood.