Product Feature : Tube Amp

The work week turned out alright, having accomplished more than expected. It feels good to finish off on Friday without unresolved issues waiting for Monday morning to come around. Feeling good, I return home to my condo to celebrate. A good work week may be a small feat, but to quote Harvey Pekar, “Ordinary life is pretty complicated stuff.” It’s time to put on some good tunes, bask in the groove and break out a few dance moves from the private collection.

The expensive computer speakers and sub hooked up to my Mac Book doesn’t quite do the trick when you are in the mood to listen to some serious music. For Youtube and movies they are awesome, but there is only so much 2.5” speakers can do. The range is very limited.

What kind of sound system suits the condo living lifestyle?

Perhaps, a bookshelf stereo. It is compact, great for space saving and some actually sound decent.  Unfortunately, most bookshelf stereos have a gawdy plastic look that will quickly cheapen the decor, especially when the room is not very big. Making the best use of space is vital when living in a condo, so a full component sound system with floor standing speakers may not be a great idea. No doubt it will get your feet hopping but the neighbors will also be pounding from above, below, and both sides.

Nowadays, most music is stored on a hard drive as mp3 or lossless flac format. LP’s are for nostalgia, cassette tapes are forgotten and a CD collection takes up too much space. Considering that the average condo size is 650sq ft and a 2TB of hard drive space is less than $100.00, why take up valuable space, when you are paying over $400.00 per sq ft.

With everything digitally recorded, digitally stored and digitally played, the musical experience can become somewhat harsh, thin and metallic sounding, rather than a full-bodied tone. Instead of plugging in the iPod into a solid state transistor amplifier, try a "Tube Amp".

Note that the source of the music needs to be good, meaning flac or 320kb/s files. Tube amps are known to produce a warmer fuller tone. The reason for this is because of harmonic distortion. All amplifiers whether solid state or tube add distortion to the signal fed to them. Distortion from a tube amp is mostly low order, even second, forth, sixth and eighth harmonics. In other words, they represent octaves that are musically related thereby blending in the harmonic distortion with the music being played. Solid state amplifiers, however, have high order odd harmonics in addition to the low order even harmonics. High order odd harmonics are seventh, ninth, eleventh, and thirteenths, which are not musically toned and does not blend well with music. The higher the frequency of harmonic distortion the easier it is heard, which is why solid state amps can sound harsh and metallic. 

A small amount of low order even harmonic distortion in a tube amp may go completely unnoticed, whereas the same amount of harmonic distortion, but in high order odd harmonics can make the listener cringe his eyebrows. This is why many claim tube amps to have a warmer, fuller sound, the even harmonic distortion blends in with music.

If you are looking for something that sounds good and looks cool in your condo, have a listen to a tube amp and see if the sound suits you.

Photo + Words : Tobin C