SchiitMjolnir2 t1_j9kz1r1 wrote on February 22, 2023 at 7:07 PM

Some tube amps (regardless of whether they're OTL or OPT or hybrid) sound indistinguishable from solid state while some have coloration / different timbre (not necessarily tonality or FR in the mids but through harmonic distortion) and the area where the difference is observed the most is in the upper to mid-bass (due to output impedance)

maXXXjacker t1_j9l8c2u wrote on February 22, 2023 at 8:03 PM

Basically this. In the most basic way I can describe it, I found the biggest changes in sound came from what tubes I rolled. Some sound like shit, some laid back, some no different than a good clean solid state. In the end, it was fun rolling but after blowing through a dozen or more tubes only to find out I liked tubes that were just a really good solid state sound... it was a huge waste of money, I could have just scooped up a really nice SS amp and have been done with it rather than the hundreds of dollars in tubes I wasted my money on including the amps.

GarlicBiscuits OP t1_j9l1o25 wrote on February 22, 2023 at 7:23 PM

Which tube amps tend to lean more towards the colored end? I've looked through plenty of threads with people talking about them, but there was too much headphone jumbo for me to personally understand how certain tube amps sound.

SchiitMjolnir2 t1_j9l6zh3 wrote on February 22, 2023 at 7:55 PM

It's a good rule that that the more components after the input tube stage (e.g. 300 B tube SET amps), the more colored it sounds because, transformers and capacitors will have their own distortion characteristics that will affect the timbre of the mids. Some OTL tubes are more "solid state" sounding such as the Schiit Valhalla 2 because it does not have output transformer and the capacitor plus the tube used have more "linear" tonality/signature than others. Other OTL amp such as Feliks Audio Euphoria have a power tube that has distortion characteristics that affects the timbre of the mids so not all OTL will sound solid state-y

blargh4 t1_j9l8ywz wrote on February 22, 2023 at 8:07 PM

don't know how reliable of a rule of thumb that is - a complex amp with
plenty of feedback will likely have much less distortion than a dead-simple tube amp that does not employ feedback at all.

SchiitMjolnir2 t1_j9lazr1 wrote on February 22, 2023 at 8:20 PM

SS discrete amps are designed to avoid capacitors in the signal path, lots of feedback to minimize distortion (see Schiit's topology with the Magni+: "Topology: Fully discrete, fully complementary all-bipolar, symmetrical current-feedback design with driver stage and Vbe multiplier, no capacitors in the signal path and DC servo") while tubes are the opposite. OTL tube amps have capacitors in the signal path (except for Schiit Folkvangr) which imparts its own distortion characteristics to the sound