"Wally" wrote in message
...
Keith G wrote:

Any time you want to post a pic of the Air Scouts next to your other
gear, I'm up for looking at it... ;-)

Er, camera battery needs recharging....

That only takes a few hours - you should have something by this evening...


Only takes one hour but the charging unit's gone missing now.....


I'm not getting into this 'linearity' thing until I've heard a triode
amp (built, bought, borrowed or blagged) on my own setup.

I've no doubt that they're very linear while one is within the
largely-linear portion of the curve - my point was that keeping it clean
will restrict the power that it can put out.


Yep - 4 watts in SE mode.....

This is all *very* interesting to me. The Japs with presumably smallish
rooms (like most of us Brits) seem to like the lower powered amps on the
infeasibly large and very sensitive/rare/expensive speakers and talk about
'Zen', 'soul', 'emotion', 'lifelike' etc. Others (Colonials mostly) seem to
prefer the 'arc-welder and two ironing boards' approach, presumably due to
much larger room sizes?

As my 'listening room' is now tiny (due to the arrival of a space-eating
piano and endless telly these days) and the fact that I'm already leaning
toward the former approach, I'm hoping to get even more of the particular
qualities (imaging etc.) that I already prefer....(??)



I've been promised 'holographic' sounds blowing everything else into
the weeds. I already get/have got a superb 'soundstaging', imaging
and depth from a number of PP valve amps (far superior to any SS amp
I've ever heard, including Meridian and Krell amongst many others and
I gotta say I'm curious....

And I am too.


Me too - this 'linearity of triodes' for one thing, but the amp I'm
hoping to build has other features (direct coupled and posh/expensive
components) which are supposed to contribute to the sound quality.

Quality bits and a good circuit design must surely apply to any amplifier
type - it's the 'magic' of triodes that I'm curious about.


Yes, the component count is about as low as you could get, but I gather you
simply couldn't spend too much on the transformers!



I'm talking about a 4 watt amp here, Wally......

Which has less power than the 20W amp I have at present. So far as I can
tell, the 20W sounds very good at low to medium volume, but not when I
want
to crank it up. Years ago, I had a half-decent 40W SS amp, driving the
same
speakers, and I got more clean volume than I do at present. As I may have
mentioned in a post a month or three ago, I feel that the speakers are the
next thing to address in terms of improving the sound - I'm not sure that
a
super clean 4W amp would make a huge difference until that's done.


My take is that at *normal* listening levels on music where sound quality
counts in small to medium sized rooms (ie not 'rave/dance' music in some
derelict warehouse) on average sensitivity speakers most/all amps are only
producing a small number of watts. Where these 'low power' triode amps come
in, is by having high quality transformers and superior power supplies,
apparently.

OK, I'll stick my knob out:

This track has been recorded (from an LP) straight to my computer's Line In:

http://www.apah69.dsl.pipex.com/keit...enportline.mp3 (2.8 Mb)

This is the same track recorded over the open mic from my system:

http://www.apah69.dsl.pipex.com/keit...venportmic.mp3

Not sure what it shows as both these tracks burned to an Audio CDR sound at
least 'acceptable' to me, when played back on my system and ****e on my
computer playback, but that's another story. (OK, the open mic version is a
bit 'boggy' and a lot less well-defined but WTF - it's only Day 2 with the
mic and the room accoustics have come into the equation!!!) What I'll have
to do is record the same track with a triode amp and see if I can record any
discernable 'difference' with the open mic!!

(Valve everything btw, apart from the computer!)

All very interesting/confusing......!! :-)