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In the Forum: Melquiades Amplifier
In the Thread: Why the tubes shall be the same?
Post Subject: Soundstage and tube mismatchPosted by drdna on: 5/23/2009
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 Romy the Cat wrote: |
| Can you provide me with more adjectives and more descriptions what exactly you recognize was differently-wrong in the sound of playback with use of non-paired tubes? |
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The results I found were similar to what you had found with different amplifiers. And after all what is an amplifier but really a way of expressing the characteristics of the tube?
Anyway, in the center, I was surprised to find that I could mix and match the tubes on either side and it seemed to have an effect like I was adding ingredients to a soup and mixing them in. It affected the presence, tonality, focus, dynamics, etc. but as far as I could detect had an effect overall on the music quite evenly. It was at the edges of the soundstage that I saw the differential effects. I can compare this to using different optical lenses, like a telephoto lens or a fisheye lens. All the same information is there, but for example with the fisheye lens it is all compressed at the edge. Here is where there was discontinuity with mismatched tubes. There can be with different tubes I observed a standard soundstage, a change in the dimensions of depth and width, or an elimination entirely of the soundstage, with musical presentation simply extending outwards in natural space with no regard for the dimensions of any artificial soundstage. The mismatch created an alteration of the curvature of space like the distortion you can get with funhouse mirrors.
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