Tube amp, vs Digital Tripath based T amp vs regular amp ... anyone know.

[The Buddha]

K there is a guy selling a t amp (digital tripath chip based amp) by my house, and I read great reviews of it.
Anyone know/use one ?

Also anyone know of tube amps and how they compare to a off the shelf amp/receiver ?

Now can I run a tube pre amp before a regular Amp/receiver and will it do anythign for sound quality ?

Cool.
Buddha.

[The Buddha]

OK fine from what I hear, a tripath or a gain clone LM3875 based based amp is very very similar to a tube amp in terms of real world performance as in, close to actual out put in terms of wattage to sound (not wattage mostly wasted as heat in a regular solid state amp) very low distortion at high volumes, soft clipping at high volumes etc etc.
OK so I am gonna try one, and wouldn't you know it, the guy doesn't have a amp, he got a kit.
Damn cold, making me do crap inside the house. I am less destructive outside my wife says.
Cool.
Buddha.

[natedawg120]

I am less destructive outside my wife says.
Cool.
Buddha.

My wife says the same thing and i get banished to the garage.  At least i have a heater in there 

[The Buddha]

Heat in the garage - I wish. Worse yet, there is barely standing room in there.
Driveway ... yea that is where the damage occours.
Cool.
Buddha.

[DoD#i]

Step away from the kool-aid.

Electronics engineers refer to people who spout the sort of things you're spouting as audiophools. Marketing folks love you, on the other hand, because you'll pay more for a titanium twist-tie to hold your speaker cord off the floor, and swear that you can tell the sound is "more liquid" because of it. I personally delight in how 12 guage copper speaker wire is supposedly better than 0000 gauge welding cable if the 12 gauge is "oxygen free" copper...

Hell, I though you had an engineering background. Must be something in the kool-aid.

Tube amps - much better at making heat than solid state amps. If you need an electric furnace, they work great. If you'd like a 20W amp that takes 6000 watts to power up, they are wonderful, but not nearly as (insert non-quantifiable golden-ear BS audiophool term here) as 10W amps that take 12000 watts to power up. Would heat the garage nicely if you made space for it.

You want a kick-ass amp? How loud are you going to play it? Really? What about after the neighbors call the cops on you a few times? FINE. If you are going to play it that loud, get you an 800W/ch pa amp. Otherwise any modern 100-200W/ch home stereo amp sounds better than you can measure, or "hear" if you can't actually see which amp is providing the sound. If you are not playing electric guitar (where you want distortion, and a tube preamp does have better-sounding distortion), you avoid distortion by not overdriving the amp - buy a bigger one and be done with it. You could get a very detailed poster of a Carver tube stack and use it as the door on a cabinet with a perfectly ordinary Sony solid state amp, have lower power bills, and sound just as good. If it's  good enough poster, you could get all sorts of excited commentary about the way the tubes make the sound (insert non-quantifiable golden-ear BS audiophool term here.) And then you could open the door...

She-hite. I'm tempted to drag you back in time to the sort of crap we had to put up with when there really was a quantifiable difference in audio systems, but they pretty much all suck compared to anything that even tries a little bit today.

[bill14224]

Here, here.  I'm not familiar with the newer digitally-controlled multiplexing 7-channel surround sound receivers, but I'm quite familiar with old tube amps and simple transistor amps.  In fact I built a couple and fixed several.  Tube amps died for a reason.  They suck power like crazy and have much more background noise than transistor amps.  They are also less reliable and safe.  Since tubes run on several hundred volts and have comparatively large elements which are electrically exposed to their environment, they produce a lot of noise, unlike transistors.  People who prefer tubes are some of the same people who think records sound better than CDs because they have a "sweeter sound".  When I try to explain that when you have the greatly increased bandwidth of a CD you could tailor your EQ settings to mimic an LP, then burn a CD that sounds exactly like a record.  It's like telling someone there's no Santa.  That's why I don't say it at parties and such anymore.  You can design a T amp to sound just like tubes (without all the noise) if you want to.  In fact, it's been done many times in the guitar amp world.

In short, there's nothing you can do with tubes that you can't to with transistors, other than burn yourself.

[The Buddha]

OK fine, I was trying to post here to see if I should pay this fool 10 bones to buy his tripath based kit ...
Then some other fool said oh they are great, I had a carver this or that and the T-amp sounds just like it.

OK and I aint spending any real $ ... I have several clowns who are unloading stuff they didn't need that they ahve had for years and never used and we are facing the coldest damn winter in years ... so everyone is running for $ to pay the heat bills.

I am getting buried under 6 inch snow, so till next week no amp is comming in the house. Then if I decide this fool has all the parts I may buy it.

BTW its a close cousin of this one I believe -
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110462987719&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

I may just bash the bugger down in $.

Cool.
Buddha.

[The Buddha]

And sorry to disappoint you guys, I can tell the difference between the various speakers I got, oddly the #1 and #2 spots are held by what I call are polar opposites. I am working on building the next step up. And a good system with good speakers produce more details at all volumes.
Now my favorite tends to be the speakers that are very sensitive and detailed, precisely because I run at low volumes. We were watching TV and we have a defective dryer that buzzes when its done, but never stops buzzing.
The fisher craopola I am running now was so good and clear, we heard the voices clear over the buzz. Its only the wharfedales that have done that in the past. Anyway, I am no audiophool, cos I wont spend the $, I am a cheapophool ... I am one who says, I see your $1500 wharfedale, but this tin can sounds better at low volumes.
I am working on finding the best kept secrets in audio.
Cool.
Buddha.