Romy the Cat wrote:

Anyhow, the Melquiades does have some “tricks” in the realm of dynamic viscosity. It is what make it quite different in term of Reality Reconstruction as I feel that propagation of sound via air does not have linear “audio dynamic”, soft of speaking.

Paul S wrote:

Given speakers that can be driven dynamically by single stage amplification, there remain a host of issues, and among those issues is color.  Most compression drivers are color-challenged to begin with…

I would agree. Perhaps lest “soft” materials involved means less opportunities to do “colors”. With the single stage amplification perhaps the same but it very educational to hear MF driver with a single-stage of amplification, particularly with very fast core. It strikes me as very “honest” sound; it has a sense of purity and cleanness that is very addictive if you get use to it. What important is to understand that usually the phrase “clean” sound audio people use only in context of “lean” sound. The Milq’s single-stage doe not sound lean at all, rather just  “full” but “clean”.

nl wrote:

The 6C33 has some adherents, including Lamm and also the well-regarded Almarro amps. However, even Lamm is now using the GM70 for his $140,000 statement amplifier.

It is not accurate. The GM70 is not regular DHT tubes but in a way unique tube in all DH family. This tube has nothing from what commonly considered as typical “DHT sound”, if it has any…

nl wrote:

DHTs have a special character. I wouldn't call them "neutral." But, if I wanted "neutral" I would use a gainclone-type amp. DHTs can be among the lowest-distortion amplification devices ever made. However, most DHT users like the funny addition they make to the sound, and tend to emphasize this aspect.

Yes, they do and also mostly all of them drive their few watts DHT with 90dB full-range load that dive down to a could ohms… 

nl wrote:

Once again, a simple gainclone amplifier, which can be built for $200 or so, will crush a DHT amp in terms of dynamics, bandwidth and headroom. It will crush the Milq amp too, despite Romy's possible protestations otherwise. It will crush any amp that uses an output transformer, as regards those qualities. However, it just doesn't have that DHT (or Milq) tone.

I never trued any gainclone amps in my own playback and therefore I have not reasons to protest. The last gainclone that I heard was last year were 4-way system was driven by 4 or 5 47Lab amps, that are gainclone I belive.

nl wrote:

I have used Russian high-gm tubes like 6C45 in amps before, including single-stage designs very much like Romy's single-stage Milq. These have many attractions. However, in my experience it just didn't have the tone. Jim de Kort of VT52.com came to the same conclusion, regarding his WE437 spud using amorphous output transformers, on his 107db horn speakers. He went back to his 26-10-45 combo, three stages instead of one.  In my experience, a very simple 6sn7-6sn7-45 amp destroyed the 6C45 spud, even with the disadvantages of three stages instead of one.

Interesting… Still, I do not think that the idea to go three active stages to get “some colors” is something that sounds logical to me. I like to use as less stages as possible. It shell be “other ways”. In fact I do have some interesting ideas and not those that that I have expressed in my post above.

nl wrote:

I don't have time to try every possible combination. The high-gm tubes tend to have a certain glassiness which doesn't appeal to me. I even bought some 6E5Ps to give it another try. It would surprise me if the outcome was much different than my experiences with the 6C45 however.

The 6E5P is a perfect two-stage driver (low current and high voltage), it is not out tube. You remember when I was trying to have 6E5P to drive headphones – it was not good. I thought and still think that it is possible to use 6E5P of the 6C45 in the DSET configuration, letting it to drive just HF channel. If it has glassiness then load it harder and it might go away.

drdna wrote:

I think you must be careful to be seduced by the idea of adjustable color, to avoid going down the road that Bob Carver did with the adjustable Sunfire amp or Mark Levinson did with Cello Pallette preamp. It should be more like a knob to fine tune the station rather than a "loudness" button.

Yes, the Carver’s fame did come to my mind and I certainly do not go into the same camp - I hate whatever he did.

nl wrote:

I don't know. Some people like …. supposedly mixing the appealing qualities of each

Romy the Cat wrote:

Also, in DHT the electrons flow dispatched not from uniformed nice cathode but from many 3-D wires that make the arriving to anode not… time-aligned and more unsystematic. BTW, this is one of the reasons why many DHT people prefer the 50-60 years old tubes – older tubes have more “hanged” cathodes that got longer by gravitation and consequentially have more room for “shaking”. If to look at the subject slightly deeper then it would be obviously that some things might be “done” with it. I will be doing next weeks two very interesting experiments that might tune out to be very promising.

Well, I have to admit that I feel that those conversations about the “soul” of the vintage tubes bring conversation and actions absolutely to nowhere.  Yes, I have to admit that there was a special magic riding a horse pulled wagon but we for very strange reasons use today the air-conditioned contemporary automobiles.  I have to also admit the ascent in air balloon has a very special feeling but we chose to travel by airplane.  I have to also admit, and a I know that many people will not like it, that any of my own exposure to the practical achieved sonic result of the people who not just used the DHT but expressed in absolute importance of DHT lead to me walking out of their listening room literary laughing.  Interesting that laughable it was not as much Sound itself but rather the absolutely idiotic in my view faulty premises that they used to built their playbacks.   Did I witness interesting Sound with DHT-stressed applications?  Well, my problem was that I did not witness any serious objectives in the minds of the DHT-stressed system owners and that is my problem.  I certainly do not associate the primitivism of playback objectives with admiration of “soul of vintage tubes, I juts report what I was exposed to. I still would like to experience as serious installation with explicit use of old DHT that would me more then exercise of the syrupy paranoia.

Saying that I would not denying the presence of a special character of sound with some older DHT, the question is: are we playing to the “special character” or we are willing to creatively use this character without our own special objective for sound reproduction?

I personally more inclined to have “accurate” sound and word accuracy is more implies to a playback accurately and fatefully render the essence of musical events. Pay attention – not accurately play the input signal, not accurately play “what the microtones heard”, but rather the accurately play what I feel shell be played and what I recognize is important in given played material. In many way to do so I need to start with impartially of playback and then to enable playback to do what need to be done. In many ways I feel that “specials character” of DHT tube might be an obstacle, lucrative   and “profitable” but still obstacle. Perhaps I did not hear a properly implemented DHT, that why I was inviting the DHT people to show me off what is possible out there. It is much possible that I shell not have worries about DHT at all as not DHT person year point me out that my own inhalation has a specific aspects the might be improvised by DHT application. Well, this is the subject that I am researching…

Anyway, there is thing that I am concerned, well, not concerned but rather am thinking about and I was implying it in my question to “nl” above. The way in which I used the DHT that I had last week was what I feel is “right” way. It was not DSET but it was multi-amp where I was taking out of the DHT the only very limited bandwidth where DHT is not too much compromised. Let also pretend that the DHT in this limited bandwidth did (for whatever reason) its “timing randomness” trick that I also described above. (lest for the sake of illustration pretend that the randomness is a properly of the DHT topology)

Now, we are multiamping the system complimenting the MF-only DHT with IDHT LF and HF channels, of like Guy does with 845PP amps (let pretend that 845PP does not have this “timing randomness”). So, will the DHT’s randomness manifest itself in this application? The “timing” marks might be very much defused by IDHT’s timing in this case. My theory is that the “timing randomness” is the specific collapse or a specific build up of particular harmonic pattern right before or after the signal changes it’s dynamic pointer. Would the presents of other channel that does not comply with this “specific collapse or a specific build up of particular harmonic pattern” be a wrecking the effectiveness of “timing randomness”?

drdna wrote:

Romy the Cat wrote: So, what I am talking about is ability for an amp to have some kind of inner-algorithm that dynamically and actively “color” or better to say “dye” signals, still maintaining general color-neutral tendencies.  Since I kind of formulate this concept in my head I would like to name it and will refer it in future as Active Pigmentation. I think you must be careful to be seduced by the idea of adjustable color, to avoid going down the road that Bob Carver did with the adjustable Sunfire amp or Mark Levinson did with Cello Pallette preamp. It should be more like a knob to fine tune the station rather than a "loudness" button.

nl wrote:

I am interested that Romy has found some interest in But, if I wanted "neutral" I would use a gainclone-type amp. DHTs can be among the lowest-distortion amplification devices ever made. However, most DHT users like the funny addition they make to the sound, and tend to emphasize this aspect.

nl wrote:

In general, DHT amps are lacking in power, dynamics and bandwidth.

tuga wrote:

nl wrote: In general, DHT amps are lacking in power, dynamics and bandwidth. Would this be the result of poor implementation or rather a feature of such technology? If the latter is true, then it might only make sense to use DHT for Injection purposes...

Romy the Cat wrote:

I personally more inclined to have “accurate” sound and word accuracy is more implies to a playback accurately and fatefully render the essence of musical events. Pay attention – not accurately play the input signal, not accurately play “what the microtones heard”, but rather the accurately play what I feel shell be played and what I recognize is important in given played material. In many way to do so I need to start with impartially of playback and then to enable playback to do what need to be done.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Now, we are multiamping the system complimenting the MF-only DHT with IDHT LF and HF channels, of like Guy does with 845PP amps (let pretend that 845PP does not have this “timing randomness”). So, will the DHT’s randomness manifest itself in this application? The “timing” marks might be very much defused by IDHT’s timing in this case. My theory is that the “timing randomness” is the specific collapse or a specific build up of particular harmonic pattern right before or after the signal changes it’s dynamic pointer. Would the presents of other channel that does not comply with this “specific collapse or a specific build up of particular harmonic pattern” be a wrecking the effectiveness of “timing randomness”?

drdna wrote:

The VERY INTERESTING idea is that the introduction of noise as a dithering element for the analog signal (for our brain to decode) can be helpful in increasing the retrieval of information vital to conveying the Sound. Perhaps different types of noise would be helpful for different types of information: a regular repeating noise to improve rhythm, a repeating amplitude noise to improve dynamics, etc. Well, I am just thinking out loud now. But the idea that we can introduce specific types of noise or signal into a system to enhance capacity for information retrieval is very interesting. We only need to figure out what kind of noise to accomplish the tasks to do the experiment. Adrian

In fig.12, the low-frequency sidebands indicated with a gray "5" lie at the ±75Hz subcode frame frequency; the ones indicated with purple numeric markers lie at ±17.6Hz and its harmonics. These sidebands appear to be associated with the 4716 transport. When I used the 4716 to drive other processors, these sidebands appeared in their analog output spectra; if I drove the 4715 with my usual PS Audio Lambda transport, they disappeared from the 47 Lab's output spectrum (though the data-related sidebands were as strong as before).

drdna wrote:

The VERY INTERESTING idea is that the introduction of noise as a dithering element for the analog signal (for our brain to decode) can be helpful in increasing the retrieval of information vital to conveying the Sound.

Romy the Cat wrote:

BTW, the idea of analog dithering (randomanization) will be used in the coming Avicena Power Generator…