This increase in bang for your buck means that smaller tubes can be used and still give a reasonable power output. This allows for a rather more efficient design and push pull amps can use a larger number of a wider variety of tubes to generate a much higher power output than would be the case for a single ended design. These amps use a more modern circuit that introduces at least one other tube per channel to allow one tube to handle half the waveform each. Done well, the combination can be staggeringly good but doing it well is rarely cheap. This in turn means that you need to use a single ended amp with a pair of sensitive speakers to get the most bang for your buck. Unless you use a whopping tube, power outputs are generally in the single figure range and even with a 'big un' like an 845 or 211 (both of which look like a fifties horror prop), you are unlikely to see more than 25 watts. Used within their operating envelope, these amps can have commendably low distortion and impressive performance but that operating envelope is rather narrow. A single ended amp will make use of a single tube per channel (generally but not exclusively of a triode design) to produce output. These are the simplest amps going and the original amplifier design. In home audio terms, modern tube amplifiers break down into three categories all with their specific pros and cons. This is the grossest oversimplification of the process going but all tube amplifiers use a scaled version of this principle to work. A tube is a device that uses differently charged sections- the cathode, anode and a control grid to move electrons through a vacuum in such a way as to create an output that can be used to power a speaker. This being said, tube amplification can sound absolutely fabulous, so what are the ins and outs?īefore the advent of the transistor and semi conductor, tube amplifiers were just 'amplifiers' and the only practical way that existed to take the signal from a stylus, radio or tape head and boost it so that it was suitable for a speaker. It is perfectly possible to get amazing performance from vinyl without ever going near tubes.

I'm listening to a collection of equipment as I type this, some mine and some on review and there isn't a single tube anywhere to be found in it. Let the record state that my own views are nowhere near as absolute as this. They claim that for the most enjoyable performance possible, you need to dispense with the transistor and output capacitor altogether and partner your turntable with tube amplification. Many analog fans make a heartfelt argument that vinyl is only one piece of the puzzle of true audio satisfaction.

Record player tube amp