Audio Systems: tube CD player with solid state amps, transistor amplifier, transistor amplifiers

Question
Hi,
I am interested in buying a Jolida JD-100 tube cd...I've heard it in a system with tube amps...and it does sound beautiful.
What I have is  a set of Vandersteen speakers that I power with 8 Marantz 125 watt monoblocks (bridged in sets of two for biamp/biwiring).
The question is: Do you "lose" the sound of a tube CD player, when you amp it with solid state amps? Should the system be tubes "all the way"?
Thanks,
Bob Sasso

Answer
You are asking the wrong expert.  I designed transistor amplifiers for many years.  I was a pioneer in transistor amplifier theory and I am quite confident that a good transistor amp or preamp is better sounding than a vacuum tube amp.  I transistor is inherently more linear and lower impedance and gives rise to superior performance.  But, that is my opinion.  I know the "golden ears" don't agree with me; I fully acknowledge that tube amps can sound good, but the problem is the iron core transformers that are always used; they are distortion generators of the highest order.  The only tube amp that I really liked over transistor was the transformerless Futterman amp of many years ago.

And, if you think there is a tube cd player you are just kidding yourself.  The decoding of cd digital information is a completely digital process with about 1 million transistors in a couple of big IC chips that do all the processing; the only tube is the class A amp output to feed the audio output tap on the back end of the player.

No doubt the Jolida (made in China) is a fine sounding cd player, but it is still a digital decoder right up to the final DAC and it cannot, in my opinion, sound any better than an all solid-state unit properly designed.  The heart of the sound quality in cd players is in the DACs and linearity adjustments at the low end.  It is not difficult to tweak a cd player if the design engineer understands jitter and dither and how to design for good linearity and least bit resolution.  The large signal amplifier at the output (where the tubes are used) is a no brainer for disign engineer.  

So, in my opinion - as an old analog design engineer - the tube craze is 90% hype and 10% slick marketing.  I once did an experiment with a room full of golden ears blind listening to a $10 cd player and a very expensive one of the Jolida image.  They could not hear the difference - until they knew which one they were listening to.

Back to tube amps;  if the tube amp has lots of headroom, which is much easier to get in transistor designs, they can sound really good, but the biggest problem is when they bump up against the hard rails in the transformer output.  Then they go into serious distortion; a sound that lots of golden ears think is really neat; but in reality is pure harmonic distortion.

Bottom line, however, in all this is:  What does it sound liek and is it what you want.  Sound quality is very, very subjective and there is no measuring device that will tell you what a unit will sound like to the ear.  So, you get what sounds good to you and learn to be happy and proud with it.

I used to write reviews for some of the audio magazines;  the comments you read about this sound and that sound are pretty much a lot of nit picking and stretching to find a difference.  So, I quit writing them.

I have challenged the makers of the big fat speaker wires, for example, to show me a test where their wire measures or sounds better in an ab/blind test when compared with zip wire from the hardware store.  None have taken up the challenge.  I have done blind tests with different speaker wires and all kinds of comparisons and the golden eared listeners have not faired any better than the secretary out of the secretary pool.  

Speakers are the very most critical in a sound reproduction system. They are by far the least "high-fidelity" and the sound quality is an order of magnitude off the mark compared with amplifiers and other electronic gear.  So, if you really want to enhance your system, spend about 10 times the effort (not the money) on the speaker system compared with the other stuff.

Have a great evening.  I like to talk about this stuff; let me hear from you again.

CLeggsan