SET Asylum

Posted by Palustris (A) on June 11, 2022 at 08:38:08

In Reply to: RE: Tube Rectification posted by Berrell88 on June 10, 2022 at 19:46:48

It is safe to say that excellent sounding single ended amplifiers have been built with both vacuum tube and solid state rectification. There is no one "formula" that one can use with convenient check boxes that will guarantee a good sounding unit. Many builders have a set of guidelines or personal principles they use to fulfill their own ideas of good sound and in many cases those focus on synergy with a particular brand or type of speaker.

Personally, I have violated much of my own personal audio dogma as a means of advancing or exploring other topologies and engineering ideas. For instance, my latest amp is a push pull, directly heated triode connected 5516 pentode, using RC coupling and only two stages of amplification from DAC to speakers and Triad output transformers.

I eschew popular tubes such as the 12AX7, 12AU7, 6922 family, 5AR4, 6SN7, etc. The tubes I use are 6AX4GT, EC86, 6F8G, EC8010, HY69 and 5516. Most of my amps use industrial power transformers and chokes and high quality output transformers from Tango, Tamura, Sansui, Electra-Print or Magnequest, but others use power transformers from Magnequest or Electra-Print. I don't mind experimenting with different power supplies and use both choke input or capacitor input depending on the application. I use Wima DC Link MKP4 capacitors almost exclusively in the power supply.

For single ended, my personal dogma demands a two stage amplifier (no preamp!) with directly heated pentode or triode output tube; low impedance power supply, direct coupling and a high transconductance driver tube capable of driving the output tube to clipping with an input sensitivity of 1Vrms.