Talk:Valve sound
From Academic Kids
I don't believe this has anything to do with triode characteristics. Valve amplifiers differ from transistor ones in a number of fundamental ways. The most obvious is the need for a final output transformer in valve systems which is not present in transistor designs. More subtle influences are the behaviour of valve circuits when handling signals outside the designed peformance where a transistor has a charactristic clipping effect whilst the valve is just non-linear.
In any event, triodes were not the dominant part of the amplifier as to handle the necessary power to drive the transformer it was necessary to use a pentode or pentode pair. Triodes do make up a good part of a pre-amplifier but audio buffs seem to prefer transistorised preamplifiers in conjunction with valved power amplifiers! Rjstott
Geeze, I'm sticking in tube sound and tube amplifier lest Americans not know what you're talking about. Ortolan88
soft clipping or compression?
"A tube radio or tube amplifier will increase in volume to a point, and then as the volume is further increased beyond the linear range, it gently reduces in gain."
- I'm pretty sure this isn't true. I think it just has soft limiting, not audio level compression. - Omegatron 15:47, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)
