Yes, I concur with Ian's info. SS amps have much more damping factor, hence
cone-control, than any tube amp, generally. But if you get wrapped up in
specs like that, or even care about damping factor, you are missing out on
the whole purpose behind tube amps: the sound. Specs-wise they may be
wretched compared to SS amps, but specs are for weenies anyway, most of the
time. Good sound is very difficult if not impossible to objectively describe
via technical specs. It's much more subjective and organic than that.
FWIW I've built several tube amps and other tube-related pieces of gear, and
worked on SS and tube amps a fair bit, plus built my own multi-way horn
speakers, etc.
On 4/20/11 6:16 AM, "olympus-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
<olympus-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hmm, I know I'm still a beginner at this game, and have never played
> with valves (tubes) (I've only recently got around to reading books on
> the subject so I can stop following other folks' recipes and
> understand power amps properly), but I'm having trouble following that
> last bit. Surely a solid state amp with negative feedback can sink
> the current generated by the voice coil very effectively, giving it a
> near-zero output impedance and heavily damping the cone movement,
> whereas a valve (tube) output stage has to have an output transformer
> that lies outside any feedback loop and thus it's secondary winding DC
> resistance contributes to the output impedance and reduces its ability
> to damp the speaker cone?
--
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