From AAAS, news of a super tiny vacuum-tube transistor hybrid that can operate up to .46 TERAHertz (thats 460,000 megahertz or 460 gigahertz):
Return of the Vacuum Tube
by Jon Cartwright
Peer inside an antique radio and you’ll find what look like small light bulbs. They’re actually vacuum tubes—the predecessors of the silicon transistor. Vacuum tubes went the way of the dinosaurs in the 1960s, but researchers have now brought them back to life, creating a nano-sized version that’s faster and hardier than the transistor. It’s even able to survive the harsh radiation of outer space.
Developed early last century, vacuum tubes offered the first easy way to amplify electric signals. Like light bulbs, they are glass bulbs containing a heated filament. But above the filament are two additional electrodes: a metal grid and, at the top of the bulb, a positively charged plate. The heated filament emits a steady flow of electrons, which are attracted to the plate’s positive charge. The rate of electron flow can be controlled by the charge on the intervening grid, which means a small electric signal applied to the grid—say, the tiny output of a gramophone—is reproduced in the much stronger electron flow from filament to plate. As a result, the signal is amplified and can be sent to a loudspeaker.
Vacuum tubes suffered a slow death during the 1950s and ’60s thanks to the invention of the transistor—specifically, the ability to mass-produce transistors by chemically engraving, or etching, pieces of silicon. Transistors were smaller, cheaper, and longer lasting. They could also be packed into microchips to switch on and off according to different, complex inputs, paving the way for smaller, more powerful computers.
But transistors weren’t better in all respects. Electrons move more slowly in a solid than in a vacuum, which means transistors are generally slower than vacuum tubes; as a result, computing isn’t as quick as it could be. What’s more, semiconductors are susceptible to strong radiation, which can disrupt the atomic structure of the silicon such that the charges no longer move properly. That’s a big problem for the military and NASA, which need their technology to work in radiation-harsh environments such as outer space.
…
The new device is a cross between today’s transistors and the vacuum tubes of yesteryear. It’s small and easily manufactured, but also fast and radiation-proof. Meyyappan, who co-developed the “nano vacuum tube,” says it is created by etching a tiny cavity in phosphorous-doped silicon. The cavity is bordered by three electrodes: a source, a gate, and a drain. The source and drain are separated by just 150 nanometers, while the gate sits on top. Electrons are emitted from the source thanks to a voltage applied across it and the drain, while the gate controls the electron flow across the cavity. In their paper published online today in Applied Physics Letters,
Full story here at AAAS, here’s my concept pictorial image (may not be fully accurate – I don’t have access to their paper diagrams) of what it looks like compared to the traditional vacuum tube (triode) based on what I’ve been able to find on the design:
The paper from AIP:
Vacuum nanoelectronics: Back to the future?—Gate insulated nanoscale vacuum channel transistor
Jin-Woo Han1, Jae Sub Oh2, and M. Meyyappan1
1Center for Nanotechnology, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California 94035, USA
2National Nanofab Center, 335 Gwahangno, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 305-806, Korea
(Received 24 February 2012; accepted 22 April 2012; published online 23 May 2012)
- A gate-insulated vacuum channel transistor was fabricated using standard silicon semiconductor processing. Advantages of the vacuum tube and transistor are combined here by nanofabrication. A photoresist ashing technique enabled the nanogap separation of the emitter and the collector, thus allowing operation at less than 10 V. A cut-off frequency fT of 0.46 THz has been obtained. The nanoscale vacuum tubes can provide high frequency/power output while satisfying the metrics of lightness, cost, lifetime, and stability at harsh conditions, and the operation voltage can be decreased comparable to the modern semiconductor devices.
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Thanks Anthony!
You brought back some nice childhood memories, mostly forgotten! In the late 60’s, my folks acquired a color television, when the old black-and-white set was getting cantankerous. After a bit of negotiating, they agreed to let me delve into the old B&W set, I’m sure with the caveat “He can’t make it much worse!” I was 13-14 years old then.
I had already caught on to the simple tube diagnostics of “look for one that isn’t lit, has a broken filament, or has a lot of grey/black soot on the inside of the tube glass” from exploring a couple of old tube radios. When my folks would go into the nearest ‘town’ (Markesan WI, about 8 miles) once a week to get groceries, I’d tag a long so I could get to the local TV sales and repair shop, to test and replace ‘suspicious looking’ tubes on their tube tester. It took a few weeks and several discussions with the really nice old fellow that ran the TV repair shop, but eventually I had the old set working reasonably well again! I now had a TV in my bedroom, much to the surprise of my older brothers and sisters!
If the folks were watching some ‘serious’ show (The Evening News, with Walter Cronkite…), we would pile into my room to see if we could get something ‘better’ on the old B&W (Daniel Boone?!). Mind you, the ‘deep fringe antenna’ had to be aimed at either Green Bay WI or Madison WI with the antenna rotator, to receive any of the 3 or 4 stations we could usually receive! On one occasion, the ‘new’ color TV went on the fritz and I ended up with Mon, Dad, and the rest in my room watching ‘Gunsmoke’, a family favorite!
Thanks for shaking some nice memories loose again!
MtK
@george E Smith
“There’s a lunatic fringe of so-called hi-fi nutz, who still believe that valve amplifiers sound better than transistor ones; the sound is “warmer” they claim. Well I never ever heard, a “warm” symphony orchestra”
By coincidence I’ve spent the last few days on the internet researching which tubes to buy for a mic preamp I’m building (settled on some 80s military Mullards in the end). In the process I discovered that there’s no bore like a hi-fi bore, and that some do talk a lot of bull. The ‘superior’ and ‘warm’ sound quality of tubes which they perceive as accuracy most likely comes from even order harmonic distortion introduced by the tubes and other analogue circuitry in their amplifiers, giving some instruments a more human voice like quality (and also maybe emulating sound reflections in an enclosed space which can add depth). In reality a lack of reproduction accuracy but sometimes pleasing nonetheless.
Looking forward to getting the amp finished, but it’s probably 50/50 as to whether me or the tubes light up when I switch it on..
I’m amused that no one has picked up on the fact that the tube referred to at the start of the article (12AU6) is in fact a pentode, not a triode as used in the following explanation about how the vacuum nanotransistor works.
The triode 12AU7 (+variants) however has been used in numerous audio/hifi and guitar amplifiers.
My boss is a vacuum tube amp fanatic, and I’ve talked to him about the difference between audiophile solid state amplifiers and tube-amp guitar amplifiers. Yes, there is a big difference, and musicians rightfully love the tube amp sound. Tubes are 3/2 law devices, so they naturally introduce harmonic distortion into the waveform. They also tend to be smoother at the clipping point; distortion increases smoothly rather than just hitting the wall like solid state amps do. So…. an electric guitar with a tube amp constitutes a musical instrument, and the sound of that instrument is compelling.
But hi fidelity sound reproduction is a different problem. There, the object is to be absolutely faithful to the original source material. Harmonic and inter-modulation distortion are killers for transparency and accuracy. Distortion is eliminated by having lots of head room; one simply uses an amplifier with so much power capacity that you never get close to clipping. You don’t want a hi-fi amp to sound warm. You want it to acoustically disappear.
I built my first audio amp back in the late ’60s using 6V6 outputs with A-B biasing, and a 12AX7 phase splitter. It was good for about 15 watts. It sits in my basement now, gathering dust and memories.
-BillR
“”””” JJB MKI says:
May 25, 2012 at 5:24 pm
@george E Smith
“There’s a lunatic fringe of so-called hi-fi nutz, who still believe that valve amplifiers sound better than transistor ones; the sound is “warmer” they claim. Well I never ever heard, a “warm” symphony orchestra”
By coincidence I’ve spent the last few days on the internet researching which tubes to buy for a mic preamp I’m building (settled on some 80s military Mullards in the end). In the process I discovered that there’s no bore like a hi-fi bore, and that some do talk a lot of bull. The ‘superior’ and ‘warm’ sound quality of tubes which they perceive as accuracy most likely comes from even order harmonic distortion introduced by the tubes and other analogue circuitry in their amplifiers, giving some instruments a more human voice like quality (and also maybe emulating sound reflections in an enclosed space which can add depth). In reality a lack of reproduction accuracy but sometimes pleasing nonetheless.
Looking forward to getting the amp finished, but it’s probably 50/50 as to whether me or the tubes light up when I switch it on. “””””
My point is JJ, that ANY competently designed audio Amplifier, uses so much negative feedback, that the amplified INPUT SIGNAL couldn’t possibly have enough harmonic distortion to hear over the distortion introduced by THE INPUT AND OUTPUT TRANSDUCERS; namely, microphones, phono pickups, loudspeakers, not to mention speaker enclosures.
The rush to tiny matchbox speaker enclosures, which drive down the low frequency response corner frequency by accoustically loading the speaker to the point that the efficiency drops radically, and every six dB of conversion efficiency, you throw away, gets you another octave of low frequency response, at the expense of having to double the drive power. The resut is that whereas a 1960 era speaker system could level the house walls with five Watts, of Amplifier power in a high efficiency speaker, today you need 500 Watts, to put in the Bozo et al full six inch cone sub contra base WOOooofer.
The other modern problem is the penchant for using “opamps” for audio preamps. A typical opamp feedback amplifier, is actually an integrated input signal ATTENUATOR and feedback amplifier, and that attenuator formed by the two gain resistors, throws away input signal power, so the result is unavoidable input circuit noise.
In addition, typical integrated op amps, have high frequency cutoff frequencies, in the 1 to 100 Hertz range (open loop), so the neagtive feedback starts dropping, almost before you get into an actual audible signal frequency.
If your preamp doesn’t have an OPEN LOOP BANDWIDTH of at least 10 kHz to 20 kHz BEFORE, you apply negative feedback around it, then it DOESN’T have low distortion for high audio frequencies.
Phono preamp amplifier designs ALMOST INVARIABLY throw MOST of the tiny signal power, down the drain in the (47 kOhm) cartridge “load resistor”; and then try to low noise amplify the few dregs of signal power that remains, as a Voltage across that resistor.
Well I don’t have time to describe all the better low noise low distortion architectures, that were thoroughly researched by engineers at Tektronix (and other places) back in the 1960s.
Make that four times the power for each octave lowering of the low frequency cutoff frequency of the speaker cone.
Thankyou KevinK, I have been pondering for a while how the radar proximity fuses were possible at such an early date.
An odd thing that science noticed long ago, is that a simple vaccum tube like an xray tube that consists of two plates in the opposite ends of a glass evacuated tube. Electrons randomly and spontaneously appear in the vaccum. A large computer made with these new nano tubes may give some surprising outputs!!!!
“”””” William C Rostron says:
May 26, 2012 at 12:14 am
My boss is a vacuum tube amp fanatic, and I’ve talked to him about the difference between audiophile solid state amplifiers and tube-amp guitar amplifiers. Yes, there is a big difference, and musicians rightfully love the tube amp sound. Tubes are 3/2 law devices, so they naturally introduce harmonic distortion into the waveform. They also tend to be smoother at the clipping point; distortion increases smoothly rather than just hitting the wall like solid state amps do. So…. an electric guitar with a tube amp constitutes a musical instrument, and the sound of that instrument is compelling.
But hi fidelity sound reproduction is a different problem. There, the object is to be absolutely faithful to the original source material. Harmonic and inter-modulation distortion are killers for transparency and accuracy. Distortion is eliminated by having lots of head room; one simply uses an amplifier with so much power capacity that you never get close to clipping. You don’t want a hi-fi amp to sound warm. You want it to acoustically disappear. “””””
Well it all depends on design decisions. One of which is to run the power output stages class AB. That automatically means that the amplifier draws a non constant power from the power supply. The bigger the signal and power out demand, the more power the amp draws from the power supply, and the more that power supply will sag, and everything goes pear shaped. In addition, the power supplies were seldom regulated on those early Williamson era amplifiers; and even if they had been, it wouldn’t make much difference, because regulated power supplies simply do not have the same transient, and frequency response that hi fi amplifiers do, So when the whole Orchestra suddenly goes Bang !, and your class AB amplifier suddenly DEMANDS more power from the power supply, then the regulated (or unregulated) power supply, simply says; can you hang on a minute while I throw another log on the fire.
The answer of course is to strictly adhere to class A output power stages, so that the power drawn from the power supply, is absolutely constant regardless of signal level (or irregardless, as the case may be). So if the supply power is constant, the lack of fast transient response is irrelevent.
Yes class A amps draw maximum power all the time. All the more reason to not use inneficient matchbox speakers, so you don’t need a 500 Watt amplifier, unless you want to play music in Yankee Stadium.
And if you stay with push pull stages, then you don’t generate even order harmonics; and of course, the vaccuum tube 3/2 power resonse is irrelevent, since the use of negative feedback makes the gain totally independent of the active devices or their transfer curve law. But I forgot; you can’t put much negative feedback around a class B or class AB amplifier, because now the frequency and transient response of the power supply, is part of the amplifier open loop system response, and the power supply will oscillate, if the amplifier itself doesn’t.
Yes you can design good audio systems; and you can design schlocky ones too, and most people settle for schlocky; after all, if it is a guitar amplifier, or if your input is that Canadian shrieker singer; who can sing all the harmonic distortion anyone can stand, without ANY amplifier system; then who cares if it sounds crappy.
“”””” CodeTech says:
May 25, 2012 at 4:35 am
George E. Smith, a very large portion of professional (studio grade) recording equipment still contains at least one vacuum tube. I’m sitting right beside both a microphone and a pre-amp that both have tubes, and they’re not old. There IS a warmer sound, and in truth there’s no good reason they couldn’t simulate the sound with solid state. The reality is the solid state guys get so obsessed with the accuracy of signal that they forget the vagaries of art. “””””
Well code, I’m all in favor of everybody doing whatever floats their boat. That after all is what the whole “climate catastrophe” business is all about. Some people just FEEL that it is getting warmer, even though the science proves there is no way they could sense that, even if it was true.
So if your studio judgement is a feel good approach, that’s ok by me.
Now with my son, his music is ALL about art; he could care less about high fidelity (another way of describing replication of the original). So he makes no effort to preserve reality, and so he artistically creates EVERY SINGLE NOTE of his quite creative music, on his lap top, out of ones and zeros; so his music has absolutely zero distortion or lack of fidelity, and it has all the warmth anyone could desire, or even cold if they feel that way inclined.
If somebody wants to pay $4,000 for a microphone that has a gold plated can, like one I saw recently at a San Jose guitar center; well I’m not going to get between him, and someone itching to take his money.
I have NO DISAGREEMENT with anybody who claims that tube (valve) audio gear sounds different, from some (name your poison) alternative. And if that is better for you; enjoy, but don’t expect everyone to agree with you because it sounds “warm.”
By the way; how does warm sound; is it akin to how “warm” looks in light bulbs.
If Mark Zuckerberg, can rip off people for over 20 million dollars in one day; selling them 30 plus million “shares”, for $38 that are worth seven dollars less tomorrow; all in the name of conning people into publishing all the information needed by the identity theft industry, for the whole world to see; then perhaps such people deserve to be separated from their money. Well they are depending on someone else being even sillier, and willing to pay even more than they did. I guess you can sell painted human excrementas art, to people who feel good about it. That’s capitalism
Does anyone come home from a rock concert (held anywhere), and exclaim; gee that microphone with the tube in it sure sounded good ! Like they actually heard anything.
Right now I’m sitting in a Peeks coffee shop in Mountain View, and they are playing some 17th century string instrument music; have been for hours, except when they play flute music instead. What they are playing, is obscure, and thoroughly deserves all the obscurity it can muster and then some. It was trash when it was written, and it is still trash; but people will pay other people to play it. Well you can’t here it anyway, because in this coffee shop, they grind the coffee with a hammer, and every 20 seconds or so, some worker smashes their hammer on some metal can for some reason, drowning out the ancient substitute for texting. I’m sure if OSHA walked in here with a noise meter, they would cite the place, for unsafe working conditions. But actually, nobody in ere sipping coffee and yakking, seems to even notice.
Each to his own I guess; that’s capitalism.
Make that over $200,000,000 loss to Zuckerberg victims.
George E. Smith; says:
May 26, 2012 at 1:38 pm
> By the way; how does warm sound; is it akin to how “warm” looks in light bulbs.
I’m not sure myself, but a level headed EE audiophile friend explained a couple things that made sense.
One of the key things seems to be reduced gain at high levels. E.g. where digital would clip and sound horrible, tubes enter a realm where the signal tails off, i.e. a sawtooth wave would have less pointy tops and lose some of the high harmonics of the sawtooth. In digital, the sawtooth would become a trapezoid. The other, (think op amps here) tube circuitry has a limited slew rate, this also limits loud, high frequency sounds. Like record scratches. I assume purists don’t hook up CD players to tube amps. If they do, how can they live with themselves?
I’d like to see some of that displayed on an oscilloscope, of course, but I can see how limiting loud high frequency sound can be considered warm, and a good thing.
Me, I’ll stick to my CD player.
He also told me to use OFC (Oxygen Free Copper) for speaker cables and to ignore anything that refers to skin effect in speaker cable. Which is pretty much what I had figured. Speaker cables just don’t have any issue with skin effect, at least not at frequencies we can hear.
George E Smith
Not in a rock concert George, but in a recording studio or the proper home listening environment, yes.
Source.
“”””” Keith Minto says:
May 26, 2012 at 6:36 pm
George E Smith
Does anyone come home from a rock concert (held anywhere), and exclaim; gee that microphone with the tube in it sure sounded good ! Like they actually heard
anything.
Not in a rock concert George, but in a recording studio or the proper home listening environment, yes. “””””
I’d venture that more microphones are used at rock concerts, than in recording studios or home listening environments. How about at a jazz festival. Two years ago, I attended the Catalina (Avalon) jazz festival, and we had perfect seats in the middle of the amphitheater, listening to a jazz combo of about six players, so we were maybe 30 to 40 feet from the musicians. We never heard a peep out of the musicians on the stage. Their playing was totally drowned out to the point of inaudibility, by the noise put out from the grossly distorted theatre sound system. We tried moving to the back of the hall, to no avail; and eventually had to leave because of that horrible noise. Too bad too, because those musicians seemed very talented.
And I think I explained why amplifiers crash; specially class AB and class B amps; it’s their power supply that limits. And I’m not responsible for poorly designed amp systems that overload. At home, I can easily crank my stereo system up way beyond realistic listening level; and I am fond of both full bore symphonic or operatic music; as well as French organ music. So I am not your standard flute solo enthusiast. About a year ago, my son accidently switched on a noisy movie DVD, without checking the level, and he tore the cone out of the rim, on one of my JBL speakers.
Amazingly, I was able to resurrect it slowly, by painting it with several coats of nylon loaded Hard as nails finger nail polish. So my amp just does not limit within the realistic listening level of the loudest stuff I listen to.
And if it is necessary to add deliberate distortion to the original sound to make it “warm”, then I’ll just make do with my normally cool music, which doesn’t sound distorted.
So do people think that listening to MP3 music on their cell phone; that the teens like to do, is where it is at ?
I’ve seen valve amplifiers that cost $20,000 per channel, that you put down on the carpet in your “audio room”, so your friends can admire them; and your taste. Well good for them; they probably have too much money for their own good.
And as for those “warm” tube mike amps in the recording studio. Note that word “recording.”
The end consumer is going to listen to that “recording”. Well actually they will listen to what remains of that “warm” music after the “sound engineers” have finished with masticating it and digitizing it so that it has lots of quantization noise, specially in the quiet passages, where the ear can hardly ignore it. The very best “records” I have are actually now 40 year old LPs. Except for a few scratches, and sometimes a little dust, thy sound better than CDs. Yes I do actually have the exact same recorded performance originally cut onto disk, from tapes; and a modern digitally remastered CD release of the same recording. The LPs sound better; can’t tell if they are warm or not.
Still don’t know what warm music is; something like wine “bokay”, I would venture.
George E. Smith;
If this sounds like an argument, I can assure you it’s not. But hopefully I can explain some of this for the benefit of anyone wondering about warmth.
I record digitally. I personally prefer 24bit/96khz for the highest quality I can get with my equipment, with the greatest dynamic range. I lay down the tracks: drums, bass, guitar, keyboards, vocals, vocals, more vocals, and do a mix. The mix is balanced, each track is individually EQd so it stands out in the mix, and the overall mix makes a satisfying downward slant on the spectrum analyzer. That’s part one, and it sounds great here in the studio.
Trouble is, when I take it from the studio, downsample it to 44/16 for CD quality, and play it in the car, it sounds horrible. It’s cold, lifeless, sterile. Yes, those are subjective terms, and they are terms you will hear virtually everyone in the recording world use. I don’t know the origin of the terms, and probably neither do the majority of people who use them.
So the first thing that, again, virtually everyone in the recording world does: I add distortion. Or, I take away precision, depending on your perspective. Two voices together in perfect pitch sound bland. Detune one slightly and they merge into a rich blend that looks quite complex on the scope. Instruments should never be perfectly tuned, but obviously also never too far out of tune.
Vocals are almost always compressed, otherwise the quieter parts get lost in the music. Compression makes the quiet parts louder and the loud parts quieter, to compress the dynamic range. Compression is almost a voodoo art, not enough and your vocals seem to get louder and quieter, too much and they lose power and punch. Overcompression leads to chuffing, and that particular one is at least onomatopoeic. Each track needs to be compressed differently, and the overall mix also gets compressed.
If you listen to any popular music from at least the 50s, you will hear intentionally introduced distortion, and specific response curves of the compressors and their settings. Some famous compressors limit your range of control and always add a characteristic sound, while current digital ones can pretty much be set wherever you need them to be. I mentioned before that there is an Abbey Road plug-in that faithfully reproduces the actual specific hardware that was custom built just for Abbey Road, using tubes, and exists nowhere else. Those sounds are instantly recognizable to any Beatles fan, or fans of any of the British Invasion bands.
Every track in a recording has a certain range of compression, EQ, and distortion that defines it as the sound that we are used to hearing. Originally it was done this way live, then the ad-hoc standard was further refined in studios through the decades, and even today very few recordings ever achieve success if they are outside of the norms.
I noticed your comment before comparing the “warmth” with something undefinable like the AGW people promote, and nothing could be farther from the truth. What we describe as “warm” is a combination of dynamics and distortion, that makes the sound less precise but more like you’d hear sitting beside someone in a comfortable setting, maybe beside the fire. If you wanted perfect quality, the person would have to speak right into your ear. A real comfortable conversation takes place in a room with sound reflecting and absorbing materials and is totally unpredictable.
Live concerts work entirely differently. I don’t think many people realize it, but after playing an artists’ albums a few dozen (or hundred) times, they literally fill in most of the details when they hear it live. Live music quality can descend to the level of horrid while still elating the audience. This is the trick that gets the showmen going, adding dancing and visual effects (eye candy) to the music that is mostly in the audience’s head. Almost every concert I’ve been to uses non-tube Shure SM58 mics for their convenience and good signal quality, then basically slaps together a passable mix.
In my recording industry years I often encountered someone who tried to run live sound the way they ran a studio mix, and it never works. Your description of an overly loud and poorly rendered concert is a perfect example. I would always tell these techs to, first and foremost, TURN IT DOWN. 90db is a good volume, anything more annoys your audience.
For the record (no pun), I love classical music, and nothing has more power than a real orchestra at full volume, pounding out the crescendo for a symphony. Live performances always include the acoustics of the hall they were recorded in, usually some coughs, the occasional mistuned instrument or misplayed note, and that is part of the appeal.
Imprecision is warm. Precision is cold and sterile.
Oops, almost forgot:
Almost ANY audio purist, myself included, will agree with you that your 40 year old records sound better than anything new, with the possible exception of the latest high sample rate remasters of analog recordings (the jury is still out on that). And yes, you have thus defined “warmth”.
It is unfortunate that the current generation are being brought up believing that hiss is an evil sound… they can’t tolerate an occasional click or pop. Then again, they also can’t handle a space between their songs and are more than happy to mix the tail of one to the start of another.
MP3s are horrible quality, unless the settings are all maxed out at 320, but nobody does that because at 128 they can fit more songs on their disc or device. The end result of this is not so bad, they don’t realize it but 20 years from now they’ll long for the nostalgic sound of a badly rendered MP3, and recording studios will obligingly reduce all their quality to that.
“”””” CodeTech says:
May 27, 2012 at 6:31 am
George E. Smith;
If this sounds like an argument, I can assure you it’s not. But hopefully I can explain some of this for the benefit of anyone wondering about warmth. “””””
Say CodeTech, thanks for the detail on what YOU do, and what you are telling me (which I certainly believe) is that YOU and your brethren, are as much the ARTISTS, as are the grassed out guys jumping around on the stage, and smashing their guitars, for audience effect.
I happen to have an almost full set of all ten of the Widor Organ Symphonies; which are rarely performed (in full) and even more rarely ever recorded; so I take what I can get. Now recording a pipe organ is quite difficult, and whoever “did” these recordings, did a lousy job; lousy mike placement (if any) and lousy mixing so they sound like mush; but there they are, virtually the only records of those works you can get. For good measure, some of the organists involved, despite their reputations, also did a really lousy interpretation of the works; but what can one say; nobody else recorded them.
On the other hand, the sound engineers and recordists, who put together the Georg Solti Decca/London recording of the complete Wagner, Ring of the Nibelung, with a spectacular singing cast in the 1960s made a recording, that likely will never be surpassed.
Now I should hasten to add, that the music genre is not the issue, I can listen to most anything; although I certainly don’t know a lot of categories. I know nowt about jazz, but my ear and my heart sure as hell knows when it likes it.
I know nothing about Country and Western music; either one as they say, or Bluegrass, but if I hear something I like, I kow when I like it. Amazingly, when I go to work, these days (I still work) I actually can get to hear some of the best Bluegrass fiddling music on the planet;and am itching to get my hands on some of those recordings. But I’m spoiled rotten; I can actually listen to live artists playing in the next room, including a four time National Grand Champion BG fiddler, and currently an excellent Junior one as well.
So I don’t have a problem with folks such as YOU creating works of pure fiction, when the result is more satisfying than the “observed facts” ; but a 90 dB reduction for that Certain shrieker would be a great improvement.
Incidently, your 24 bit A-D certainly should practically fix the quantization noise at low levels. I’m not sure it was available when Decca remastered the “Ring” for CD from the original 16 track tapes from the 60s. The CDs are more convenient to play, but the old LPs still sound better; but then I have to toss the family out of the house to get rid of ambient noises.
Dunno whether my son’s computer music, will ever make him rich; but at the moment, he is also his own recordist. But then he doesn’t use any mikes, so even a gold plated one won’t help him.
George
I’d love to here what a silicon tube would sound like in audio application. Oh the sweet sound of the breathing tube amp. Jack Vance’s “Book of Dreams” has interesting comment about how real musicians intentionally don’t play music accurately. A musician plays all these extra things “wrong” to make the music come alive. Sounded like something Minto was saying.
Someone also mentioned the other great audio technology, the turntable, which is superior because it is analog and is missing the digital pulse. No possible number of digits can beat no digits. Digital music is tiring and stressful: it’s sandpaper on the subconscious. When I listen to records with a non-digital amp I get to go way down into the music, there is no second reality digi-beat.
Audiophiles are nuts. No further proof is needed other than what is written by them in these comments.
Mac the Knife says:
May 25, 2012 at 4:08 pm
Thanks Anthony!
You brought back some nice childhood memories, mostly forgotten! In the late 60′s, my folks acquired a color television, when the old black-and-white set was getting cantankerous. After a bit of negotiating, they agreed to let me delve into the old B&W set, I’m sure with the caveat “He can’t make it much worse!” I was 13-14 years old then.
In the year 1958, 14 years old, the boss of the local TV repair shop in Germany has begun teaching me TV technology with receivers like this and all that stuff of tubes. In July 1969 I was watching late night on such B/W TV receiver the TV pictures from the Moon. In my last years in research fifty years later in 2008 all that stuff was helpful to design a CT x-ray tube emitting electrons of total 2 Amps from a round cathode accelerated by 75 kV on a rotating tungsten anode spot. Its not problem of high frequency but on power density. It was fun.
.
V.