raleighnut
Legendary Member
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- One of the 'Elite'
I think QUAD did that several times with various variations of their transistor amps from the 303 (Triode) to the 405 (Current Dumping) against the QUAD11 (valve) and no-one was able to tell the difference.although aesthetically pleasing, and quad are a recognised good make, I do recall an article in wireless world some 35 years ago where they tried to get to the bottom of whether valves where better for hi-fi, and in fact even if there was such a thing as "valve sound". They did blind listening tests under very carefully controlled conditions, with matched levels etc, and tested two quad amps against each other, I think the 405 transistor amp, and whatever the valve alternative was at the time. After a lot of statistical tests, they concluded that listeners couldn't actually tell the difference, never mind have a preference. . They got similar scores for a preference A versus B as A versus A or B versus B. Both sounded the same. Admittedly both the same make, and hence built to similar aims, but was interesting.
My own preference is 2 303 poweramps each fed a single channel (from the pre- amp) that is 'commoned' across the inputs powering a pair of speakers that have separate terminals for the bass and tweeter. This gets around the problem of intermodulation/crosstalk within the poweramps that is present in all stereo amplifiers with a single powersupply, (quoted at better than 60db for the 303) by effectively using them as 2 channel monoblocks.
Not as 'pretty' as valve amps though.
Sound nice though.