3 ms·

Tubes are better since they have amplify with less "zero point crossover distortion". Silicon has .7v and Germanium has .3v Vbe so that is why people seek them

• squarefoot 6y ago
  Crossover distortion is completely inaudible if the amplifier is correctly biased as it amounts to a fraction of a fraction percent of the output power, like attempting to listen to a distorted 100 mW pocket radio put on top of a perfectly linear 500W amplifier set at maximum output. The difference between germanium and silicon transistors lays in the former having much narrower bandwidth, so that it naturally and more gracefully limits higher audio frequencies, and some the artifacts of distortion become less audible making the sound more warm. Tubes are better than both in this context because they saturate in a really graceful way and produce mostly even harmonics which give tube guitar amps their unique different sound; this is something hardly reproducible in solid state, unless DSPs are involved. I wouldn't however use tubes for clean HiFi amplifiers as more modern technologies such as Class D today made possible building incredibly good amplifiers at a fraction of the cost, space and energy requirements. They can also be used for guitars, but as Class D stages distortion sounds like pure junk, everything has to be redesigned so that the final stages are kept clean and distortion happens before entering them.