Arny Krueger wrote:
"Pooh Bear" wrote
in message

Stewart Pinkerton wrote:

Russ Hamm proved it in 1973 with his paper which
appeared in JAES and it has not been contradicted. Arny
talks a lot but he knows it's true and will be until
they change the laws of physics.

Hamm's paper was not peer-reviewed,

AFAIK, *everything* in the JAES is peer-reviewed.

No, eberything is NOT necessarily peer-reviewed. Engineering reports
aren't necessarily peer-reviewed.

However, Journal articles are.

I guess the peers were
also tubies. Either that or they were smokin' some gooooood stuff. Maybe
both. ;-)
I'd like to find some AES old-timers and get some straight answers about how
a POS like the Hamm paper made it through the JAES review process. The
guilty parties are probably dead and gone by now, so the truth might be
knowable despite the confidentiality of the review process.

Has anyone here actually READ The Hamm article. It woiuld appear
not, as it does NOT support any of the assertions made about.
Consider the precis of the article:

"Engineers and musicians have long debated the question of
tube sound versus transistor sound. Previous attempts to
measure this difference have always assumed linear operation
of the test amplifier. This conventional method of frequency
response, distortion, and noise measurement has shown that
no significant difference exists. This paper, however, points out
that amplifiers are often severely overloaded by signal transients
(THD 30%). Under this condition there is a major difference in
the harmonic distortion components of the amplified signal, with
tubes, transistors, and operational amplifiers separating into
distinct groups"

Let's look at the KEY points of the article:

* Previous attempts to measure this difference have always
assumed linear operation ...

* amplifiers are often severely overloaded by signal transients
(THD 30%).

The article ONLY deals with the amplifiers topologies AT THE TIME,
UNDER CONDITIONS OF SEVERE CLIPPING DISTRTION.

It makes NO claims about the operation under normal conditions.
The implications are quite clear: Clipping results in audibly
different
output from. An early 1970's tube amplifier sounds different than an
early 1970's transistor amplifier WHEN BOTH ARE BEING SEVERELY
CLIPPED SUCH THAT THEY ARE GENERATING 30% THD.

The solution to the problem is NOT to by tubes or transistors. The
answer to the problem is VERY simple:

DON'T CLIP THE AMPLIFIER!

Thus, Hamm's paper supports the reasonable assertion that a 250
watt sollid stats amplifier MUST sound better than a 20 watt tube
aplifier when both are being asked to try to produce more than 20
watts.

Thus, Mr. Ludwig's assertions:

"Subjectively tube amps of a given specification often (not always)
sound better than solid state amps of better spec. Russ Hamm
proved it in 1973 with his paper which appeared in JAES"

is simply not supportable. The ONLY difference that the Hamm paper
deals with is under conditions of sever clipping, which is not
"always,"
it's not even "often" as Mr. Ludwig erroneously claims. Further, his
statement:

"and it has not been contradicted."

Is similarily false, as the following citation suggest:

Monteith, Jr., Dwight O.; Flowers, Richard R.; Hamm, Russell O,
"Transistors Can Sound Better Than Tubes," Vol 25, no. 3,
pp. 116-120; March 1977

What's interesting is Hamm, the author of the paper erroneously
cited by Ludwig, is one of the authors of this paper!

Further, the suggestion by Mr. Krueger that there is something
fundamentally amiss with the article or the reviewers is similarily
off the mark, because if you actually deal with the contents of the
article, you find that it makes reaonable sense: solid state amplifiers
clip differently than tube amplifiers, and for a variety of reasons.