"Bret Ludwig" wrote in message
oups.com

"Don't clip the amplifier" is easy to say, and tough to
do.

Nonsense. People do it all the time.

Totally avoiding amplifier clipping under any and all
circumstnaces

A totally ludicrous goal. In the real world enough can be known about the
initial requirements that clipping can generally be avoided.

requires either active power compression
control (i.e. "Power Guard")

Compression is not a solution because it has its own set of audible
consequences.

or a really, really, really big amplifier,

By the ca. 1960 standards of tube bigots, really really big amplifers are
now readily available.

the very small signal performance of which
is usually suspect unless the amplifier is made extremely
heavy and hot and has a very high quiescent power draw.

Total nonsense.

A 20 watt tube amp that pulls 50 watts at full power is
more efficient in practice than a 250 watt solid state
amp that pulls 80 watts quiescent and 500 at full power
if either provides the same _subjective_ performance-even
though the solid state amp is more efficent for each watt
it puts out.

There's no way that a 20 watt tube amp can sound better than a 500 watt amp,
if the situation requires much more than 20 watts. While tube enthusiasts
like to posture about how their hobby-horse amps sound as good if not better
than far larger SS amps, back in the real world an hi fi amp that is
clipping sounds bad no matter what its active devices are.

First, Hamm's article by title states "transistors _can_
sound better than tubes", which is sometimes true, not
that they "always do" which we know to be false.

This is just more senseless posturing. Of course a sweeping generality can
be false under some situations. So what?

Either vacuum tubes or trnasistors can be used with good
results. However many people still prefer to use vacuum
tubes, at least under certain circumstances.

There are enough people listening to amplifiers that the "many people (who)
still prefer to use vacuum tubes" is a miniscule and shrinking minority.

However, I have not yet read this second Hamm paper, and
will endeavor to do so. It still won't make building tube
amps any less recreationally rewarding, though.

I thought this was about technology, not recreation.