Forget transistors, tubes are still very hot

I saw and heard a number of other wonderful stereo systems based on interesting vacuum tube designs at the weekend expo. Some amplifiers sold for a few hundred dollars; some for a few thousand.  Some for even more. Auditioning what was being played in the Audio Note room was a labor of love.

There was even one room featuring a reel-to-reel tape deck. Charles King used an ancient Stellavox tape deck and a modified Dynaco FM3 tuner as music sources in his room. Needless to say, it was very crowded in Charlie’s listening room.

At the other end of the spectrum, there were some interesting displays which showcased iPods as real music components. 

The people at Robyatt Audio were showing off an affordable, high-end home hi-fi using an iPod instead of a CD player or FM tuner. 

The iPod was plugged directly into a beautiful Italian-made Tektron TK2A3/59S-I integrated amplifier chock full of vacuum tubes ($2,050) using those same terrific Omega speakers mentioned above. You can use any of a number of output tubes in this amp (2A3, 45, 245, 345, 300B, 50, 250, 350 or VT52) for slightly different sounds.

Robyatt Audio The baeutiful, simple Tektron integrated amplifier uses tubes throughout its design.

Overall, the sound coming from this little system was top-rate.

So was the music coming from the Red Wine Audio room. Proprietor and chief designer Vinnie Rossi makes some very good sounding amps and preamps — transistor stuff that we won’t discuss today.

But Vinnie also has a booming modification business. He takes very good-sounding components and takes them to the next level. He makes very simple circuitry sound amazingly good.

One of those components is the Olive Symphony music distribution/storage/CD player that I recently told you about. Vinnie does lots of modifications that I won’t go into in great depth but one that I will tell you about. He changes the Symphony to run on batteries. The unit still plugs into the wall, but when you’re listening to it all the power comes from the new battery.  Noise coming from your home AC line — and in my home there’s a lot of noise — is totally eliminated. The difference is astounding.

So is the sound of Red Wine’s modified iPods, called iMods. Basically, Vinnie takes the iPod’s digital output signal and routes it through a much better-sounding circuit. The headphone jack is turned into an audio output jack so you can plug your iMod into your stereo. 

If you rip your music, as recommended, using Apple’s Lossless codec (the best compromise between file size and sound quality) you won’t believe just how good your iPod can sound.

The sounds coming from Vinnie’s room proved his point. The music sounded less "digital" than I’ve ever heard coming from inexpensive digital sources.

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