Why do people love TUBE AMPS? 

Thanks lads!

some years ago, when I was in the HiFi trade, the company I was with started marketing some valved amplification from a Japanese company called Wavac. We launched their product range at the Singaporean HiFi exhibition with their mighty HE-833 SET monoblock amplifiers which used an 833 transmitting tube for each monoblock amp driven by KT88s. The sound was quite stunning as the amps were paired with an early Magico stand mounted loudspeaker. Quite uniquely the Wavac amplifiers used interstage transformers throughout eschewing capacitors which the designer thought was detrimental to the audio quality.

Tubes are always something I admire in terms of the sound , circuit topology and design . Love the woo audio tube mini. Tube that I can actually bring out with great power.

A quality tube amp does something absolutely magical to the midrange and I find it absolutely addictive. I use the Woo Audio WA22 (2nd Gen) and that amp has certainly transformed my audio world.

people are using tubes in a modern way and they forget tubes are old tech with its quirks. Similar to playing vinyl records, the pops and clicks are the charm. :)

Listened to the Abyss/WA33 set up at a London CanJam a few years ago, the best set up at the show and blew everything clean out of the water. Still dreaming of winning the lottery and treating myself to an Abyss/Woo set up. I have the WA22, love it and will never let it go 😀

But don’t tube amps have a less ‘ black background’ as a good SS headphone amp? Thanks

Tubes are good at throwing a large see-through soundstage with all the detail without sounding analytical or harsh in any way. This smoothness is what is often called warmth which is slightly misleading. Today's better tube amps are not syrupy, dark sounding or tonally unbalanced.

Trafomatic primavera, woo wa33, viva 845 egoista