Tube Mastering

[ChiefEngineer]

I have compared some older non re-mastered CD's to CD's that are produced using non tube electronics.

I am hesitant to note exact selections as this was a few years ago. I noted the tube mastered music sounds less shrill. Without exception I could tell which songs had been "made better" (haha) by re mastering. Each had excessive high end. If the music had simply been blaseted to CD without re mastering ti sounded much better.

From the days of listening to radio consoles with tube circuits I recall seeing buried meters and the music still sounded good in many cases.

If we compare now, and then, is this a product of solid state processing versus tube amplifier stages?

If this is something you have noted any comments might be worthwhile. If you have not noticed this do you have early CD's you can compare?

 

[Kmagrill]

Vaccuum tubes clip more gently than solid state electronics. A transistor will typically have lower noise and distortion than a tube but when the transistor reaches cutoff, the output rapidly changes from linear to completely square. Tubes tend to have a transition region where the output retains partial linearity, sort of acting like a soft clipper. Magnetic tape has a similar property as well. Of course, if the mastering is done properly, the audio shouldn't be clipped. In that case, correctly designed solid state circuits will produce a more accurate reproduction of the original source than a tube circuit.

 

[Tom Wells]

It also depends somewhat on the type of electronics and load.
Bipolar transistors have a certain sound and they "tend to" produce odd-order harmonics.
How hard they are driving the load changes the sound, too. Less amplification is almost always a cleaner sound.
Higher amplifier effieciencies often compromise signal purity.
In tubes, lower impedance triodes have a certain sound vs higher impedance pentodes.

The amplifier circuit also comes into account. Single ended class A amps in power stages can be the purest
sound of all, but not very efficient. Push-pull designs automatically cancell even order harmonics in the output.

In remastering, it's probably seldom that we can know what the original electronics were.

I have always shed a tear for the recordings of the Ramones, which defy my best attempts to make them sound like what I know they really sounded like. Or maybe they really wanted that shrill scritchy effect.

Most modern and computer audio will be through MOsFET devices, which like tubes seem to favor even order harmonics.
These are "natural" harmonics, such as occur in naturally reasonating bodies, like wood.
Odd order harmonics are "ouchy" and shrill like fingernails on a blackbaord.

It has been long ago suggested that the ear/brain is very tolerant of harmonic distortion and accepts as much as 5%
without fatigue or alarm IF the ratio of even to odd harmonics favors the even order harmonics.

This either sounds musical or simulates what already occurs in normal variation of listening environments of
all sounds, not just music.