Which is the better violin, the strativarius, or the garnery?

Which is the better way to record music, on vinyl or digitally?

And then, which is the better way to amplify that signal for playback, a digital amp or

old-school vacuum tubes?

Turns out this latter question is just as passionately debated as the others.

Today we separate this signal from the noise surrounding tube amps.

That's up next, UnSkeptoid.

You're listening to Skeptoid.

I'm Kevin Hoover from Skeptoid.com.

Tube Amplifiers.

The 20th century dawned with an innovation that transformed communications and set today's

electronics industry in motion, vacuum tubes.

Once succeeded by more efficient, miniaturized circuits, tubes still enjoy deep loyalty by

musicians and the audio enthusiasts who spend to reproduce their music.

Is the order for this antique appliance misplaced, with appreciation colored by extraneous

associations, or do the drab silicon successors to gleaming vacuum tubes fail to relate the

magic in the music?

Have your headphones, settle into your favorite chair, and crank up your high-fi as we sound

out the signal and the noise surrounding tube amplifiers.

But first some science and history.

When electronics pioneer and Marconi company engineer John Ambrose Fleming invented the

vacuum tube in 1904, he couldn't have known that his new device, known as a thermionic

...