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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Vanquish" data-source="post: 108994" data-attributes="member: 84">** We're not OT ... I think we're still discussing ICE related topics as these arguments apply both in car and at home **Affan ... good point but don't you think even MOSFET and other form of solid state power supply also introduce coloration on the end result ? Take this usual adage of Italian amps like Audison, PHD, Steg and etc being WARM sounding while Helix, Xetec, Brax, Zapco are supposedly CLEAN sounding. Most if not all of these amps are MOSFET powered ... the only difference being the components like boards, PCBs, caps, resistors and power supplies being the main difference. And yet, our brains easily adjust to what we're hearing and it hits us with a thought like " Damn, this amp sounds way cleaner and more detailed than that XYZ amp!"It's actually here the tubes gather that upper hand over the solid states as it's tied up in the sensing instrument - that is, your ear. The way the human ear works is that it is very sensitive to the harmonic content of a sound. A tube amp is less linear (that is, has more distortion) at signal levels below clipping than a solid state amplifier. The distortion will increase slowly, and then more rapidly as the amp starts to clip. In fact, the distortion increases so gradually and is of such a benign nature that the onset of audible distortion has no easily defined threshold. The solid state amplifier on the other hand has no such gradualism. It is almost perfectly non-distorting right up to the point that it clips, and then it clips HARD. It's easy to hear the threshold. This sudden onset of distortion is also composed of relatively harsh sounding distortion, not like the subtle second and third harmonics of the tube amp. The human ear hears the sudden harsh distortion as clipping and harshness. It interprets the low order distortion of the tube amp as a louder sound, not as distortion. In effect, the tube amp fools the ear into thinking that its early distortion is more loudness. They therefore sound louder or more powerful than the actual measurements show are really there. But I remember this saying very well ... IF YOU'RE STILL LOOKING FOR NEUTRAL AUDIO GEARS ... STOP LOOKING. THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS NEUTRAL GEARS IN REALITY. As you said it, if such a simple thing like a signal cable swap make a noticeable difference in a system, then doesn't that just reaffirm the above ?  <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /> Basically, all sound reproduction adds color, because sound reproduction is about taking a three-dimensional sound waveform, squashing it into two dimensions, and then attempting to recreate the original 3-D in another media.</blockquote>

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