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So in other words it designed jack shit?

Appreciate what you’re trying to explain… but that explanation contains several crucial errors. Might be worth getting a recording engineer on your channel, to go through this in more detail. For example there’s a big difference in the method for recording an orchestra, vs a rock band. There’s also issue such as source (and even feed) phase coherence, bleed, and natural reverb reflections. I mainly work on live recording popular music at a grassroots level, which is a completely different hill of beans from recording the same band in a studio. I’m working with artists that almost no one has ever heard of, and I’ll never win a grammy or go multi-platinum. Hell… I won’t even go remotely bronze. There isn’t a metal assigned to sales this low… but it’s absolutely essential work that props us the rest of the ecosystem. Imo, in some ways it’s also more skilled since I’m working on a much lower budget. The process I use consists of: Mic selection and placement (up to 45 concurrent mic and direct feeds). Recording Clipping anomalous transients Reamping Overdubbing (ugh!), but only if absolutely necessary! Bleed mitigation Layer extraction Phase alignment Gating Feed optimisation Emulation Source processing Mixing Editing Mastering Slicing Rendering During the source processing and mixing stages I’ll use EQ, compression, various FX, and extensive reverb modelling. During mastering I’ll also use more EQ, saturation, multi-band compression, layer tuning, stereo imaging, and limiting. What the listener hears might sound like it was produced via an ORTF stereo pair of Neumann studio condensers… but it absolutely wasn’t 😂

I'm waiting to finish the video t ask you. WHY IN THE NAME OF NATURE YOU ARE FEEDING THE BEAST ?

PS Old Mullard EL84s had no problem running up to 400V. Marshal and Vox tried it. Tremolux did too and many others.. I think there was someone running a bunch over 500V! Care on the screen voltage is much more important. Descriptions of resulting sound varies some saying great some saying 'glassy'... I stick to the published Mullard figures. The Chat GPT schematic was amazing!

Good fun. And don't take this the wrong way but often when you said 'volts' it sounded like 'watts'. And made me jump each time.... Subbed.

Everyone has a quantum computer in their brain. The second brain use's intuition. That can guess the answer with just a glance at an equation. AI will never surpass the brains potential. That most fail to access. From travel to the edge of the universe. To remote viewing and telepathic communication. Even seeing though someone else's eye's. And reality manipulation etc. " My brain is a receiver " Tesla. 😊

It`s like you ask how to make a cake and AI says you need egg, sugar, flour and yeast

Love it, did already some months ago with dac Design;-) i prefer anthropic, gemini flash2 or deepseek, better for those use cases 😉 AI RAGs will rule 2025 😊 keep going, thanks a lot!!

These generative AIs know how to communicate, but don’t understand what they are talking about; they are eloquent idiots. For verbal communication, this distinction is less obvious and their perceived superficial success probably says more about a blindspot in our own cognition than about a leap forward in AI. When asked for visual communication (diagrams, etc.), though, AIs cannot not leverage this blindspot and it becomes immediately apparent what is going on.

REAL fun Janos.......

I seem to remember a kind of phased array speaker...??

Oh no!! Thank you János for doing this. It was a funny shock to see the schematic at the end. It is a steam punk amplifier, it would make good poster.

Planar speaker has a dipole response, I think? Kind like what's called "cardioid" in microphones??

Regarding lightning strike sound: the closer you get to the strike, the higher the frequency content... The lowest frequencies are heard many km away... I have had lighting strikes within 30-50 m from my house, and they make a very short 'CRACK" sound. I have had a lightning strike to my van, during a big storm in Montana, and that was a sound like a big "spark plug", a rather loud "TICK"! BTW, this was followed by a kind of flash , a circle of blue light, in my vision, maybe one to two seconds.A bit scary.

I use chatGPT all the time to assist in tube amp design. It gets better if you have an account and develop some history of other tube amp questions. Just yesterday I asked about designing a voltage divider screen grid supply for a pentode preamp tube. It did a perfect job.

Well that was fun. I think we can say that AI likes Steam Punk. To me, this also gives the impression of somebody who can never admit not knowing something. Also, in all honesty I think this is a major let down. What I often do when I look for a doodle start is to go to google images and type in what I want. It often gives you a working schematic. You still have to do your own diligence, but if you needed a leg up to start somewhere it could serve that purpose. The AI results as funny as it was do not allow for that.

Well....at least the image would make quite a cool poster! haha fun experiment, thanks for sharing!

There is usually a capacitor across the cathode bias resistor, is this not a sonic disadvantage compared to fixed bias? Also the bias level can change with large signal excursions, they sometimes use this in guitar amps to get richer distortion.

Hi Janos, thank you for your kind words. I also feel that you channel is more like a group of remote friends engaging in audio topics than a normal YT channel with a comment section. My previous comment was probably deleted by YT because I shared a buying experience as well regarding the OPT's discussed. I will not make that mistake again.

Nice

I love the fictional drawing of the amplifier - looks like something out of a Russian 50s sci-fi movie!

wow😂

Hi Janos! I am also considering building an EL84-based PP amp, and have of course heard a lot of praise for the ST-35 amp. It uses solid state rectification, and I think I heard you say in the past that "-There are many tube amps with solid state rectifiers that sound wonderful, but generally, they always sound even better with tube rectification" . Would you recommend modifying the ST-35 circuit for tube rectification ?

The very first tube amplifier I owned, which incidentally was the first proper Hi-Fi integrated amplifier my father bought for himself in 1966, was an André Dumortier Sforzando. At that time Mr Dumortier's designs were really bespoke, high quality, somewhat innovative and very well regarded "niche" products, designed and hand built in Belgium (I"m Belgian). My father bought it for 6000 Belgian Francs, with a cumulative inflation index between 1966 and 2025 of 679.93% that gives us about 1020 Euro ..., whereas an equivalent small manufacturing scale tube integrated amplifier in today's money would most likely cost around 6K Euro?! This tube integrated amplifier was designed around a PP output of quad 7189A tubes and a pair of custom wound Belgian OPTs). When my father gifted this amplifier to me (some 20 years ago) it had been slightly modified (just by making slightly different pin connections on the output tubes) to use a quad of 16P14P EV (be cause NOS 7189A are kind of unobtainium...). The amp still had the original preamp tubes (which I still have and sometimes still use), 1965 Telefunken ECC82 and ECC83 diamond bottoms. Needless to say that this amp worked his magic on me (could have been much worse as a first encounter with a vintage tube amp, hey) and had me signing up with the fervent tube afficionados. Compared to all the other amps I owned afterwards, tube and SS, the Sforzando was way more noisy and coloured, but also way more charming and pleasant to listen to. It had a wonderful natural, gentle and unforced presence and physicality to its presentation that gave real substance to more recent and processed recordings but also and foremost revealed the true essence of recordings of that era (i.e. recordings made with tube gear in the 50's and 60's), regardless of genre. This amp was equally capable of bringing me to tears of joy or to have me dancing around my listening room entranced, while it also served as reference amplification when recording my own productions of electronic music (not dance music...), disarmingly honest... I sadly parted with it, miss you buddy ! This video might be redirecting me to the EL84 option (currently running a PP of EL34), thank you Janos, Frank & Co 🙂

I think the price of quality tubes might discourage many people. It seems to me that amplifier theory should be paramount. Quality tubes can be rolled in later as required. Low quality tubes would be better for testing new builds. In case something goes wrong. Some might be happy with the cheap tube sound. For a while. 😊

Hello Janos! I also used to have a Philips Radio from 1959 with an EL84. It sounded wonderfully. That radio also used tube rectification. I only sold it because I cannot stand woke radio.

Decades ago when I still messed with vintage amps, I had a Dynaco integrated amp that showed me what this tube was capable of. Lately I am building with unusual tubes because NOS tubes are still available. If I were to build an amp with new production tubes it would be with EL84 outputs.

While I'll stay away from PP, I can ditto much of remarks by you and Frank on the Japanese OPTs.. I bought a potted Hashimoto 20W OPT and coming from a similar AM core your speak of and Lundahl OPTs, I was impressed by their natural timbre and low-high harmonic coherence/integration which I found on a different level... like you said, it feels like it has a soul and they're very nicely made - no cut corners. Yes, it's expensive relatively but at some point it makes sense. I do still like my 93H 10K:10K AM paper/copper wound interstages... they're not like the 'HIFI' sounding AM OPTs; my speculation on that is that the relatively low current variation minimises the 'AM' artifacts.

Back for a rewatch of this, I then went back to the Reichert article, and… at 4:30 AM… I dug deep, frustrated by the disappearance of the AudioStream link that HR had originally included in his article, and came up with this blog entry, by one of HR’s partners in crime! Janos, I hope you enjoy it! “Friday, November 23, 2018 European Triode Festival - ETF 2018 - pt I” hifiheroin.blogspot.com/2018/11/european-triode-festival-etf-2018-pt-i.html

How does this compare to the ET7 S2 ?

Hi Janos, i am using the measurements for my build that tech ingredients did in their video, as for the driver mounting hole it is 86,5cm from the bottom off the cabinet to center,, that leaves 115 cm from center to the top,, any toughts on that ? before i drill out for the driver, thanks so much, best regards from norway😀

Hello, Mr. János. Having been fixed upon and absorbing what you have conveyed - I couldn’t help but think ( in the back of my mind ) if you so happen to be an associate of a fellow named Larry, in Europe ( perhaps, in Denmark ). I’ve listened to Larry’s passion for audio and him ( occasionally ) mentioning an esteemed and, very adept audiophile, friend - his descriptions remind me of you. Thanks, for sharing.

Vintage speaker gets to the soul while modern speakers gets to the head

HiFi = 95% marketing & 5 % truth...

this is amazing! I built a 9V 0.5A amplifier for a 2 inch speaker, and i thought it would be cool to add physical amplification on top in order to get a bit more volume out of it. Even if it's a tiny bit, it's going to be cool to see what I can do with this information :) It's a test speaker for my breadboard workbench, it's already perfect, this might make it more perfect

Janos, I’m with you on time travel. I seldom listen to the same recording more than once, but one exception is a 1971 live recording of a David Crosby and Graham Nash concert called “Another Stoney Evening”. This recording masterfully puts you in that place, sitting among a respectful audience, connecting with the performers. I never used to be a proponent of live recordings, thinking they were generally poorer quality, but my opinion has been shifting as I find high quality examples. It seems live recordings are more likely to provoke this transportation; perhaps something is commonly lost when a recording is the result of overdubbing.

Hi Janos. I want to try your speaker cable idea… I would appreciate an advice for the connection Mark Levinson 332 (i‘m considering tubes in the future ;-)) to Wilson Audio Watt Puppy V. AWG, parallel, twisted etc.??? If you need specs, pls ask me. Thanks for your work, i‘m enjoying it! Greets, Dom

Great perspectives, Thankyou for sharing. I watched the previous video. It reminded me when I first noticed moving between musicians playing their respective instruments, then as a musician, and again as an engineer, how different it would sound to each player in their relevant positioning, especially with acoustic instruments, let alone an audiences perspective!! As and musician and engineer, my role in trying to find the space between it all that excites me, and hopefully the listener as well. 'The Juice'. I am constantly learning....! When you say old school thinking, it means to me , low wattage, paper cone drivers with high sensitivity that breathe into the room, and as due too the technology of the time, the tweeters were much less detailed, for better or worse, I like the smoothness. I suppose when we listen analytically or critically we may tend to be overly judgmental and miss all the magic... I think it is fair to say that, what most consider ' sounds right' is what they are used to, which can change with due attention.

1:25 I have a 25db noise floor. Fully treated room, triple glazed, concrete floor, 12” thick walls with cavities. So yeah, 20db is very difficult to get.

The concert hall , is backwards. The audience , is sitting in the iso acoustic curve. That's where the orchestra should be. Amphitheaters , we are already losing the wisdom of the ancients. 🤔

Amazing video! Very clarifying, thanks for sharing your knowledge Janos!

Are there any projects out thre that digitize these recordings in a high quality? That would be the only way to perserve this kind of music to our grandchildrens.

Hi Jonas, I recently came across your channel and am thoroughly impressed. I really like the idea of this speaker design, but I have a question. Your design would be too big in my listening room; so I was wondering if your design would work if the dimensions were to be proportionally cut in half. Would doing that be the same as your design?( I.e. sound)

❤

somehow no-one uploads sound files or videos showing changes in sound from different capacitors in speakers' crossovers for example. You may wonder why not. Well, I think that's because they all sound the same as long as the values are the same and they are not aged. Replacing old caps with new makes a difference but there is no difference (apart of longevity or failure rate) between super expensive ones and the cheap ones.

A system tries to faithfully reproduce a stereo recording not the actual event as experienced by the actual audience if even there was an audience when the recording session was made. Stereo is meant to give you some phase information which is critical to its raison d'etre as well as needing low colouration because speakers are meant to as 'acoustically neutral' (but not necessarily all the same) as possible and that costs money and research. Not sure why you like to hear the same boxy colouration despite different recording structures, that's not hifi in fact it's the opposite of hifi but perhaps it's what you like to hear regardless of the source.

If hi-fi was a real thing we wouldn't be able to tell the recording from reality. :)

Not sure if you mentioned mic compression? That is the start of the dynamic range compression in the audio chain. (The more money an audiophile spends on their system, the more deluded/ignorant they are? ) Likewise, e.g. monster JBLs to monitor the studio session's dynamics, with final mastering to follow with say Yamaha NS10's to represent the dull bookshelves at home.

If one assembles a system that is capable of translating a recorded waveform to acoustical energy at the listening position with a high degree of accuracy and completeness, one can then pass judgement on the success of the recording in capturing the essence of a sonic event, and can at best enjoy that translation to a high degree of organic sensual satisfaction. When ALL the "holes in the Swiss cheese" align, a truly magical result can be experienced. We are at the mercy of recording quality, and recordings are at the mercy of our reproduction systems. Great post, Janos, cheers!

I agree with you in so far as you say that the product created by the recording engineer / mastering engineer is not judged by its fidelity to the original instrument. We know that there is a chain of creative decisions that lead the creation of a digital master for distribution. However I think you went further and said that we should not expect perfect reproduction of the final digital master when we listen to the recording in our domestic listening space. If so, I disagree. The creative process is over once the digital master is finalised. The home playback chain should aspire to accuracy, transparency, high-fidelity, call it what you will. Accurate reproduction of the digital master, which is the culmination of the creative process.