B & O 5500 Linear tracking.http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1675722705.jpg

Having just bought 8 new matched Tung-Sol KT-150’s (Russia), I can certainly attest to that!

This is an education for sure !
I got to studying tube amps and I am a bit overwhelmed as of right now.
Plug-in / double-ended, single-sided. etc etc etc.
I had no clue.
For sure I have always said," tube juke boxes sounded better than anything else I have ever heard!."
Now i am getting to know why

https://www.amazon.com/Willsenton-Single-Ended-Integrated-Amplifier-Balanced/dp/B0841J88GH


Or the R8

I have a ways to go here as far as education and input is welcomed.

Besides the warmth and euphoric sound quality of vacuum tubes, that path takes it further from appliance to hobby…Honda vs Porsche in a way.

Changing tubes often requires adjusting bias settings which all influence sound quality. There are amps that make it easy (autobias) and some with built in bias gauges, etc. My PrimaLuna amp has auto-bias, so tube rolling is just the flip of a switch. You can also switch between Ultralinear (more dynamic) and Triode (warmer) with a button on the remote. What they do is less important than what you hear on each setting.

Generally tubes last thousands of hours, trouble free. And not all are mega-bucks. For me it makes it more involving, much like turntables. Honestly if you enjoy spinning records, you may enjoy playing with tube gear. Or you can just sit down and enjoy the amazing SQ and a nearly visual sound stage.

Do you have the opportunity to listen to any of these components you are interested in? You may not ending up caring about amp configuration but how it sounds to your ears.

In the end, it will be a hipshot guess, go do it, and hope, as I live in the middle of nowhere, pretty far from somewhere.
Even 100 miles from me I know of no one that is into turn tables /tube amps and pure great sound.
My education will come from here, utube and where ever .
I know of no stereo store anywhere anymore, for a demo like in the old days .

For sure I have always said," tube juke boxes sounded better than anything else I have ever heard!."

Afterburn, just checking, this line has me worried a little, if you are after a "RETRO" sound of a old juke box I do not think any modern speaker will give that, the frequency range of any old juke box that I have ever heard is pretty limited, no real high frequency or real low, more of a full sounding midrange. The newer speakers are able to reproduce the sound more true to how it was recorded.

Most modern tube amps sound very different to the older designs, I do not think that most people could tell them apart from a good modern solid state amp.

All good info
But because I am stubborn I have to go with some sort of tubes .
I will if nothing else be the status quo.....LOL
No, i know I will enjoy the tubes -
no matter how it all comes out.

LOL, nothing wrong with wanting to play with tubes, aside from what they cost these days. Just expect the sound of newer speakers to be much more dynamic and open compared to an older juke box. I still have two tube preamps and a CD player that use tubes so I have nothing against them, aside that they can have problems taking the low frequency when I crank it up way too loud.

Check out the Audiogon forums. Then peruse their classifieds. Also, US audio mart. No brick and mortar here either.

When I was getting educated on buying a stereo way back in the early '70's, I was always being told to settle on the speakers first as they are what produce the sound your ears will ultimately hear.

There is plenty of mythology in sound reproduction.

Yes, speakers are arguably the most important single hifi component.

Tube juke boxes tended to have remarkable LF response. This should answer anyone's concerns about whether tubes have adequate LF response. Of all my stereo gear, my amps with EL84 output tubes clobber the rest in their robust LF response.

Mega-Watt SS setups often, IMHO, overdo the low frequencies. Some folks prefer to hear low frequencies that are many times louder than 'normal.' Louder than actual live performances. Subwoofers are entertaining to some folks. I don't use them.

Back to speakers: Some folks want compact size, high sensitivity/efficiency and great LF response, and you can only have two of the three. My speakers are physically large (not compact) and have high sensitivity and good LF response. 103db sensitivity, which means that with a single Watt of power, they are nearly as loud as lawn mowers. My power amp makes no more than 8 WPC.

Others prefer high-watt systems feeding low-sensitivity speakers. Pick your poison, but don't be assuming that tubes have poor LF performance, since this is just not true. I am a bass player, and my two favorite gigging amplifiers are tube amps. Overall, the most popular bass amp head over the last sixty years is a tube amp called the Ampeg SVT. In a league of its own.

These are my speakers:
https://www.hifiengine.com/manual_library/infinity/column-ii.shtml
Not small by any means but not as large as some I know of.
They are capable of playing loud enough to drive you out of the room.

For the record I did not say that the tubes could not do low freq. But I do not believe any old juke box can do accurate low freq down to 20hz, I doubt the it's below 40hz. Hard enough for high end speakers to get below 30hz but properly set up subs can do the job extremely well.

Very few speakers reproduce useful music below 50hz. Only really deep pipe organ or low frequency effects happen below 40hz and that is mostly for film soundtracks. Most of the vinyl produced from 1940-1980 was mixed and mastered on reference monitors that rarely reproduced below 50 hz. The fabled JBL 4311 found in most A list studios had a response of 45-15k +/- 3db.

A Juke box does exactly what it was designed for- play and reproduce hit records designed for radio airwaves to the masses, not audiophile golden ears.

As far as tubes go, I love em and have 3 tube amps in my project studio. They are guitar amps strictly for music production, not music reproduction. After everything gets mixed, mastered, and compressed I see no benefit and cannot hear the difference once EQ'd for sonic parity. I have not seen a tube amp running studio monitors anywhere for at least 40 years. All of my critical listening speakers are bi-amped SS.

DCM Time Windows, all you need to know

Will respectfully disagree Cajundaddy. Most modern floor standing speakers go well below 50hz with little/no rolloff. My Focal Aria 936’s are -3db at 38Hz as I recall. Like many, I integrate (hi level) an REL sub that blends in and goes down to about 25Hz.

The benefit is not to necessarily “hear” the sub (when properly integrated you don’t hear it at all) but rather to pressurize the room with harmonics that are missed otherwise. It makes the SQ so much more palpable and rich, even in mid-range frequencies. And of course Toccata and Fugue in D minor will shake the foundation on a good recording!

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1675866959.jpg

Yes you can find them. I used to own a pair of Altec A7-500 that were rated to 35hz and classical music is one of the few places you will find "useful" music below 50 hz. I sometimes listen to Charles Ives and the organ passages are pretty amazing but... this represents about .00001% of music produced over the last 80 years. If this is your thing, you probably need those Arias.

My measure of deep bass these days is a kick drum. If I cannot hear a discernible difference between unfiltered down to 35hz and a signal limited with a HPF to 45hz then we will often go with the latter to clean up unwanted LF rumble that muddies the mix. We are currently working with a vintage Hammond B3 w/Leslie and we will probably keep as much bottom as she will produce for effect. Deep bass is always a tradeoff and getting room boundaries to play nice with a 27' audio wavelength becomes challenging.

It is interesting how many people believe that the low frequencies do not add anything to the music. I can tell in a couple seconds If I do not plug my subs in, I normally leave amps and subs unplugged from AC power. The low freq part of my speakers are rated -3db at 28hz, but in real life applications I do not believe it is only -3. The people not appreciating what a sub can add is likely because they have never listened to a high quality subwoofer set up correctly. Hopefully we are not just confusing afterburn 549.

The low E on a four string bass guitar (the lowest note it can play) is about 41 Hz, but this is not the frequency you actually hear. You hear the harmonic (82Hz). Your brain fills in the gap. Psychoacoustics.

On a five-string bass, the low B is 31 Hz but you hear 62. Or, more likely, 124.

This phenomenon is so thoroughly understood that if you just google something like "low E frequency" or "low B frequency," You'll get plenty of hits that barely discuss the frequencies of 41 and 31, or not at all.

Chocaholic correctly reports that when we go through the gyrations of actually producing these frequencies, it is not to hear them so much as to feel them. Pressurize the room, he correctly reports. In a live band performance, where serious wattage and speaker/cabinet equipment is used to emphasize these 'subsonic' frequencies, then there is another problem you will encounter. Often, and especially where these frequencies are most emphasized, you get this boomy, wolly, sound-pressurey thing that distorts the rest of the music, and you also get hot and dead spots throughout the room. In my bands, if a sub will be used, it will only slightly enhance those subsonic frequencies. But then...those are not disco bands. Even in the country bands, with all those low frequencies in modern country music, subwoofers are not important. In my view.

Chest-thumping sound is an interesting experience, but it's not how music actually sounds. Unless, as others have mentioned, you are trying to reproduce the sound of a live pipe organ. Good luck with that. ;)

And, as at least one other has mentioned, if these subsonic frequencies are the goal, then you will need to feed a lot of current into low-efficiency 3, 4 and five-way speakers. Some folks like this and are willing to try to balance and smooth out those different frequency band systems (tweeter, at least one mid, woofer and sub). My preference is for the (to my ear) more smooth and delicate high-efficiency speakers.