Tube Watts = 3x as Loud as SS Watts?

[tlbonehead]

Originally posted by martindcx1e I heard somewhere awhile back that tube watts are 3x as loud as SS watts. So if a tube amp is 30W it can get as loud as a 90W SS amp. I know tube amps are louder but just wondering about this 3x rule really. True or not?

This is nuts,but watts don't know whether they are tube or SS. Therefore,1 watt = 1 watt.

[martindcx1e]

Originally posted by tlbonehead This is nuts,but watts don't know whether they are tube or SS. Therefore,1 watt = 1 watt.

 

obviously but you know what i am trying to convey

[tlbonehead]

Originally posted by martindcx1e obviously but you know what i am trying to convey

Ok,tube power sections tend to stay very musical far above their totally-clean ability to reproduce a signal. SS power sections sound bad above that point.

[Eric the fish]

can someone PLEASE kill this thread?

way too much bull{censored} floating around. this has come up WAY TOO MANY TIMES.

the answer is:

technically NO
psychoacoustically YES (well, the 3x is approximate)

[V-Type]

Ok if a watt is a watt. Which it is its just our ears perceive them differently depending on the source(tubes,Solid state).
Take the test:
Take any wattage tube or ss amp and then also have its tube/SS opposite IE:15 watt tube combo vs 15 wat ss combo. The wattage may be the same rating but the difference in actuall volumes are very noticeable between the two sources. Try it.

[tlbonehead]

Originally posted by V-Type Ok if a watt is a watt. Which it is its just our ears perceive them differently depending on the source(tubes,Solid state). Take the test: Take any wattage tube or ss amp and then also have its tube/SS opposite IE:15 watt tube combo vs 15 wat ss combo. The wattage may be the same rating but the difference in actuall volumes are very noticeable between the two sources. Try it.

Depends on the amp. I gave one of the main reasons. Now,take a JC120 or an old Peavey SS amp. They are loud!!!!!

[V-Type]

Originally posted by tlbonehead Depends on the amp. I gave one of the main reasons. Now,take a JC120 or an old Peavey SS amp. They are loud!!!!!

 

Yes their are a few exceptions to the rule. IMO.

Funny whenever I shop for ss amps many have similar wattage ratings but their actual volumes between each other in most cases is very different.

5 years ago I had one of the original Spider 50 watt combo's for noodleing. But i swear its vloume level to me seemed much short of its 50 watts rating when played next to my buds 50 watt bass combo also ss.

[L6Sguy]

Originally posted by V-Type Yes their are a few exceptions to the rule. IMO. Funny whenever I shop for ss amps many have similar wattage ratings but their actual volumes between each other in most cases is very different. 5 years ago I had one of the original Spider 50 watt combo's for noodleing. But i swear its vloume level to me seemed much short of its 50 watts rating when played next to my buds 50 watt bass combo also ss.

 

 

theres a lot more than watts involved in that comparison. a lot more.

 

 

 

can someone PLEASE kill this thread?

 

 

+100.

[WynnD]

What should be noted is that changing from a 75 watt amp maxed out to a 150 watt amp maxed out through the same speakers is only a 3 decibel increase. That's noticable, but not much. If you want to double the apparent volume (10 db) you need an increase of around 8 times the original wattage. That would be 600 watts in this case.

And a 30 watt amp is plenty loud for guitar onstage. (I play bass and keys. Maybe I'm jaded by past experiences.)

Better is better. Louder isn't better.

[Weathered]

Whoa - thread necromancy!

Kill it! Kill it!

[knucklefux]

i'm keeping it alive, baby.

 

when a tube power section starts to distort, it doesn't get appreciably louder, it get distorted and compressed, right? although, i suppose the added current flow will drive the OT harder, so there's that.

 

i would put a lot of emphasis on speakers. if you were to use the same speakers with a 100watt SS or tube power section, i suspect that both would be about the same volume at max volume...IF you could actually be in the same room with the cab.

[tlbonehead]

I heard somewhere awhile back that tube watts are 3x as loud as SS watts. So if a tube amp is 30W it can get as loud as a 90W SS amp. I know tube amps are louder but just wondering about this 3x rule really. True or not?

Daddy,please make the bad man stop!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[angus_old]

its only true for triode amps, a pentode amp will be 5 times louder and a diode amp will be twice as loud

[Boondoggy]

Hi,

The thing about users of iconic valve amps is that when those amps came out there were no truly informed consumers.

The only figures the early buyers were interested in were the cost and the power.

The power ratings were always given in Watts and one could be forgiven for thinking that 1W was a non variable standard. The fact is, was and always will be there is no such measurement when dealing with Audio equipment

What there is: is a range of qualified measurements all entitled to be called a Watt.

I'm referring to:

R.M.S. Watts (Root Means Squared is basically an average power reading)

Peak Watts(Simply the measurement from zero to the peak of the wave in one half cycle)

Peak to Peak Watts The Measurement from the peak of one half cycle to the peak of the other half cycle

Now 1WRMS = .707 x 1WPEAK or 1Wpeak = 1.414 x 1WRMS

1WPEAK = .5 x 1W or 1Wp2p = 2Wpeak

so some manufacturers advertised their amp with RMS ratings and some used Peak rating and the less scrupulous used P2P ratings

 

The other factors never considered in these raves is the fact that the ear is a logarithmic device and responds accordingly.

The true units that should be used to convey loudness are decibels

It is important to realise that when reading wattage measurements you are reading a linear scale and trying to relate it to your logarithmic ear.

 

basically 40 watts does not sound twice as loud as 20 watts.( to our ears it is an increase of 3 db, which to most people is barely perceptable )

whereas 100 Watts sounds to most of us to be twice as loud as 10watts.

 

The fact is manufacturers downrate their amps to capture a market then uprate them to sell more.

 

Some of the myths associated with guitar amps defy reality

hope that helped

[Boondoggy]

 

its only true for triode amps, a pentode amp will be 5 times louder and a diode amp will be twice as loud

 

 

you can't say that

 

for a start a pentode gives more ways of reducing plate current.. not necessarily increasing it.

depending on the valve type, the changes needed to provide extra power to an amp are often the input stages and tone controls

Early guitar amps used a 1st stage before the tone control that utilised a dual triode or a triode/pentode

Some of the most powerful amps employ "beam power tetrodes" for high power while some early amps (e.g.Goldentone) used radio transmitting tubes in the output.(Notably "Goldentone" amps were also rated in Peak to peak Watts)

 

To achieve high power many valve amp designers resort to Parallel Push-Pull configurations in the output stage. (so 4 triodes might be louder than 2 pentodes)

 

The diodes you refer to are not amplifying valves at all and are used in the power supply and play no role in increasing power except for providing a constant DC supply (in fact they are unreliable while a solid state rectifier will never fail)

 

 

IT all depends on the circuitry and the quality of components.

[Weathered]

you can't say that for a start a pentode gives more ways of reducing plate current.. not necessarily increasing it. depending on the valve type, the changes needed to provide extra power to an amp are often the input stages and tone controls Early guitar amps used a 1st stage before the tone control that utilised a dual triode or a triode/pentode Some of the most powerful amps employ "beam power tetrodes" for high power while some early amps (e.g.Goldentone) used radio transmitting tubes in the output.(Notably "Goldentone" amps were also rated in Peak to peak Watts) To achieve high power many valve amp designers resort to Parallel Push-Pull configurations in the output stage. (so 4 triodes might be louder than 2 pentodes) IT all depends on the circuitry and the quality of components.

 

 

I'm pretty sure that he was being funny.

[GodBlessTexas]

One watt is one joule of energy per second. 1 W = 1 J/s = 1 newton meter per second = 1 kg

[fretless]

My '73 50 watt Marshall is far better than my old Stewart 1200 watt ss amp, go figure . When it comes to ss amps I seem to prefer the old school type with the big ass transformers not the new fad class D , or digital , they just don't do it for me .

[pickinatit]

I thought a Watt was a Watt. What's heavier, a pound of lead, or a pound of feathers?

A watt is a watt, but this has more to do with Db or SPL that those watts produce or something or other like that (I'm not that technically astute) ; in other words the output that those watts produce.

[tommythelurker]

 

I'm pretty sure that he was being funny.

Or at least trying.

 

Let me expand on what boondoggy said a little to try and explain what we're actually hearing.

 

First of all, one thing some of you may not realize is that a 100W amp does not always put out 100W. When you turn the volume down on the amp it's putting out less than 100W. The rating of the amp is the MOST power it can put out before exceeding a certain amount of distortion.

 

If a tube amp and an SS amp are both putting out 100W of clean power, they will sound roughly the same volume all else being equal (there are other factors but lets keep it simple for now).

 

Once an SS amp starts distorting, that's pretty much it. You can't push it much beyond that without it going to crap. Once a tube amp starts distorting, as mentioned above it's very "soft", and you can still push it quite a bit before it sounds bad. But you are pushing it beyond it's "rated" power.

 

Because of the difference in the way the two amps clip, manufacturers design the volume controls different. Say the volume control goes from 1 to 10. A tube amp may reach it's max rated (clean) power with the volume on 4, while an SS amp may not reach it's max rated (clean) power until the volume is on 9. The tube amp reaches it's max earlier on the volume knob because you can go further past that point than you can on a tube amp and still have it sound "good".

 

So you can see that with two amps both rated the same, one tube and one SS, with both their volume controls on say, 2, the tube amp is going to sound louder because the knob has a faster taper (reaches max rating at 4 vs. 9) so it's actually putting out more power than the SS amp even though they are rated the same and have the volume knobs set to the same point.

 

That is why tube amps sound louder than SS amps, not because tube watts are different from SS watts but because you can get more usable watts out of an tube amp than a similarly rated SS amp.

 

A watt is still a watt as far as tube vs. SS. The "tube watts are louder than SS watts" line is just a loose way of describing our perception of the difference between a tube amp and similarly rated SS amp. And the "3x" thing is just a rough estimate of that perceived difference, there's really no hard math behind it.

 

Yes, it's true that how the rating is determined will vary, but you will see discrepancies from that even between different SS amps. It has nothing to do with tube vs. SS.

[Weathered]

Uh oh, Tommy became a Hall of Famer, and now he's going all technical on us.

[tommythelurker]

Uh oh, Tommy became a Hall of Famer, and now he's going all technical on us.

what about the "holier than thou" attitude, I put great effort into that, where's the love??

[Weathered]

what about the "holier than thou" attitude, I put great effort into that, where's the love??

You know that we love you, Tommy. You know more about the workings of amps than 98% of this forum. You are allowed to be holier than thou.

[fretless]

To me a tube amp has that feel , it's fat , so I tend to just keep turning up a ss amp to get some fat bottom , where as a tube amp just seems to be fuller right away .

[jshaft37]

article on the topic.

http://users.chariot.net.au/~gmarts/amppower.htm