Vacuum tube sound cards?

[cdean]

I'm looking for a vacuum tube sound card to prove to a friend that they do, in fact, exist. I found the AOpen motherboard that has a vacuum tube on it so that it can facilitate sound through the tube or through the DSP codec.

However, I can remember distinctly an edition of PC Magazine (or Maximum PC?) which reviewed a vacuum tube sound card (PCI, mi credas) and found it to be fantastic.

I've always adored the warm sound of a vacuum tube assembly instead of today's modern DSP/transistors. I'm not so much of an audiophile that I'd drop the megabucks on it now, but perhaps, when I have a job job, I would consider such a feat (or just build one myself and write my own driver for it! ha HA! my education actually going to use kaj magic of open source software!).

Gxis la,

[Dark Hornet]

A co-worker pointed me to these sites...have fun!

http://news.softpedia.com/news/A-Tube-Soundcard-YES-45715.shtml

http://www.computube.com/computube3_005.htm

:guitar:

[KB1LQC]

Nice find, interesting that its made to fit into a computer lol.

BTW Tubes have the "Warm" sound because they actually "smooth" the edge of the audio, the extreme example would be a square wave passing through an amplifier, a solid state (BJT Transistor) amplifier would accurately recreate the square wave. A tube amplifier would output a "smoothed square wave" where the exact point where the voltage drops off suddenly on the square wave is rounded a little rather than an almost instantaneous drop to 0. A good reference is ESP audio:

http://sound.westhost.com/articles/hexfet.htm

HEXFETS and MOSFETS are solid state semiconductors that are closely related to tubes in performance. They also "smooth" the edges, plus... they are darn cheap! I bought a couple 100 Watt MOSFETS (IRF 540's or one of the ones in that line...) for about $1.50 a piece, run them at about 50 watts per MOSFET (For reliability and heat management) and you have an incredibly nice amplifier!.

Currently working on a homebuilt guitar tube amplifier... had to stop once I went to college, but will start building it again in the summer!

http://bstguitarist.googlepages.com/guitartubeampproject



Enjoy!



KB1LQC

[cookieforyou]

http://news.softpedia.com/news/A-Tube-Soundcard-YES-45715.shtml

The pic with the tube visible amoungst the other components really looks more like an Aprils fool joke than not :D