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Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

I have two tube headphone amps on my desk, one of which I just bought new a couple months ago right in front of me, and 3 other people in my office have similar tube amps. Probably not the norm, but still the death of tubes has been greatly exaggerated.

edit: photographic evidence: http://jdon.at/15kV9

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A great many music products (compressors, amplifiers) still contain vacuum tubes.

Simply including a "tube" is often feature enough to help sales.

I can't find the link right now, but I've seen sales/marketing efforts _so_ determined to include "vacuum tube" in their features list, that they designed an amplifier with only opamps and transistors in the audio stages, but a single tube as a rectifier in the power supply...

Of course, because the tube rectifies more smoothly and makes the sound more pleasant as a result. They even light up the rectifier with DC to reduce humming noise...

Indeed, even order harmonics in your power supply ripple create measurably more musicality and a higher resolution soundstage... (I hate myself for even _thinking_ that...)

And tubes in UHF broadcast stations are in no way anachronistic.

But high-powered analog UHF transmitters themselves starts to be, considering that only major application is analog TV.

Is that true? I was under the impression that ATSC transmitters used tubes as well.

I think the message is that this is the last common product where a tube was required.

That was the first thing I thought also, but I guess you can't argue that tube amps (for headphones, guitars, whatever) is a pretty niche product these days.

They are not at all hard to find.

Not much is, anymore.

They have never been hard to find. Virtually every guitar store has carried a wide variety of tube amps since rock music went mainstream.

You know what electronic part is hard to find these days? Variable capacitors! At the caps needed to make radios. Sure, you can buy them in bulk or at ham fests, but I've found it frustrating as a hobbyist.

Because they are fiddly, hard to manufacture and expensive, while solid state voltage or digitally controlled filters and oscillators are cheaper and more reliable.

You can fairly easily build your own.

You're right. I've followed instructables on how to do it (e.g. some cds and some foil). However, I am mesmerized by the beauty of some old school variable capacitors. Wish they still made 'em.

We used to call them meat mincers :)

If you want good quality variable capacitors then your best source is flea markets and thrift stores, look for old tube radios that you can scavenge them out of. And if the radio is nice enough then maybe restore it!

Less niche than they were 10-20 years ago. Lots of really good stuff coming out of China that isn't at all spendy.

I use one of those, http://hughes-and-kettner.com/products/tubetools/ and it's pretty sweet!

For guitars they are nothing but niche. In fact they are probably more guitar tube amps produced today than they were 20 years ago.

I assume most news articles are really just reworded press releases with some background information, and this one seems to be from Freescale. There is even a link in the article. However, this article lacks a quote by a person from the company, an expert, or a related company in the field.

Nice! I just recently got a I+ too. How's your experience been so far?

Pretty happy overall. It's a little more receptive to noise than I'm used to, if my phone is anywhere near it I get a sort of low hiss. I adjusted the ohms for my Q701s but that seemed to make the noise problem worse. Despite all that, like I said pretty happy.

The Bravo Audio V2 has been sitting on my Amazon wishlist for a while now.

Any semi-serious guitarist knows vacuum tubes are alive and well.

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