In layman's terms? A silicon device can work from neutral to + or - values only. So, device A cuts in at - 0.7 volts and amplifies the negative side of the waveform. B then cuts in at +0.7 volts to amplify the + side of the waveform so there is no amplification from - 0.7 volts to +0.7 volts as the wave switches polarity. Vacuum tubes can work in both + and - sides of the waveform without shutting off during the switch from - to +.
Purists say they can hear the difference due to the shutdown of A to the start up of B as opposed to the uninterrupted wave in a vacuum tube ...I can't - time lapse is extremely small during the switchover from A to B. I have always doubted the human ear can detect it.
Better in which respect? They have a few advantages and a lot of disadvantages compared to silicon amplifiers - how you weight those differences is up to you.
And silicon amplifiers aren't copies of valve amplifiers, they're competely (and in some cases, completely completely) different designs.
I prefer hybrid amps - glass for the preamp, silicon for the power stage. Gives you the warm glow of a tube while not heating up the house with 90% waste heat. I'll even admit to the sacrilege of using chinese digital power stages
Admittedly, I could get the same by just adding a dummy tube to any full solid state amplifier :-).
There not they are popular and you can buy them at places like Maplin electronics and there amps out on the market that still offer lots of technical specs on what the benefits of having this type of system can be, in a tied load or a high end 'op' amp the issue is usually the size of the amp and the amount of cooling since amps with large outputs over 300 watts need a lot of power and have lots of cooling issues.
The best rig we came up with was to analyse the issue single input at the source and if that needed a booster to bring the signal to a good level then the issue was over the potentiometer the point where the input gate to the amp circuit has to be in line with the amount of resistance and any tie bridge that would be required, after that it was a choice of what type of speaker (SPK) and how to boost up low level sounds and bass boost, the project that you may be working on may be as similar to the sound experiments we were running codenamed 'black box,' either portable or home use for recording and channelling and altering the output to various systems from strange locations and low to medium frequencies.
They are not better. It is just their (inferior) frequency response has a particular characteristic that is appealing to an older generation because they grew up with it. A modern quality solid state amplifier is so perfect that it adds no characteristics of its own, it just perfectly reproduces the source sound.
So basically it's nostalgia, you are paying for the imperfections added by the valves which some people like.
Valves are inherently more linear than transistors, which means they don't have to be corrected as much by feedback circuits. And it is the feedback that usually causes much of the anomolies of transistor amps. That and they're usually made in topologies that don't care so much for good looking specs, like output impedance, low power consumption, low harmonic disortion, and general DC accuracy. They're made to sound musical.
If transistor amps are made with these same priorities, they can be made to sound as good as, or better than, valve amps. Transistors have worse linearity than valves, but they're not THAT much worse. Low distortion, and even ultra-low distortion, transistor stages can be made with some sacrifice to power consumption, for example, reducing the need for large amounts of negative feedback, which usually causes the higher order harmonics that so many deem unmusical and are most often associated with transistor amps. The output stage, which is usually push-pull and has crossover distortion and relatively low speed compared with the input stages, can be made class-A to eliminate these effects and so forth.
Also remember that once you get into the high-end world, there is no "best sound" out there. Lots of differing opinions as to what sounds best. And "sounds best" depends on what the application and type of music is being played. Good sound for a living room may not be good sound for a concert and so on. Some people prefer a more accurate sound while some like it to be more euphonic, even though it may not be the most accurate sound in the world.
Triode valve amplifiers are better than solid state amplifiers in few if any respects. Modern switching technology can switch gigawatts, far exceeding any room full of triodes ever assembled.
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Silicone copys
