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But the argument for vacuum tubes mainly applies to power amps, not low level signals, right (because as far as I know I am not aware of 16-bit D/A converters made out of vacuum tubes, and every CD player has two such beasts)?

Having a couple of vacuum tubes down the signal path to strenghten the signal by few dozen of dBs does not change the fact that the "evil" is at the source. If vacuum tube are so perfect, a music audiophile should refuse playing CDs (maybe they do).

They do. There's so much esoterics in the transistor-tube stories. There is a saying among studio guys that there are no bad microphones but only wrong microphones with respect to the task, and I guess the same thing can be said on amplification techniques. Where solid state amps simply become more precise as the quality of components rises, valve amps by construction affect the sound. The closer you get to full weight , the more the signal is compressed, i.e. dynamic peaks are suppressed while the basic level rises. This is often a highly wanted effect because you increase the ceteris paribus loudness or punch or fatness of a signal. Valves also affect the frequency spectrum, i.e. function as a sort of equalizer, often so in a way to make the signal sound more round and balanced. Also, valves have a natural distortion, again depending from weight. While a heavy valve supplied with a low gain produces a clean signal, a valve on duty makes a clean Stratocaster signal really dirty, as anyone knows who has heard what Hendrix did with a Marshall valve amp.

That sounds like the computer motherboards (Like AOpen's AX4B-533 Tube) with tube amps in their integrated sound. I've never heard of anything so silly... It's still a digital (aka evil) source.

I don't know this motherboard, but the idea is not necessarily silly given what I said above. It is sometimes useful to get a valve into a transistor signal chain which sounds too "digital", too "sterile", too "clean". However, if you have a CD where the mixer took benefit of expensive valve technique to get the "perfect" amount of compression, equalization and distortion for each track and for the master, there is initially no need not to use a good and precise (and cheap and long life) transistor amp chain including the low level amps in the CD player and pre and power amps outside. But of course a properly driven valve amp can also produce quite a linear frequency response. With respect to the Theremin issue, I'd recommend to proceed like the common guitar or electric bass player: try both and decide if you like the characteristic valve sound or if you are more impressed by transistor directness. (As a bassist, I'm personally in favor of the valve sound) Fritz ############################################## Fritz Feger mail@fritzfeger.de www.fritzfeger.de Fon: 0177 - 6424 020 Fax: 0721 - 151 435 058 Rüttenscheider Str. 253 Eulenstraße 56 45131 Essen 22765 Hamburg 0201 - 455 4555 040 - 3980 4766 ##############################################