Talk:Transistor/Archive 2

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Vacuum tubes

The article mentions the advantages of transistors over vacuum tubes, but not the other way around. I believe there still are applications where vacuum tubes are preferred over transistors, like high fidelity audio. At least until recently. I don't know if there has been such advancement in transistor technology that maybe vacuum tubes are not used anymore at al where they can be replaced by transistors.(MrDeBeuker 19:40, 16 February 2006 (UTC))

You understand that the concept that vacuum tubes are better for audio than transistors is basically a religious belief, right? That is, it's supported by faith but basically no evidence any more. See Audiophile and High-end audio.

On the other hand, tubes probably still are better if you're trying to design equipment that will survive EMP; that's about the only place I can think of (besides highly-specialized tubes such as CRTs, magnetrons, klystrons, and TWTs) where tubes still have any edge at all over solid-state electronics.

Atlant 22:12, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, there's sometimes talk about harmonics, but it does boil down to audiophilery. - mako 23:54, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

The big difference is that tube amps tend to "soft clip" as you drive them to their limit whereas transistor amps tend to hard clip; that is, the transistor amps operate linearly right up to the point where they don't but in tube amps, the gain rolls off as you drive near the limits, rounding off the clipping waveform. In this way, when they're both driven into the clipping region, tube amps produce a lot fewer harmonics. But why drive either into clipping, ehh? :-)

And then there's microphonics...

Atlant 00:34, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

You might be interested in Valve sound. There has been quite a bit of discussion on the topic. Madhu 02:21, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

It is more "preference" than "faith" if one prefers the sound of tube audio. If I prefer chocolate to vanilla, I don't see how that is "faith." The harmonic distortion modes are different. Then there's the old saying "Transistors hiss, tubes hum." There's also the notion that recordings in the tube era were doctored to sound good when played with tube amplifiers through big bass reflex speakers. When played through more "accurate" equipment, they might therefore not sound as good.Edison 16:32, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

The differences in harmonic distortion content are unrelated to vacuum tubes vs transistors; they depend on topology. Tubes just tend to be used in asymmetrical class A more often than transistors. Likewise with "hiss" noise levels and ground loop hum.

All of these differences are a non-issue, anyway, if the sound is not run into clipping and the amplifier is designed well enough to have inaudible distortion/noise/hum, which can be done with either device. — Omegatron 17:41, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

IMHO it's a "preference" if someone says they prefer Coke and consistently can tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi in a blind taste test. It's "faith" if someone always orders Coke and says it tastes better, but prefers the taste of Pepsi in a blind taste test if they are told that it is Coke.

I'm speaking, by the way, as someone who always believed I could tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi until one day at McDonald's I said to myself "This Coke tastes a little funny," and went on drinking it until my daughter said "Dad, you've got my root beer." Dpbsmith (talk) 18:05, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Removed from page (sound of tubes)

All This stuff has been removed from the page because: A) This text is not about transistors B) page is about transitors and not transitor amplifiers. C) page is not about audiophiles or how transistors sound

Some argue that the larger number of electrons flowing in a vacuum tube behave with greater statistical accuracy, although this ignores the fact that vacuum tubes generally have a high-impedance control terminal (grid), and that discrete transistor circuits (as opposed to integrated circuits) can also be designed to use large currents.

Others detect a distinctive "warmth" to the sound. The "warmth" is actually distortion caused by the vacuum tubes, which some audiophiles find pleasing. This is "soft-saturation" which occurs when vacuum tubes are overdriven, causing poorly designed vacuum tube amplifiers to sound better than poorly designed transistor amplifiers. Tube amplifiers are also less prone to slew-rate limiting, which was a problem with early semiconductors and is still observed in low-cost transistor audio amplifiers.

Above speculative opinion gives no correlation between characteristics or measurements and perceived sound quality. See Tubes vs. Transistors - Is There An Audible Difference? and Transistors vs. Tubes - Brief Feature Comparison.

Vacuum tubes are also preferred in guitar amplifiers which are designed to be overdriven, because they have a different non-linear transfer characteristic than transistors, and create a different, more pleasing spectrum of harmonic distortion or "fuzz". Digital signal processing (DSP) can be used to achieve similar effects in the digital domain.

(single-ended transformer coupled to push-pull transformer coupled to push-pull capacitor coupled to push-pull direct coupled). DSP Recently, inroads have been made in digital signal processing (DSP). DSP is a technique that can (among other things) be used with A/D and D/A converters to allow a digital processor (along with a computer program) to manipulate analog signals.

I totally agree that this stuff does not belong here. I didn't have the energy to start a new page at the time. :) Snafflekid 02:11, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

If its to go anywhere, it should go to audio amplifiers or electronic amplifiers--Light current 00:50, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

1. It most definitely "goes somewhere". Deleting large chunks of information is not helpful to anyone. Yeah, it's still in the history, but it should be in an article, and people generally don't go digging around in the history unless they are looking for something specific.
2. Better places to put it would be Tubes vs transistors, Valve sound, or Audiophile.
3. When something is moved from a general article into a more specific article like this, there should still be a short summary in the main article with a link, to keep the articles tied together. This is definitely relevant enough to the transistor article to get a sentence or two and a link. — Omegatron 01:58, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I try to delete as rarely as possible. At bare minimum it is better to move it to an new page or even cut and paste the unwanted stuff onto a new wikipage and let someone else edit it IMHO. Snafflekid 02:09, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Moving to the talk page is a very good alternative to deleting it, too. — Omegatron 02:15, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Im not sure if you are telling me off here 'O'. Have I done something wrong IYO?--Light current 02:21, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Tran Advantages (over Tube)

"though this is usually a desirable part of the sound of guitar amplifiers" There are many valve characteristics that contribute to the "valve sound" both for guitar amps and hi fi amps (valve amplifier topology also has a major influence). But the modulation of the valve characteristics by vibration is not a significant or consistent one. In some layouts the valve amp can be physically isolated from the speakers but this does not affect the sound. In fact valve manufacturers go to great lengths to minimise vibration effect and they often do this in different ways giving different characteristics. (Russian EL34s compared to Mullard EL34s). Suggest this statement be deleted. CPES 01:22, 24 April 2006 (UTC) (80.177.169.33)

Also statement "and can take advantage of the higher electron mobility in a near vacuum" is not really a main advantage but more of a tube design aspect which is not visible to the user as an advantage. Valves are not faster than trans (not anymore anyway). This aspect does not fit with rugged aspect either. KIS also applies. Suggest delete. - CPES 22:25, 27 April 2006 (UTC) (80.177.169.33)

Cost in $

It looks like this page has been trimmed, so I didn't want to add to it without discussion. I'd like to see a bit of information relating to cost. A quick Internet browse shows that from about 1955, the bulk price has dropped from about $5.50 per transistor to about $1.00 per 200 billion transistors.(wrong) With that drop in price, there have been enormous gains in various efficiencies (switching speed, power consumption, frequency response, consistency of manufacture, etc.). Fracture98 06:45, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I wish to know where you got your "about 1$ per 200 billion" number. it's more like 1$ for a billion. Even so this is irrelevant, what kind of transistor do they compare ?.--Transisto (talk) 09:45, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I note that it may be removed becuase of monetary indifference. You can justify the entry by using How much is that?. We are using this website in RWC to make historical pricing relevant. Other additional odd references. meatclerk 17:48, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

value of 1955 $ to 2005 $ "It cost $49.95 (the equivalent of roughly $500 in year-2005 dollars" this from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_radio.

thst page on transistors gives a value of $361 (i think).. i don't know which one would be right

ok, just found http://stats.bls.gov/ it works out to $364

--Roger sandwich 13:52, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

A transistor radio is not a raw transistor. Even so what's the point ? a 1950 transistor is not a 2005 one. --Transisto (talk) 09:51, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Transistor Curve Tracer Images

Tran page is much leaner and cleaner now thanks to the good work of the electronics standardisation team and others. So what is the relevance the images of the tran curve tracer: suggest this should be deleted? Also, it would be nice if we had some images of tran packages showing surface mount thu to TO3 to give an indication of package size range. CPES 00:52, 24 April 2006 (UTC) (80.177.169.33)

Vandalism

This user deleted the entire page on the transistor. I fixed the page. Perhaps someone could look into this to see if this has occured before, or is occurring regularly.

11:18, 24 January 2006 82.211.102.159 - This user deleted the entire contents of the page.

Vandalism on Wikipedia happens all the time. A large number of Wikipedians spend an awful lot of time fixing it, whether it's the blanking of an entire article, the insertion of "Xxx is so Gay!", or the subtle changing of a numerical value from accurate to false. Welcome to the club!

One thing you can always do is look at the edit history of an article. Click on the vandal's IP address (it's almost always an anonymous IP user that's doing the vandalism) and you'll get a list of their contributions. Click on any that interest you, especially recent ones where they are shown as holding the top edit. Then, if necessary, see WP:VIP on the procedures to report them.

You may also want to see Wikipedia:Recent changes patrol.

IMNSHO, vandalism is one of the largest problems faced by WIkipedia.

Atlant 13:38, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Ending of initial paragraph is very inaccurate

It says "... allows a precise amount of current to flow through it from the circuit's voltage supply." I would recommend to replace "precise" with something like "substantial" or "significant". Using "precise" is completely wrong because in fact every individual transistor is very imprecise, and it's parameters vary widely from sample to sample, and with temperature. An electronic circuit can be made precise if a certain combination of transistors is used (like OA, operational amplifier) having high amplification but with a deep negative feedback loop. - apredtechenski, Sept 06, 2005

Agree. Ive changed it!--Light current 00:39, 21 September 2005 (UTC)