Solid-Tube Design

Years of experience have shaped the founder's preferences towards one technique versus another, and along the way, some discoveries have been made too. One which is called Solid-Tube^tm and has a patent pending. Although this page does not contain any trade secrets, it does describe the principle of Solid-Tube^tm.

What is Solid-Tube^TM

Solid-Tube^tm is a technology we discovered in October of 1998 initialy designed for our next generation of amplifiers. It offers extremely open sound stages while keeping the neutral, accurate and natural sound of a live recoding. The Solid-Tube ^tm is a new and clever combination of various transistor technologies each works at hiding the shortcomings of the others while extracting only the most desirable linear characteristics of each.

How does it work

As mentioned above, Solid-Tube employs a combination of transistor technologies, namely jfet, mosfet and bipolar, where each technology is working at hiding the undesirable characteristics of the other technologies while only extracting the most desirable linear regions. This aproach is not totally new for some known designs do take this route. The Cascode assembly is a well known example of this - but never before did anybody try the combination we call Solid-Tube ^tm. Analog stages designed witch this are extremely linear and very imune to power supply noises, a heavenly characteristic seeked by every audio designer.

What does it sound like

Because Solid-Tube^TM results in extremely linear stages which exhibit outstanding characteristics, it virtually disappears leaving the sound almost un-touched. It is experienced as a very natural and extremely open sound stage where the system disappears to leave only the music. Yet this transparent sound comes with a touch of warmth otherwise found in tube electronics.

It was named Solid-Tube ^tm because it is mainly based on solid-state technology but it reminds of the Tube designs in that the result is extremely transparent and open.

Who uses it

Currently, Solid-Tube^TM is our proprietar technology and is only being used in our products although, we have been considering licencing the technology to third party interested in OEM integration with their products. Please contact us if you are interested in including Solid-Tube^TM technology and sound in your designs.

Gilles Gameiro - Birdland Audio