Korg 'Nutube' - next generation vacuum tubes

[teemuk]

What do you mean by "do so well at low voltages"?

IMO, if you look at characteristic curves, a very typical characteristic is that non-linearity gets distinctly worse with lower B+ voltages. This especially with the kind of tubes that are designed to operate at higher plate voltages in general. No, linearity wise the tubes aren't "doing so well", which is why one keeps hearing "tubes must operate at high voltages to sound good" repeated over and over again everytime starved plate circuits come to discussion in one way or another.

That's a "HiFi" design rule though. If the tube is employed for no other reason than to intentionally generate distortion (which is obvious reason of products such as NuTube) then little non-linearity in operation is likely no issue, rather a benefit. So if we have no practical use for the "most linear device ever", which potentially is a vacuum tube triode, we can actually abuse that device in various ways and the output signal still probably sounds like we expect it should sound like: distorted.

Of course those are two entirely dissimilar schools of vacuum tube design. NuTube, and many other "starved plate" circuits cater for the latter but at the expense also perform much, much weaker in respect of the former.