The literature and history of vacuum tube audio amplifiers is extensive, and multifaceted, and Vanderveen Trans Tube Amplifiers is a worthy addition to that body of work.

Quite often, modern articles and books on highperformance audio amplifiers are exercises in egotism and elitism, but van der Veen avoids these pitfalls. His presentation is factual and humble. In addition to transfer functions, he includes many harmonic distortion and linearity measurement results, and these quantitative evaluations of amplifier performance are greatly appreciated. His distortion vs. frequency plots are difficult to interpret because they were probably originally generated in color but printed in black and white. However, they get the point across. His subjective evaluations of the tonal quality, dynamic range, and clarity of his amplifier designs are...well... subjective, but that cannot be avoided. However, van der Veen’s objectivity is strengthened by his criticism of—based upon his own subjective listening to—one of his own designs. I was glad he included the example of an amplifier he developed using the “trans” concept that did not sound good. That unsuccessful experiment—which put too much highgain, solid-state circuitry directly in the audio sign path—will save other experimenters time and guide their creative developments.

Consistent with the literature (and actually tube amplifiers themselves), this book’s topics and designs are esoteric. The techniques presented for lowering tube-driven output transformer distortion solve a problem that most commercial manufacturers avoid by using solid-state power drivers—but those drivers are not for everyone. The beautiful sound, the signal path simplicity, and the challenge of designing and building our own audio amplifiers pull us toward the emotional comfort of glowing vacuum tubes. Menno van der Veen’s books and papers present new ideas and new implementations of old ideas to provoke creativity and stimulate experimentation.

In summary, Vanderveen Trans Tube Amplifiers contains technical content worthy of a paper, or a chapter in a larger book—but van der Veen expanded the material to include valuable descriptions of multiple amplifier designs that actually are “suitable for hobbyist construction” and the experimental paths that were dead ends (to save others from having to learn those lessons themselves). This expansion to book format is valuable for a few reasons. First, books typically reach a larger audience than technical papers. Second, the broader exploration of successful, and unsuccessful, amplifier designs makes the trans topology much more accessible to amateur experimenters, designers, and constructors.

Vanderveen Trans Tube Amplifiers is a worthy read, and it provides provocative ideas that readers can experiment with and expand upon to create their own sweet-sounding vacuum tube amplifiers.

About the Reviewer
Bill Reeve is a technical program manager at Google in Mountain View, CA. He has graduate engineering degrees from the Colorado School of Mines and the University of California, Berkeley. He also earned his Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Santa Clara University.