European triode festival - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Since 2000 each year the "European Triode Festival" (ETF) has been held in various venues in Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

(the first three events were called "Aarhus Triode Festival" aka "ATF". The ETF focuses on do-it-yourself audio valve amplifier

Valve amplifier

A valve amplifier or tube amplifier is a type of electronic amplifier that makes use of vacuum tubes to increase the power and/or amplitude of a signal. Low to medium power valve amplifiers for frequencies below the microwaves were largely replaced by solid state amplifiers during the 1960s and...

s using triode

Triode

A triode is an electronic amplification device having three active electrodes. The term most commonly applies to a vacuum tube with three elements: the filament or cathode, the grid, and the plate or anode. The triode vacuum tube was the first electronic amplification device...

vacuum tube

Vacuum tube

In electronics, a vacuum tube, electron tube , or thermionic valve , reduced to simply "tube" or "valve" in everyday parlance, is a device that relies on the flow of electric current through a vacuum...

s, and brings together some 100 high end

High-end audio

High-end audio is a term used to describe a class of consumer home audio equipment marketed to audio enthusiasts on the basis of high price or quality, and esoteric or novel sound reproduction technologies. High-end audio can refer simply to the price, to the build quality of the components, or to...

vacuum tube audiophile

Audiophile

An audiophile is a person who enjoys listening to recorded music, usually in a home. Some audiophiles are more interested in collecting and listening to music, while others are more interested in collecting and listening to audio components, whose "sound quality" they consider as important as the...

s from all over the world (from as far away as Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

and New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

). At the Festival participants demonstrate their (all home-built) equipment (analogue/digital/amps/speakers/etc.) and discuss all aspects of high-end vacuum tube sound reproduction. It's a private venture of audio lovers; commercial activities are not allowed.

For the first 3 years, the festival was organised by Kurt Steffensen and held in Aarhus

Aarhus

Aarhus or Århus is the second-largest city in Denmark. The principal port of Denmark, Aarhus is on the east side of the peninsula of Jutland in the geographical center of Denmark...

, Denmark

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

. During the next 3 years, Christian Rintelen and Wolfgang Braun organised the festival and held it in Langenargen

Langenargen

Langenargen is a town in the district of Bodensee in Baden-Württemberg in Germany.- Sports :Langenargen is an ideal venue for sports such as sailing. The town's location on the shores of Bodensee provides smooth waters even when windy. Langenargen is the host city of Match Race Germany part of the...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. In 2006 and 2007 Guido Tent and Emile Sprenger organized the Festival in The Beukenhof, a former monastery in Biezenmortel, The Netherlands. In 2008 Guido teamed up with Arend-Jan Wijtzes and Rob Hubertse to organize the final Dutch edition and in 2009 the festival moved to Stella-Plage, France. During the 4 days of the Festival, several seminars, workshops, shootouts and musical performances are organised.

Previous seminar speakers have included people like Jean Hiraga, Morgan Jones, Lynn Olson, Per Lundahl (Lundahl Transformers), Brian Sowter (Sowter Transformers of England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

), Steve Bench, Guido Tent (Tentlabs), Allen Wright (VSE), Peter van Willenswaard of Stereophile

Stereophile

Stereophile is a monthly magazine that focuses on high end audio equipment, such as loudspeakers and amplifiers, and audio-related news, such as online audio streaming. It was founded in 1962 by J. Gordon Holt....

magazine, Pieter Treurniet (Tribute Transformers) and John Broskie (GlassWare and Tube CAD Journal).

Previous workshops have included subjects such as power supplies

Power supply

A power supply is a device that supplies electrical energy to one or more electric loads. The term is most commonly applied to devices that convert one form of electrical energy to another, though it may also refer to devices that convert another form of energy to electrical energy...

(shunt/series/passive/regulated), the sound of distortion, noise and hum, speaker crossover

Audio crossover

Audio crossovers are a class of electronic filter used in audio applications. Most individual loudspeaker drivers are incapable of covering the entire audio spectrum from low frequencies to high frequencies with acceptable relative volume and lack of distortion so most hi-fi speaker systems use a...

s and digital jitter. Audio gear listening competitions are held for items such as phono stages, full range speakers

Loudspeaker

A loudspeaker is an electroacoustic transducer that produces sound in response to an electrical audio signal input. Non-electrical loudspeakers were developed as accessories to telephone systems, but electronic amplification by vacuum tube made loudspeakers more generally useful...

, single-ended triode

Single-ended triode

A single-ended triode vacuum tube electronic amplifier uses a single triode to produce an output, in contrast to a push-pull amplifier which uses a pair of devices with antiphase inputs to generate an output with the wanted signals added and the distortion components subtracted...

amplifiers and output transformer

Transformer

A transformer is a device that transfers electrical energy from one circuit to another through inductively coupled conductors—the transformer's coils. A varying current in the first or primary winding creates a varying magnetic flux in the transformer's core and thus a varying magnetic field...

s.

ETF's have been reviewed in several magazines, including Revue du Son, MJ, TNT Audio, 6Moons and Prestige Audio Video.

A recurring item with each Festival is a Special Guest that is invited to join the Festival and hold a presentation about a high-end audio subject of their own choice.

External links

Previous ETF presentations

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