Apple's iPod reeks of modernity. Its combination of sleek industrial design, capacious storage, and a clever user interface is state of the art. So why would anyone think to mate the iPod with a retrogressive stationary audio component that is based on vacuum tubes?

After auditioning the N and S Valveworks iPod amplifier for more than a month, I'm not sure I'm any closer to an answer than when it arrived. The amplifier, made by N and S, in Saitama, Japan, is as oddly conceived a product as I've ever encountered in more than 20 years of audio reviewing. But it's kind of fun, and in its own way it is an interesting commentary on some frequently overlooked trends in component audio. The survival of the vacuum tube some 30 years after its abandonment by mainstream manufacturers is one of the great anomalies of consumer electronics. Huge, hot, inefficient, and somewhat dangerous, tubes offer no practical advantages over their solid-state counterparts. But what they do provide is a musically natural distortion spectrum and, for many, a superior listening experience.

Photo: Nicholas Eveleigh

Back to the Future:: 20th-century tubes amp up the 21st-century iPod.

Even when pushed hard by demanding musical material, tubes overload gracefully, and although the sound at that point is audibly distorted, it still has a singing tone that is almost impossible to duplicate with solid-state circuits. That's why many recording engineers continue to use vacuum tubes in their studios and most premium musical instrument amplifiers also employ tubes. Within the consumer electronics sphere, hundreds of mostly tiny companies make vacuum tube equipment for residential listening systems as well. N and S is one of those companies. Another such company, PsiberAudio of Singapore, has also announced a tube-based iPod amplifier; its iTube SE15 retails at US $900.