Vacuum tube
Vacuum-tube amplifiers (also known as tube amplifiers or valve amplifiers) use a vacuum tube as the active device. While semiconductor amplifiers have largely displaced valve amplifiers for low-power applications, valve amplifiers can be much more cost effective in high power applications such as radar, countermeasures equipment, and communications equipment. Many microwave amplifiers are specially designed valve amplifiers, such as the klystron, gyrotron, traveling wave tube, and crossed-field amplifier, and these microwave valves provide much greater single-device power output at microwave frequencies than solid-state devices. Vacuum tubes remain in use in some high end audio equipment, as well as in musical instrument amplifiers, due to a preference for "tube sound".