SO this tube hoopla what's the deal???
dudeinaroom
Posts: 3,609
dudeinaroom wrote: »I have a tubed pre spending the weekend here mated to a parasound hca 1000a and it is sublime. To me tubes seem more real sounding, especially when guitars are in the mix. The sound stage seems to have more width and a more realistic depth, but still able to wrap around you and pull you in. Micro details and detail in general have quite a step up in presence. It also has an ability to make magic...your music seems to float on the air, but at the same time carrying more weight. All my opinion from the last 2 days of listening.
Is this the way it is, is it synergy, or just dumb luck?
Quote taken from Tube Curious thread
Post edited by dudeinaroom on
Comments
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Depending on the source, pre, amp, speakers, tubes, wires (including the AC, IC's, speaker, digital, etc.) what you said in the quote can be truth. Synergy is real (as Reeltrouble says: "everything matters and tubes rule"). The hard part can be finding this synergy, however dumb luck can play a role in finding it.
Taken from a recent Audioholics reply regarding "Club Polk" and Polk speakers:
"I'm yet to hear a Polk speaker that merits more than a sentence and 60 seconds discussion."![:\](https://forum.polkaudio.com/resources/emoji/confused.png ":\")
My response is: If you need 60 seconds to respond in one sentence, you probably should't be evaluating Polk speakers.....
"Green leaves reveal the heart spoken Khatru"- Jon Anderson
"Have A Little Faith! And Everything You'll Face, Will Jump From Out Right On Into Place! Yeah! Take A Little Time! And Everything You'll Find, Will Move From Gloom Right On Into Shine!"- Arthur Lee -
Did this experience push you to consider having a tube preamp permanently in your rig? Also which tube pre where you using to get the synergy?
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I started thinking about my gear in a whole new light the first time I put some tubes in the mix. I'm now on my fourth tube pre, definitely thinking this one is the keeper.Good music, a good source, and good power can make SDA's sing. Tubes make them dance.
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I started thinking about my gear in a whole new light the first time I put some tubes in the mix. I'm now on my fourth tube pre, definitely thinking this one is the keeper.
What tube pre amps did you go thru and what did you finally land on?Rig1 - Totem Hawks, Benchmark HDR, Parasound A21, Sonus, Samsung 52 LCD, Audioquest Type4
Rig2 - LFD LE IV Integrated, Harbeth P3ESR, Rega Dac, MF V-Link, IMAC, Audioquest Type4 -
heh, heh.....tube buffer.
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What tube pre amps did you go thru and what did you finally land on?
Actually, now that I think about it...... make that seven, not four :evil:
Ok, here's the history:
1) Yaqin tube buffer (if you count it as a preamp, which it isn't, really....) - bought it as a low-cost test to satisfy my curiosity about tubes. Liked it. Figured, correctly, there were better things to come if I stepped up the totem pole.
From that point I decided to try to find a tube headphone amp that also acted as a preamp, to kill two birds with one stone. Moved on to:
2) Little Dot MKIVSE - Great little unit, not overly expensive, liked it a lot. Thought I'd move up even further when I got my Krell amp with balanced inputs, so decided to go with a balanced head/preamp (and dac...)
3) Little Dot MKVI - Little Dot makes some great gear at a budget, if you're ok with buying Chinese stuff. This was a very nice balanced preamp/headamp. Sounded very good with my Sennheiser headphones. I wasn't blown away by what it did for my LCD-2's. This is when I began to lose my mind in tube gear! So I moved to:
4) Eddie Current Balancing Act - Wow. Most insanely good piece of audio gear I've ever owned. Moved up to LCD-3 headphones at the same time, and I've never heard any headphone combo sound as good as this. But it's an expensive piece. Very expensive. And expensive tubes. What I found, though, was that I spent most of my time listening to it as a preamp, not as a headphone amp. I was spending most of my headphone listening time in my office with a different amp. After a year of enjoying this piece, I decided to experiment and see if I could drop down to a less valuable preamp, without the headphone functionality. I sold the Eddie Current after I convinced myself that I was perfectly happy with the sound of:
5) Dared SL2000a. Awesome piece at a pretty budget price. If you're looking for the very basic functionality of a volume knob and two inputs with some great tube rolling capabilities, but don't care about a phono stage or a headphone amp, I highly recommend this. But then......... I got back into vinyl with all that extra cash from selling the Eddie Current. Started off thinking I'd just add a separate phono stage, so I bought:
6) Bellari VP530 tube phono stage. This is just a phono preamp, not a line stage, but it still counts! However, this one never even made it out of the box. I returned it, because I started thinking about the fact that for the cost of the Bellari, the cost of a power supply for the Bellari (which apparently makes a big difference over the cheapo wall wart it comes with), the cost of the Dared SL2000a, and the cost of interconnects between the Bellari and the Dared, I'd be better off with:
7) Dared MC-7P. This is what I have right now, and I'm quite happy with it. Tube pre-amp with tube phono stage built right in. Sounds wonderful, don't really detect much difference at all between the sound from my loudspeaker system with this versus the Eddie Current. Maybe one day I'll add a solid state headphone amp hanging off one of the outputs of this (it has two), but for now I now only use my headphones in my office. This is quite limiting in that I can't listen to vinyl or SACD's with headphones, since my table and SACD player are in my loudspeaker rig. But that's ok for now.
Yes, tubes can be quite a journey! But a fun one....Good music, a good source, and good power can make SDA's sing. Tubes make them dance. -
"Tube"? Was ist das "Tube"?
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Tubes, taxes and death! The inescapable! With tubes everything matters ala Ted. With taxes nothing you do can help you. With death well, you're on your own and there may not be tubes on the other side, if there "is' one! lol
Enjoy!
cnhCurrently orbiting Bowie's Blackstar.!
Polk Lsi-7s, Def Tech 8" sub, HK 3490, HK HD 990 (CDP/DAC), AKG Q701s
[sig. changed on a monthly basis as I rotate in and out of my stash] -
Nspindel - thanks for the write-up. And i agree with our comment about this hobby being a journey. It is always fun to try out new gear.
I have the dared sl2000a and am happy with it. I also bought a bunch of tubes to roll when i feel like a change.Rig1 - Totem Hawks, Benchmark HDR, Parasound A21, Sonus, Samsung 52 LCD, Audioquest Type4
Rig2 - LFD LE IV Integrated, Harbeth P3ESR, Rega Dac, MF V-Link, IMAC, Audioquest Type4 -
Scott 130
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Nspindel - thanks for the write-up. And i agree with our comment about this hobby being a journey. It is always fun to try out new gear.
I have the dared sl2000a and am happy with it. I also bought a bunch of tubes to roll when i feel like a change.
Unless you have more than two sources, or need a phono preamp, I'd stay right where you are. That is a very enjoyable piece.Good music, a good source, and good power can make SDA's sing. Tubes make them dance. -
I tried the tubes route and gave up due to warm up periods and time constraints, etc. I'll try again when I retire and I have time to fuss with them.
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With a tube pre the warm up time is minimal. The scott is just visiting. Fresh rebuild and has been running since about 6 o'clock of friday. Heard a decent amount of change in the first 3 hours as every thing settles in.I tried the tubes route and gave up due to warm up periods and time constraints, etc. I'll try again when I retire and I have time to fuss with them. -
I'm fairly new to tubes. It started with my purchase of a Rotel RCD-855 cd player modified for true tube output (not just a buffer). The sound was so liquid and analog like I had to get more. Then I made a deal for a vintage Eico ST-70 that had all original tubes (Mullard and Westinghouse). It was great from the get go but the caps and resistors were 50 years old. I rebuilt it (there is a thread on here chronicaling the build) and put in all new caps and all new resistors along with a couple mods. The thing sounded fantastic and gets daily use. It's an integrated but it kicks serious butt. The newest piece is a Pro-ject tube box for the turntable which is running with two Mullard 12AX7's and sounds very nice. I don't think I could go back to solid state after falling in love with tubes.SDA-1C (full mods)
Carver TFM-55
NAD 1130 Pre-amp
Rega Planar 3 TT/Shelter 501 MkII
The Clamp
Revox A77 Mk IV Dolby reel to reel
Thorens TD160/Mission 774 arm/Stanton 881S Shibata
Nakamichi CR7 Cassette Deck
Rotel RCD-855 with modified tube output stage
Cambridge Audio DACmagic Plus
ADC Soundshaper 3 EQ
Ben's IC's
Nitty Gritty 1.5FI RCM -
^^+1^^ I dont think I could ever go back to solid state either.
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Tubes to have that magical quality to them. I remember when I bought a Classe Power amp, the music just had a soft velvet like quality to it. Them I swapped it out with an Adcom, and it sound so harsh and metallic. I can see why so many audiophiles prefer it.
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Why? What's the transiumformerus for?
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Frank
Polk LSiM 703 mains on Skylan Stands
Polk LSiM 704c center
Polk FX500i surrounds
Parasound 5250 Amp
Oppo BDP-105
SVS PC Ultra tuned to 16hz
Panasonic 65" Viera Plasma -
I guess if it would have been a capacitator, or even a rectumfier you would have understood me better.
lol.......mhardy6647 will understand.Denon Frank wrote: »The WHAT? -
Tubes to have that magical quality to them. I remember when I bought a Classe Power amp, the music just had a soft velvet like quality to it. Them I swapped it out with an Adcom, and it sound so harsh and metallic. I can see why so many audiophiles prefer it.
Wasn't the Classe solid state? I know many say that the early Classe had a very tube like sound (to a fault to some people).
I love the idea of a tube pre and a SS power amp. I haven't tried a high power tube amp but have heard many low power (under 50 watts) tube amps and couldn't get around that the bass dynamics (especially on orchestral or hard rock) wasn't as good as a quality solid state amp. (and, of course, there is biamping with tube and solid state but that is another can of worms that should be saved for another thread).
On a preamp, though, dynamic limitations are easily handled and the tube magic really does something special - liquid smooth and no rolloff when done correctly imho -
That poor S-130 suffered from the common Scott problem that one of the local Scott gurus has termed the "wimpformer" - not really quite enough oompf there for the demands of the appliance (particularly at modern line voltages) - someone added a separate filament transformer to this one.dudeinaroom wrote: »Why? What's the transiumformerus for?
Yeah, rectumfriers... :-)
The tube TV guys had some even more colorfully arcane terms - look at the old RCA receiving tubes manuals and you'll see completely straight-faced discussion of "snivets", for example. -
ITS AUDIO VOODOO dont stray down the tube path youve been warned, lol.
