Tube pre-amp with ss amp?

[Resident Loser]

...hmmm...if you put the tubed gear in early in the game and pass it through a SS amp, you still get the "tube" sound?

It would seem that no specific sound, non-coloration, straight wire with gain, also known as High Fidelity, is the forte' of solid state?

jimHJJ(...is that about right?...)

[JoeE SP9]

...hmmm...if you put the tubed gear in early in the game and pass it through a SS amp, you still get the "tube" sound?

It would seem that no specific sound, non-coloration, straight wire with gain, also known as High Fidelity, is the forte' of solid state?

jimHJJ(...is that about right?...)

Try it. You might like it.

[E-Stat]

...hmmm...if you put the tubed gear in early in the game and pass it through a SS amp, you still get the "tube" sound?

Audio systems are cumulative pipelines of multiple gain stages. You don't necessarily have to change all the gain stages in order to hear improvements. Especially for those who listen to vinyl (I think that includes you), using a high quality tube pre for the first 60 to 70 db of gain can do wonders. Like Joe SP-9, I've been using tube Audio Research preamps for twenty five years.

With my vintage system, I got better results when I replaced the SS op amp output from a Pioneer PD-54 CDP with a Manley DAC having a tube line stage that drives the SS Threshold amp directly.

On the other hand, I use the tube (actually hybrid) ARC pre in the main system only when playing vinyl. I see no need to use a 12 db gain stage just to attenuate the signal. With the CDP, I use precision attenuators instead directly to the tube amps.

It would seem that no specific sound, non-coloration, straight wire with gain, also known as High Fidelity, is the forte' of solid state?

With a few notable exceptions, that has certainly NOT been my experience. Most solid state lacks the harmonic richness of the real thing, IMHO.

rw

[Feanor]

...hmmm...if you put the tubed gear in early in the game and pass it through a SS amp, you still get the "tube" sound?

It would seem that no specific sound, non-coloration, straight wire with gain, also known as High Fidelity, is the forte' of solid state?

jimHJJ(...is that about right?...)

My hypothesis is that the tube component produces low order harmonic distortion which (a) is pleasant in its own right and adds "harmonic richness", and (b) hides the high order harmonic distortion created by some s/s amps. For this reason a tube component anywhere in the circuit can produce the "tube sound".

My current monoblocks are a high-bias, low feedback MOSFET design that sound a lot more tube-like than my previous class 'D', Tripath-based amp. Dunno, but I'd take guess that the low-feedback design produces less high-order but possibly more low-order distortion, hence is more tube-like that bi-polar s/s. On the other hand my Tripath amp also had relatively low feedback so who know?