Quote Originally Posted by jrhymeammo
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Also, don't knock on SS amps as well.
Pure Class A SS amps can hang with SET amps with much wider speaker selection. I bet Feanor's SM-70 Pro sounds freakin' sweet with a tube preamp.
He just needs a different TT and relearn to embrace analogue....
Yoh, JRA; sorry, I just notice your comment to me.

Thing about embracing "analogue" in my case is that there is nothing to embrace. Since my listening is virtually all classical, and since virtually all classical today is released only on digital what's to listen to??? The days of cheap flea market and garage sale LPs are long gone.

The Monarchys are more tube-sounding than the typical s/s amp, (although there's so much variation in tube sound that the statement is dubious). My Sonic Frontiers preamp isn't the typical warm, buttery tube sound, and to get it sounding sort of tubey, (e.g. "depth"), I have to do a lot of tube rolling. Before that it was almost indistiguishable from the passive preamp I had been using. I still suspect that the tube sound is a matter of more 2nd order distortion and not less high-order distortion as, e.g., E-Stat contends.

Before the Monarchys, I had the Bel Canto eVo2 that was definitely less mellow than the Monarchys but a bit more transparent -- and and here's the the thing, the Bel Canto actually sounded better on the best recordings.

My most recent experience with the Class D Audio SDS-258 has demonstrated once again that -- least on good recordings -- resolution is king and solid state rules, (or class D in my instances). What to buy a pair of Monarchy SM-70 Pros? Admittedly I have virtually not experience with $10,000+ amps like E-Stats, which might combine the virtues of tube & s/s. However the SDS-258 sounds a bit bright on less than really good recordings and a know that Tube Fan would hate it.

BTW, what makes a "less than reall good recording"? A lot of possibilities. But I know one major problem in case of classical music is that engineers too often try to capture a close-up sound. Given that many instruments, notably strings, can sound pretty strident especially close up, this is problem. While this close-up stridency is "accurate" and "realistic", it isn't what an audience member typically hears or wants to hear.