Some interesting reads

[E-Stat]

But I think this masking does occur. People do report the "warmth, body, harmonic richness, depth, an 'organic' quality" resulting from the insertion of a simple, unity gain tube buffers.

Maybe they truly needed an impedance buffer! Here's one case where the addition of a tube buffer stage was superfluous: Musical Fidelity DAC Another unit tested added some gain and admittedly helps some CDPs with weak op amp output stages: X-10D.

And I can reported based on my use of a tube preamp versus the passive preamp I used before.

"Warmth" can always be achieved via altered frequency response. Perhaps your SF is like older C-J units having a slightly chocolate flavor to their tonal balance. The MKII version of my preamp sounds leaner, but the output devices are unchanged.

rw

[Ajani]

Maybe they truly needed an impedance buffer! Here's one case where the addition of a tube buffer stage was superfluous: Musical Fidelity DAC Another unit tested added some gain and admittedly helps some CDPs with weak op amp output stages: X-10D.


"Warmth" can always be achieved via altered frequency response. Perhaps your SF is like older C-J units having a slightly chocolate flavor to their tonal balance. The MKII version of my preamp sounds leaner, but the output devices are unchanged.

rw

I think this line in your second link best sums up the use of tube buffers:

With both these units, it will be very hard to predict whether or not they will work an improvement on the sound of any specific system.
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But more than usual, you should try to audition these units in your own system before you make a purchase decision.

But in fairness to the buffers, that quote is true of all audio products... Will a Passive Pre sound better than an Active? Will no Pre sound better than either Passive or Active? Will a Turntable sound better than a CD player? Will Tube sound better than Solid State? At the end of the day, you just have to try it for yourself to see if it works for you...

[E-Stat]

Will no Pre sound better than either Passive or Active? Will a Turntable sound better than a CD player? Will Tube sound better than Solid State? At the end of the day, you just have to try it for yourself to see if it works for you...

I certainly agree about system matching considerations. Passive arrangements are highly sensitive to specific gain and impedance matching issues. Similarly, tube power amplifiers are not a good match for all speakers. Where my VTLs are wonderful with the stats, they are not so much with the Advents where a "lesser" Threshold sounds better.

I do not, however, believe that all tube gear make music better by "masking distortion". My experience suggests it has to do with the nature of their distortion spectra which is shared by a few SS designs as well.

rw

[Feanor]

...
"Warmth" can always be achieved via altered frequency response. Perhaps your SF is like older C-J units having a slightly chocolate flavor to their tonal balance. The MKII version of my preamp sounds leaner, but the output devices are unchanged.

rw

In fact the Sonic Frontiers are somewhat (in)famous for a solid state-like sound and are not archtypically tubey. Using the standard Sovtek tubes my SF sound remarkably like the Adcom GFP 750 I'd been using in passive mode.

I wanted a bit more of the tube sound but got a measure of it only after some tube rolling. My best result was with Amperex white label 'PQ' tubes.