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Solid-state preamp with tube power amp


How important is it to use a tube preamp with a tube poweramp? Will a solid-state preamp "undo" the tube effect of the power amp?
ral6to
dave_b's avatar
dave_b
3,159 posts
 
Having spent 30 years as an audiophile and having owned tons of gear, I can attest to the fact that often our current system tends to dictate our response..i.e..we don't want to be honest with ourselves in absolute terms! In other words, we delude ourselves that what we currently have is the best combo! As for myself, the latest transformation of my system has been done upon reflection of the vast number of combinations of gear that have gone through my house. What I did cost me dearly, not just in terms of cost, but in terms of my audio ego! I traded in a pair of Dunlavy SC-5 speakers for Watt/Puppy 6's plus 11,000. I then had to have Transparent cable to lash it all up...$18,000!! They were good speakers, but the thrill was gone from the music. I traded them back after 9months for a pair of B&w 801 nautilus speakers...they were less than exciting as well. In the end I traded them back in for my original Dunlavy's. Of course the Transparent cable mucked up the sound with my old speakers back in the system so I traded for Harmonic Technologies Magic Cables all around. In the end, all is extremely satisfying. So, with this lesson and many others under my belt, I say to you that putting a solid state pre-amp in front of a tube amp is not going to yield the most musical of results. It may sound nice...but not full, dynamic and solid the way live music sounds! I have owned all kinds of tube amps and pre-amps as well as ss amps and pre-amps (I like to mix and match), but no system has sounded better than the ones with a great Tube pre-amp and world class ss amp! SS pre's squash the life out of the signal...the tube amp adds back some body and action, but to a brutilized signal. A tube pre-amp adds life and tonal color as well as dynamics that a great ss amp will pass on without the smoke between notes!

Sincerely,
Dave Borda
thebordas@yahoo.com
johnjohn
42 posts
 
I don’t think you can make generalizations like this. I’ve heard some damn good sounding systems pairing the other way around.
david_ten
5,480 posts
 
Oh, for the days of shared email addresses!!! Lazarus like as well!

To your post, good point johnjohn.
wolf_garcia
6,704 posts
 
There should be a limit on "thread time jumping." Old Dave Borda opined a decade and a half ago...his generalization has passed the expiration date.
larryi
4,024 posts
 

I prefer using tubes for phonostages, linestages and the main amplifier.  I might consider using a solid state amp if I were in need of much more power (I generally do not like high-powered tube gear), but, I am less inclined to use a solid state preamp in front of a tube amp.  Still, I have heard pretty good results when I did use solid state in front of a tube amp, and I don't subscribe to the notion that there is some kind of tube "magic" or "essence" that is completely lost in so doing.  Although it is on long-term loan, I own, and have used with success, a Levinson No. 32 preamp that fed very low-powered tube amps (Audio Note Kageki). 

While any combination of tube and solid state gear can be made to work, I have found that it is actually harder to use tube feeding solid state rather than the other way around.  There can be an incompatibility with tube feeding solid state that cannot be accounted for by just the issue of high output impedance of the tube linestage.  For some reason, even when the impedances are supposedly compatible and interconnect length is kept suitably short, this combination can sound overly warm, sluggish and too loose in the lower frequency range.  This is not always the case, but, it does happen enough that one cannot assume compatibility just by looking at specifications.

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