SS Pre-Amp / Tube Amp

In my opinion, the speakers enter into the picture.

In many if not most systems, the most important component pairing is speaker and amplifier. If the speaker works best with a tube amp, then that's the place to have tubes in your system. From there, the preamp can either be tube or solid state. On the other hand if the speaker works best with a solid state amp, go with solid state amplification and then choose whichever kind of preamp you like best.

Duke
dealer/manufacturer

This is what I do with my system - although I ended up resorting to horizontal biamplification to get the most of it. So Duke is right on - if your speakers are efficienct enough, there is no problem. But as I find out with my JM Lab Electra 926s, tube amps will sound completely different with a nice load (like the top end of my speakers) compared to giving them a large 3-way with double woofers (full-range operation).

Arthur

I use a solid-state preamp with my vacuum tube amps in the reference system for my audio company. I chose this particular solid-state preamp because, other than a slight leanness, it is extremely neutral, as a reference should be (I was able to eliminate that leanness later, to my delight). Solid-state amps usually have high damping factors, and tend to offer overdamped bass--dry and unnatural-sounding, IMO. An extreme example of this was a friend who had Klipsch Cornwalls and drove them with a Crown DC-300A ss amp (known in the 70s for its high damping factor). We thought the speakers had no bass, but the problem was that the Crown amp was telling the 15" woofer to stop before it could overcome inertia and get all that mass to move! He bought a used ARC tube amp, and, voila! Low frequencies!

It's an unfortunate dilemma of life and physics that a low output impedance is necessary to eliminate frequency response variations, but that it strangles the bass via overdamping. You have to accept the compromise that works best for you in this regard. As for me, I'll take slightly underdamped over slightly overdamped anytime (until perfect bass becomes an option). Obviously, some tube amps are waaayy underdamped, and I find this as unacceptable as solid-state bass. As a learning example all you need to do is go to a live concert, pay careful attention to the bass, go home, listen to a live recording of similar music on your soid-state-amp stereo, and cry. BTW, once you become aware of the overdamped-bass problem, you realize it's not just a problem in the bass, but in all frequency ranges.

This is a perfect example of why you need a good dealer or trusted, experienced adviser for building a system; the answer to these types of questions is the "it depends".

Dave, I disagree with your assertion that a SS pre and tube amp is "backwards". It was one of my best combinations. I went from a tube pre + tube amp to SS pre + SS amp. I couldn't believe the difference! (And the SS pre cost a lot less than the tube pre, to boot.) The bass was MUCH better, and so were the dynamics. That doesn't support your theory that the preamp is all about microdynamics and the poweramp is all about macrodynamics. In fact, I've learned just how tremendously preamps can influence the sound; indeed, in my system, the preamp is the most volatile part of the system, as I've gone through a number of preamps in the past few years.

Don't be afraid to try the "backwards" method; it has the potential to work very well.

Michael