Tubes plus SS

I have a couple of tube amps/solid state amps & I occasionally mix n match them. Solid state and tube stuff do sound 'good'.

BUT, I found that once I had ALL amplification stages running tube (as in my arc ph-3, bat vk-5i, and arc vt100), you take a pretty big jump. All of a sudden the music is REALLY alive with the full-on tube magic. To date that is probably the most engaging system I have.

It doesn't have a wisp of the ultra-resolution that I get from SACD's on my SCD-1/Aleph P/Aleph 2, but definitely more 'alive'.

Swapping a single solid state component into this rig ruins the vinyl playback. Wish I could get my CD's to sound so good...

Anybody out there find a similar effect with a tube cd player ?

I've used the Sonic Frontiers Line 2 tube pre-amp with McCormack DNA2DX for a couple years, and then with Rev. A upgrade, and all sound great. I personally highly recommend tube pre-amps with good solid state amps (the SS for bass control). Cheers. Craig

if i had to run half and half. i sure hope that something amp or preamp would contain tubes. conrad would be a good match to tame the krell if that is the amp you plan to keep.

I agree with Tireguy, IF I have to use an active preamp (I prefer passive attenuation), I've gotten better results going with a solid state preamp and a tube amplifier.

Before I had Mark Levinson 380S Pre amp with Mark Levinson 336 amp. they were OK
But something was missing so I changed to Audio Reserch
Ref MarkII. Now they sound lot deeper and sweeter.
I'm very happy with it