TOK: yes, tubes can be a hassle, especially on amps. I had an early Jadis that required 8 matched outputs, 4 matched drivers and 2 matched inputs that drove me up the wall. Actually, I don't think I could live witha big multi-tube amp again. That why I've settled on the SE route; many compromises in dynamics - you can get them, but you really have to balance it out correctly if using anything other than horns (and I've never been a horn guy...) - but let's me have the existential qualities I talked about above with minimum of tube hassles. So, I do know what you mean.
I agree wholeheartedly on what you said about pre's; I think that's why I yap about them so much, and why I've pushed the Supratek here. The pre is really the fulcrum of the system. In a beginning system, many times its best to construct a system from the speakers back (a relative statement guys; I know everything is important...), but I've found at some point it is very hard to get everything to click - at the point of delving into PC's as you mentioned - unless you build from the pre outwards. Yea, I know, speakers are the most personal choice, and you should never get speakers to make a pre happy, but I assume at that level the person knows what speakers work for him/her; the pre is the tough one, the integrator of the system, if you will, at that point.
I know what people mean by mushy tube sound. Many tube components are euphonic band-aids (many times for digital systems...), but that usually is encountered in beginning systems (where tuning is impossible to get around so you might as well deal with it as best you can, implanting a glimmer of what is possible and making the system, at the very least, non-fatiguing). With more advanced sytems, IMHO, you start to hear the pre weaknesses, both euphonic and in the ways I've described above, in that order. So, a euphonic pre may be a relative, valuable panacea in a beginning to mid-level system, but when the system moves to another level, the tube pre is left behind. That doesn't mean, as many people who make this transition assume, that any tube pre thereafter will be "colored". Believing so would be like saying an Ayre has the same degree of distortive artifacts as a beginner SS pre because lesser SS pre's generally retain that hallmark.
Anyway, things change as you go up the ladder, and valid assumptions at one point of system transition are not necessarily valid farther on. My position is that in the "magical" systems - and the "magic" of pyschic immersion in the event of musicality is what you end up shooting for towards the end - a tube pre, as a fulcrum of such system, is nearly indispensible towards attaining the spatial/dimensional/existential qualities in the stereo that catalyze the listening mind towards these deepest receptive levels of "art appreciation".
I want to be immersed in Van Gogh's "Wheat Fields and Cyprees Trees" - to be transported into the essence of beauty and exist within and as "it". And while I appreciate the realism of an Inge, or the brushwork of Sargeant, painting reality in terms of what the less deep mind sees as an accurate rendition of reality does not mean that because of that accuracy you will experience the art - the art you create when you put together a system - necessarily the same way at deeper symmetries of perception.
Reducing distortive artifacts is an admirable goal, but should, in the later transitions of your audio journey, not be a determitive one (this is not a lecture to you TOK, just me blathering again...).
TOK, I would be very interested in your reaction to the Supratek. I recommend it alot around here, and one of the reasons is because its detail and dynamics are so strong that people coming from SS - where those qualities are accentuated - don't recoil from its percieved absense as much. A "state-of-the-art" tube pre is not a piece that is appreciated right away, especially if you have a good SS pre already. With such SS pre's its hard to point to what they are not doing - its a subtle ommission of the existential qualities I talked about above - until you live with a (assumably) non-euphonic, hard-wired, dynamic NOS outfitted tube pre for a while, and then, and this is important, then take it out. Only then do you realize over the next month what is missing. It won't come to you right away because its not the thinking part of the mind that is missing it; the ommision needs time to arise into your non-listening thoughts, so to speak. This is because, as I've noted above, they are percieved, or their absense, when you are listening and not-thinking.
Oh, BTW, last thing: You have to have the right IC running from the pre to the amp in a tube system (and even with a tube pre/SS amp system, although to a lesser degree). Its critical, folks, so going from a SS system and using your Nordost isn't going to cut it. As we know, when a more musical component is inserted into a system, synergy usually requires that those pieces around it move up too. When accuracy is your goal, you can stay with the same Nordost-like IC's longer; but with a systems that aims towards the "magical" the IC becomes integral.
I agree wholeheartedly on what you said about pre's; I think that's why I yap about them so much, and why I've pushed the Supratek here. The pre is really the fulcrum of the system. In a beginning system, many times its best to construct a system from the speakers back (a relative statement guys; I know everything is important...), but I've found at some point it is very hard to get everything to click - at the point of delving into PC's as you mentioned - unless you build from the pre outwards. Yea, I know, speakers are the most personal choice, and you should never get speakers to make a pre happy, but I assume at that level the person knows what speakers work for him/her; the pre is the tough one, the integrator of the system, if you will, at that point.
I know what people mean by mushy tube sound. Many tube components are euphonic band-aids (many times for digital systems...), but that usually is encountered in beginning systems (where tuning is impossible to get around so you might as well deal with it as best you can, implanting a glimmer of what is possible and making the system, at the very least, non-fatiguing). With more advanced sytems, IMHO, you start to hear the pre weaknesses, both euphonic and in the ways I've described above, in that order. So, a euphonic pre may be a relative, valuable panacea in a beginning to mid-level system, but when the system moves to another level, the tube pre is left behind. That doesn't mean, as many people who make this transition assume, that any tube pre thereafter will be "colored". Believing so would be like saying an Ayre has the same degree of distortive artifacts as a beginner SS pre because lesser SS pre's generally retain that hallmark.
Anyway, things change as you go up the ladder, and valid assumptions at one point of system transition are not necessarily valid farther on. My position is that in the "magical" systems - and the "magic" of pyschic immersion in the event of musicality is what you end up shooting for towards the end - a tube pre, as a fulcrum of such system, is nearly indispensible towards attaining the spatial/dimensional/existential qualities in the stereo that catalyze the listening mind towards these deepest receptive levels of "art appreciation".
I want to be immersed in Van Gogh's "Wheat Fields and Cyprees Trees" - to be transported into the essence of beauty and exist within and as "it". And while I appreciate the realism of an Inge, or the brushwork of Sargeant, painting reality in terms of what the less deep mind sees as an accurate rendition of reality does not mean that because of that accuracy you will experience the art - the art you create when you put together a system - necessarily the same way at deeper symmetries of perception.
Reducing distortive artifacts is an admirable goal, but should, in the later transitions of your audio journey, not be a determitive one (this is not a lecture to you TOK, just me blathering again...).
TOK, I would be very interested in your reaction to the Supratek. I recommend it alot around here, and one of the reasons is because its detail and dynamics are so strong that people coming from SS - where those qualities are accentuated - don't recoil from its percieved absense as much. A "state-of-the-art" tube pre is not a piece that is appreciated right away, especially if you have a good SS pre already. With such SS pre's its hard to point to what they are not doing - its a subtle ommission of the existential qualities I talked about above - until you live with a (assumably) non-euphonic, hard-wired, dynamic NOS outfitted tube pre for a while, and then, and this is important, then take it out. Only then do you realize over the next month what is missing. It won't come to you right away because its not the thinking part of the mind that is missing it; the ommision needs time to arise into your non-listening thoughts, so to speak. This is because, as I've noted above, they are percieved, or their absense, when you are listening and not-thinking.
Oh, BTW, last thing: You have to have the right IC running from the pre to the amp in a tube system (and even with a tube pre/SS amp system, although to a lesser degree). Its critical, folks, so going from a SS system and using your Nordost isn't going to cut it. As we know, when a more musical component is inserted into a system, synergy usually requires that those pieces around it move up too. When accuracy is your goal, you can stay with the same Nordost-like IC's longer; but with a systems that aims towards the "magical" the IC becomes integral.