From tubes back to SS?

Over the last 30 years I’ve gone back and forth with tube and SS gear multiple times. VAC, Belles, McCormack, Modwright, Emotive, Pass, many others, and now LTA. The motivation for change was driven by the feeling of incompleteness, never reliability. 

I owned an LS100. A nice unit, but a little noisy. Healthy tubes are not inherently noisy. It’s either the circuit or worn out tubes. My LTA pre uses 6sn7’s. Dead quiet. Blackest blacks. Choice comes down to personal preferences and budget. 

Much of mid priced tube gear is colored or compromised at the frequency extremes, and much of similar priced SS gear is lifeless because it doesn’t breathe dynamically and is compromised by transitional odd order distortions which our ears are very sensitive to. Tube watts sound bigger because the higher distortions are the friendlier even order type so 2% THD isn’t too offending. .5% THD from an SS amp can sound very irritating. 

To me the LTA gear sounds complete. Resolved, extended, and clean. That doesn’t mean sterile. Not at all. Sterile sounding gear, usually inexpensive utilizing high global feedback, might be the most unsatisfying of all. The unique David Berning design doesn’t sound like anything else I’ve heard. The best of both tube and SS sound at a reasonable price. My Ultralinear replaced a Pass XA30.8, which is a damn good amplifier. But the UL was just superior in the lower midrange while retaining excellent bass definition and dynamics. And the tubes are cheap and should last 10 years because they aren’t biased to the moon. Tube amps with a conventional output transformer tend to smear the sound with hysteresis, which is a lag in reaction to change of signal. This may actually sound pleasant, but it is not accurate, and ultimately unsatisfying. Atma-Sphere amps are also OTL and I’d like to try them sometime. 

However, 20 watts is only 20 watts. Not a problem for my Daedalus speakers which are 96 dB sensitive. Many speakers aren’t anywhere near this sensitive despite their printed specifications. So choose wisely. The amp to speaker interaction may be the most important in the audio chain so it is best to consider them as a matched system, especially with tube amps. At my core I’m a tube guy because I can live with their sins more easily. At the highest levels the compromises are few, or maybe just fewer.

@tuckia08 Thats great info since I'm a newbie to tubes. How do you think the new CJ ET6 compares to the LTA? I've read/heard great things about CJs. Some people on Audiogon don't like the relay 'clicks' on the volume control of the LTA preamp. I'm not sure if that would bother me--but it might. When I turn on my system, I don't want to hear anything---but I want good quality. 

Blueorion
Sorry I don’t have any insights on the ET6. Is it the entry level replacement for the ET3?

Yes, the better LTA preamps use audible relays (MZ3 and Microzotl Preamp) can’t say that this bothers me and I’ve owned mine for 10 months so far. There are sonic benefits to using discrete resistors compared to a conventional sweep pot. This can be heard comparing an MZ2 to an MZ3 for example, but there are many other differences too.

Of all components, it seems to me that the preamp would be the easiest to maximize because of its isolated position in the chain. But what I’ve heard all sounds different, and these differences are amplified downstream. I use a digital front end and still use a Preamp because it sounds better to me. Some of my DACs have digital domain VC, but overall I like what the LTA does, or doesn’t do. Other preamps I’ve had colored the sound too much and direct sounded better. This is another topic altogether. But if you want some tubes, the pre is a good place to start. Watch the output impedance. Low is better than high. The LTA preamps have outputs under 2 ohms and can drive long cables.

I’m not trying to sell anything. You should always try equipment out yourself. I just want to share an option that I found and am still excited about. Many of the tube weaknesses mentioned in this thread are effectively dealt with by the LTA products, provided you stay within the power limitations. But you can always buy two amps and run them mono for 1.7 times the output. This is what I’m doing.

I've had brief flings with SS but always settle on tubes.  In fact at one point, though my Conrad Johnson amps have been generally very reliable, they blew a fuse or something.  I got lazy about having them fixed and threw in a Harman Kardon solid state amp in to my system so I could keep listening to it.  Over the months and the next year my listening dwindled rapidly to the point I was rarely sitting in front of my system to listen.  I figured it was because I'd just lost fervent interest in high end audio and listening to music that way, so I thought it was time to start selling stuff.  First up was selling my CJ amps.



But of course I had them fixed before I could sell them.   Got them back from the shop, hooked them up to make sure they were working fine before putting them on the listings.  And...BAM!  there was that sound!  That richness, organic, believable quality that just sucked me in.  I spent much of the night listening to music.  Then the next night.  The next night.  I found that my desire to listen to music through my system was back, big time.  I realized I couldn't sell those amps and have been listening happily ever since.

I'm very sensitive to tone/timbral qualities in a system and if it isn't "there" for me I feel no desire to bother sitting to listen.  So while the tube sound may be a subtle difference in the big picture, it's a subtle difference that turns out to be very subjectively important for me.


I have an audiophile pal who has gone back and fort between tubes and SS, usually for the "I like the tube sound but I'm sick of the hassles."He recently replaced his tube amps with a solid state amp and claims to be quite happy.  Good for him, I say.   What I don't tell him is my own reaction: I definitely find his system less enjoyable than before, with a slightly off-putting hardness/steeliness that wasn't there with his tube amps.

@tuckia08 The CJ ET6 does replace the ET3 I believe---at least that's what I've read. The LTA is slowly pulling me in. I have also glanced at Cary Audio's SLP98 and Rogue's RP5. But the LTA and CJ and #1 and 2 on the list. There are so many good opinions on here and I guess I'll have to take the dive soon. I won't know about tubes until I try it.