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What preamp creates the largest soundstage?

I have always loved a large soundstage.  I have a small listening room (10x10) and have mini-monitors, driven by a tube amp.  I have played a lot with speaker placement, room acoustics, listening position to create a large soundstage.  I have rolled tubes on the amp and made dramatic improvements. (I have purposely left details on the brands of tubes, amp and speakers out, because I don’t want side comments to distract from my question)

i have a digital source into a solid state naim preamp.  I home demo’ed a well reviewed preamp, and was surprised at how much the soundstage shrunk, both side to side and top downward.  It was deeper, and did have much of the tube magic, but I could not live without the big soundstage.  

so my question is, does anyone have experience with a preamp that produces a big soundstage?  I am looking for recommendations on what to demo next. While I lean toward tubes, I am open to solid state.  I am okay either new or used, and could spend in the 5k range, but would be happy to spend less.  Also comments on specific brands (i.e. xyz is known to have great soundstage in all their preamps) as opposed to models, are welcome.

and I will be the first to admit that perhaps the very large soundstage is not “accurate”to real music, but boy is it seductive and I love it and can’t live without it.

meiatflask
heaudio123
689 posts
 
sebs,

See my post above about rooms and speaker room interaction. I think the "Not sure why many of us chasing for perfect sound swapping gear but not adapting rooms acoustically... ", comes from the "throw money at the problem" approach, because it is easy and you feel you have done something, even if you really have not. It is much easier (and often cheaper) than the much harder job of actually fixing the problem.


I gave a talk at a well attended audiophile club meeting. I asked how many people owned a measurement microphone and software, something that can be purchased for $100. Maybe 15% put up their hand, but you know the average system price in that room was well north of $10K, not to mention the value, even un-modified of the room it often dominates.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,850 posts
 
The biggest 3D soundstage comes from directly heated triode [DHT] preamps.
This statement is false. To get a proper soundstage that is faithful to the input signal, the preamp must have wide bandwidth so there are no phase shift issues in the audio region. To do this the bandwidth must be 10x lower than the lowest frequency to be amplified (2Hz) and 10x the highest frequency to be amplified as well. Because phase shift will only be to 10KHz, you can sort of get away with 100KHz on the top end, 200KHz is better. This insures that all the phase relationships that are vital to the soundstage information are amplified correctly.
heaudio123
689 posts
 
There is no "soundstage" below about 80-120Hz.

Real stoundstage is a combination of monaural clues, so not really impacted by phase-shift except perhaps at speaker cross-over frequencies and perhaps room nodes, and differential timing, i.e. the time differential of the same signal between your two ears.  Assuming the phase-shift between the two channels is roughly the same, then phase-shift due to amplification will not have a big impact on perceived real soundstage. Artificial sound-stage effects, can be caused by frequency filtering mainly through the mid-range, i.e. height effects, and distortions, noise, etc. that can give an impression of "space" that was not on the recording.


atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,850 posts
 
There is no "soundstage" below about 80-120Hz.
This is true. But if the low frequency cutoff of the amplification is only 20Hz, phase shift will exist up to 200Hz. Admittedly, not a lot going on there either. But the phase shift can affect impact of bass notes so its worth getting that bit right as well.
sebs
4 posts
 
Heaudio123, I do measure but found that friends in same hobby do not understand graphs, waterfalls in eg REW. Furthermore, once all setup is done mic etc would not be used untill any change to the setup. So firstly lack of knowledge and secondly waste of money for them.
I found aswell that propaly integrated sub add another layer to the sound stage, you are able to sense/know in what kind of space recording took place. Since I move to new home few years ago I start having huge issue in 30hz range and no reasonable bass trap or listening position move could solve it, I start using peq upto 100hz range and difference is staggering, tight, quick, controlled lowest octaves. But as will everything some people would argue that manipulation in signal degrades it, I would say that even if it does, the positive change in overall system sound by eq bass overwhelm potential losses. 
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