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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
jtgofish's avatar
jtgofish
515 posts
 
DHT preamps produce the most 3D /holographic soundstage.Probably because those same tubes do the same thing when used in power amps.Which is why so many people love SET amplifiers.Except you are better off getting those qualities in your preamp and using any type of power amp that lets those qualities through because SET amplifiers are incredibly speaker fussy.Plus a really good DHT preamp will cost you a lot less than a really good SET power amplifier.
brownsfan
1,508 posts
 
I have found my Coincident CSL using the Psvane WE replica 101D tubes to be wonderful with respect to spacial presentation.  
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,850 posts
 
DHT preamps produce the most 3D /holographic soundstage.Probably because those same tubes do the same thing when used in power amps.
This statement is entirely false. Soundstage is not created by how the filament interacts with the input signal! And we can also show easily enough that SETs don't rule the roost when it comes to creating a 3D soundstage.


To get the soundstage right, the circuit has to have bandwidth such that phase shift does not exist in the essential regions where it makes the most difference to the human ear. For the most part this is the Fletcher-Munson  curve frequencies, about 3-7KHz. If the preamp lacks bandwidth past 30KHz its not going to get this right.


So a DHT preamp would only work if its bandwidth met this criteria. It would be doing this because of bandwidth and low distortion, not due to the DHT.


I recommend to anyone that is interested in getting to the bottom of this sort of thing to get a decent set of microphones and a good studio quality recorder. Go out and make a good, 2-mic recording that you can stand to listen to over and over- and then produce it on LP and a digital format. In the case of LP you don't have to produce 500 copies or the like; a test LP is fine. Now you'll have a real reference- because you were there at the recording session and you have the master tapes or master file.
aberyclark
1,355 posts
 
The "make your own reference recording" is a great idea and easily done. Outside of DSP or some effect, I think the soundstage comes from the recording. I do not want any component "blocking" the recording’s soundstage in any form. Or any room obstacles as well. I find even great mono recordings can have a wide soundstage.

Ralph, would monoblock versions of a stereo amp have any improvement of the soundstage?



atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,850 posts
 
Ralph, would monoblock versions of a stereo amp have any improvement of the soundstage?
They often do because there is less crosstalk.
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