Hi tobor007
I think the most important decision you need to make is between quality or quantity.
“Tube watts were louder than solid state watts”, general statements like that scare me and can be misleading. There are too many other factors and variables that also need to be taken into consideration before making a blanket statement like that.
Like everything else, there are positive and negative aspects for everything in audio that have to be considered. Some of the negative attributes that tubes have is warmup time. From the time you turn on the piece, it will take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours or maybe more until that piece sounds it’s best. You also don’t want to leave a tube product on 24/7 like you can with a solid state piece. Then you are going to probably want to change the factory tubes to some vintage nos (new old stock) tubes from the 1950’s or 60’s as these can transform a piece of gear tremendously. The nos tubes that are the really good ones like the Telefunkens, Mullard, Amperex, Siemens, Tungsol ect are very expensive and getting harder and harder to find. As the supply diminishes, the cost will continue to rise. The benefits of tubes, to mention just a few, would be accuracy of timbre and tonal beauty, more air and three dimensionallity around the instruments and better soundstage (sometimes).
Your comment on the amps never running out of power tells me you may want to try a good tube preamp and keep your solid state amps. You may find that this gives you the best of both worlds. That’s what I do and I love it. If you decide to give that a try I would need to know your budget and whether you prefer brand new or used before I could make any recommendations (assuming you would want me to).
Your speakers are are very power hungry as a friend of mine has a high end stereo store and used to sell that speaker so I’ve heard them many times and I’m very familiar with them. I used to have a Mac C52 solid state preamp which was good (not great) and when I replaced it with a PS Audio BHK Signature preamp, which sold for $1000.00 less and put some nos Telefunkens from the early 60’s in it’s place was so much more musical it wasn’t even funny. The tonality was gorgeous and the accuracy of timbre was much better. For a retail price of $5995.00 it’s a pretty good value compared to the prices of some of this other stuff out there. Those nos tubes made all the difference in the world. Best of luck.
Scot
I think the most important decision you need to make is between quality or quantity.
“Tube watts were louder than solid state watts”, general statements like that scare me and can be misleading. There are too many other factors and variables that also need to be taken into consideration before making a blanket statement like that.
Like everything else, there are positive and negative aspects for everything in audio that have to be considered. Some of the negative attributes that tubes have is warmup time. From the time you turn on the piece, it will take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours or maybe more until that piece sounds it’s best. You also don’t want to leave a tube product on 24/7 like you can with a solid state piece. Then you are going to probably want to change the factory tubes to some vintage nos (new old stock) tubes from the 1950’s or 60’s as these can transform a piece of gear tremendously. The nos tubes that are the really good ones like the Telefunkens, Mullard, Amperex, Siemens, Tungsol ect are very expensive and getting harder and harder to find. As the supply diminishes, the cost will continue to rise. The benefits of tubes, to mention just a few, would be accuracy of timbre and tonal beauty, more air and three dimensionallity around the instruments and better soundstage (sometimes).
Your comment on the amps never running out of power tells me you may want to try a good tube preamp and keep your solid state amps. You may find that this gives you the best of both worlds. That’s what I do and I love it. If you decide to give that a try I would need to know your budget and whether you prefer brand new or used before I could make any recommendations (assuming you would want me to).
Your speakers are are very power hungry as a friend of mine has a high end stereo store and used to sell that speaker so I’ve heard them many times and I’m very familiar with them. I used to have a Mac C52 solid state preamp which was good (not great) and when I replaced it with a PS Audio BHK Signature preamp, which sold for $1000.00 less and put some nos Telefunkens from the early 60’s in it’s place was so much more musical it wasn’t even funny. The tonality was gorgeous and the accuracy of timbre was much better. For a retail price of $5995.00 it’s a pretty good value compared to the prices of some of this other stuff out there. Those nos tubes made all the difference in the world. Best of luck.
Scot