Using a HT system with a tube preamp

There are plenty of excellent solid state stereo preamps that would be a huge upgrade over an AVR or prepro.  Also, there are a few tube pres that don’t have tubes on when using bypass — Rogue I think is one and maybe Backert or VAC?  Either way a good stereo pre will improve your 2-channel performance significantly. 

The world needs to deal with this very harsh conflict between stereo and HT.  It is a real pain in the ass to piece together all the equip

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Tell me about it. I must have wasted a good 2 years banging my head against this problem. Until it hit me, HT is pure gimmick. Its not really made for home theater, its made for selling movie tickets. In movie theaters almost everyone is sitting way off center so the only way dialog can sound like its on screen is to have a speaker behind the screen. At home it usually just a few and if your stereo images like it should then what do you need a center channel for? You don’t.
Surround is even worse. Pure gimmick. Once you realize this its pretty easy to just drop the whole thing. Especially if you ever bother to compare sound quality between stereo and HT components. There is no comparison.

So after a couple years I ditched the whole thing and never was happier. Can’t say it saves money, probably spend the same amount, but it sure does get a lot better quality for the same money.

I have to say I have had a very different experience from those earlier posts. I use a Modwright preamplifier with HT bypass. I’ve upgraded AVRs several times and feed the single ended main output through the Mod to my speakers. I disagree respectfully that the center channel is unimportant. It is matched to my mains, all are Von Schweikert speakers. When I’ve used only the mains it’s fine for dialog only films but doesn’t present the whole front of house experience for anything else. Plus many films are better with dedicated subwoofers (two), which the AVR controls. Thus, my amps and LCR speakers are all the same and make for a seamless front wall of sound no matter where I sit. The surrounds are only for special effects and are fun but not essential. Good luck. 

I'm with tgrisham, I also use a Modwright Line Stage with HT pass-through. I have a preamp-processor, and the front two channels go to the Modwright. It sounds crazy, but I use my 3C24 tube amp with HT, since it's sensitivity is about 8db lower than any of my other amps.

It also runs cooler than any other tube amps I've had, and it has turned out to be very reliable, so I keep it hooked up to my mains, so I don't have to constantly adjust the volume on my HT system.

My HT/stereo system sounds the best it has for many years, due to a new KEF center channel speaker, and the new (used) surround speakers (some nice Pioneer speakers that were designed by Andrew Jones when he was at KEF, they've worked out very well. The KEF/Pioneer speakers match with my 12" Tannoy mains due to them all being Dual Concentric drivers. Two subs are in use always, they help in my large room. When listening to Redbook CD's, with the Arcam AV-9 in 5.1 mode, I get very good simulated surround-sound from the HT portion of the system, the best DSP sound I've encountered.

Many of you will think me uncouth for listening this way, but it's really very enjoyable. For stereo only listening, vinyl is a great option, too.

Regards,
Dan