Tube Vs. SS Preamps

I like using my Chinese made tube preamp...its well built and sounds great.I have used both  SS preamps and tube ....phono preamps to...I like trying different pieces of equipment. 

Get yourself a BAT or Conrad Johnson tube pre. The difference is noticeable and pleasing. I’ll never go back to SS exclusively. I can’t believe you never sampled tubes in 25 years. But you don’t know what you’ve been missing. 

For the moment I’m back on full tube. Tube preamp for me adds a lot of body ss is lacking although I’ve never had what you might call a “high end “ preamp. 
 

Ive dabbled with tube pre and ss amp along with ss pre amd tube amp. I found most of the magic resides with the preamp tubes. The ss pre with tube amp did not sound good at all. Like bad. Ymmv. 

I am going to chime in here and then everyone can attack me. I think that many lesser priced tube based designs can be very musical and soft sounding which compliments many lesser expensive ss designed amps. So on the more affordable side of things I believe that tubed equipment sounds pleasing, maybe not super revealing or hyper accurate, but very pleasing. Obviously as the price goes up and the true art and science of sound reproduction is achieved both solid state and tubed designs both hit all the stops, sound stage, intimacy, immediacy and revealing of source information.

Hi Greg. Been there and done that.

First up: interplay between price and quality.  Not a difficult concept in itself but it gets a bit more complicated with the variable of tube vs SS.  That is to say it is more difficult - and thereby more expensive - to produce an equivalent quality tube pre amp.  The main issue is in getting a truly low nice tube design. 

Second: There is a bit of a continuum.  For SS then mosfets sound closer to tubes than bi-polar transistors.  Likewise 6H30 tubes have more tube sound than others.

My take for a pre (given that I like valves): Do not bother unless you get a very high quality (and expensive) valve Pre that runs 6H30 tubes.

This is not so easy.  I have an Ayon Eris but I prefer to run my Emm Labs or Daniel Hertz Pre.  The Ayon is good but the Emm and the Daniel Hertz are just lower noise.