Cary Audio SLP-05 First Impression

Hey @kennesawjet, not sure if you’re aware, the Herron that I have is a phono stage preamp, not a line stage preamp like the Cary SLP-05.

Anyway, If I have to characterize the sound quality of the Herron, then I would say it is very neutral. It just seems to disappear from your analog pipeline. Some people might think it lacks character. I was auditioning the Herron, Parasound JC3+, and the PS Audio Stellar phono at the time. The JC3+ was super smooth, almost to a point that it’s artificial. Whereas the Stellar sounded a little too analytical to me. Herron is definitely the most neutral sounding of the 3. I kind of wanted a tube preamp at the time, so I decided on the Herron, and have no regrets.

If you have read some of my comments in this post, the positive attributes of the Cary is the details, tight bass, and the 3D-ish imaging, and it really draws you into the music.

@xcool will MD offer you 30 days to resolve with Cary and still issue you a refund in the event Cary cannot fix it within reason?   I ask because MD would end up sending it back to Cary anyhow.  I'd ask Cary in advance to cover shipping costs. The only other thought is to have someone test all of your tubes, checking to see if a few of them shorted out, grounding out, causing protection to trigger or something else going on there. 

Hey @decooney, no MD did not offer me a 30 days to resolve with Cary, but that's not a bad idea.  I might try to ask them before I ship the unit to Cary. 

As with shipping cost, neither Cary nor MD would cover it.  To MD, this is a custom order, which technically is not returnable.   To Cary, I didn't buy it from them, so they definitely would not cover shipping.   I had already asked Cary if they would replace the unit, and they said no, for that same reason.

The current thinking of the Cary tech support person is something related to the tubes, because it wasn't seated properly.   I think is probable, and I hope it's a minor issue.   But as I mentioned in one of my earlier posts,  if not inserting the tubes properly can lead to system failure, then it is a poor design, but I'm not an electrical engineer so maybe this is typical of tube pre/power amps.

BTW.  is there anyway I can visually check if a tube is bad or not?  Just curious.

BTW.  is there anyway I can visually check if a tube is bad or not?  Just curious.

Upon occasion I've had tubes that took on a strange glow or put on  lightening show when powered up; however, in your case, I think that the visual you would get is no glow at all. But other than that, not really, and the no-glow isn't even definitive, as it may well be something else in the circuit before the tubes.

I then turned the source dial towards Aux2.   It skipped over XLR2 and Aux1.  When the dial landed on Aux2, all the LED lights went off, as if I have powered off the unit, but the power unit remained on

I was actually thinking that if something happened to both tubes in sockets 3 & 6, that would end the signal path right then & there & if that was the case, there would be no output when using the balanced inputs.  However, that quote above is pretty weird, and that makes me think that this is a failure of some electrical component (resistor, cap, diode, etc) on the circuit board prior to the tubes.  I will continue to reiterate, however, how electronically challenged I am, so you can probably take my thoughts on this matter with a grain of salt. 

Looking at the bright side:  this is under warranty, and as disappointed as I know that you are (believe me, I can relate) with being unable to play with your new toy, from reading prior posts, at least you have vinyl and an operational phono-stage.

But I will be interested to know what they tell you is wrong with it.

Hey @immatthewj, you’re right about my tubes. The 6 on the left side have no glow at all, only the 2 headphone tubes on the right side have glow. Other than that, the tubes seem to look fine to me visually.

As with how a poorly seated or non functional tube can affect the rest of the circuitry, this is what Cary support person said in our email exchange:

"A tube can cause an intermittent issue and maybe cause an arch in the circuit. Its possible that a tube may have been compromised and will need to be replaced. Hopefully that maybe all that is needed."

I actually don’t understand what it means by ’cause an arch in the circuit’. Does anyone understand what that means?

Yes, I’m just as curious as you are finding out what is the root cause here. Maybe it’s my wishful thinking, I feel that Cary will do right by me and do a good job fixing it. Will definitely share with you guys once I find out more.