WILL IT MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

@spatialking +10.

If you have gone from SS to Tube, what did you buy? What was the most striking difference out of the box and 300 hours in? Did you keep the speakers you had?

Back in the prehistoric days of Dolby Prologic, I became more & more interested in listening to music & less & less interested in watching movies. A guy at the gym I was working out at , in that period of time, had planted the vacuum tube seed in my mind, so after I bought my first piece of tubed gear (which was a Carver CD player) I started looking into a new amplifier & preamp to replace my Dolby Prologic integrated unit.

There was/is a true scarcity of better-end stuff to audition in my immediate vicinity, but I did locate a store that had a Cary SLA 70(which at the time was Cary’s entry level stereo tube amp, featuring tube rectification, a pair of 6SL7s, and four 6550s) and I thought that it sounded "pleasant", so I bought one. I don’t know that I immediately heard a huge difference, although I was not willing to admit it at the time due to what seemed to me (at the time) to be a huge cash output on the amp, better cables, better interconnects, and AV digital preamp. But as it broke in, and as I broke in, I realized that I was appreciating music more & more, and as tubes wore out & new tubes broke in, I came to recognize the sonic characteristics of both events.

In the course of owning that fore mentioned amp, I upgraded from a pair of NHT two way speakers to a pair of B&W 805s. That was a HUGE difference.

The longer I owned the Little Cary, the more I came to appreciate the attributes of "vacuum tube sound." But that little amp wasn’t making enough of it, and (for (what seemed like quite a while) I obsessed about more. When Stereophile reviewed the Mesa Baron (dual mono-blocks in one chassis, and I do not, off hand, recall the tube complement), I actually did find a dealer who had one & who let me take one home for the weekend. BIG difference: sound stage was in my face and all around, and being someone who arrives at general admission concerts hours early so I can sit in the front row in the center I liked that. But the sound had a smoky & musky quality, which I noted, and which did appeal to me in a way. Sunday night came and I had made up my mind that I was going to buy this amp, but the last thing I did before I went to bed was to hook my Little Cary back up & listen to Cowboy Junkies/Sweet Jane (again, as I had listened to it several times on the Baron) and I was blown away by the black background & the sound of the cymbals shimmering in the air with the Little Cary. The sound stage was smaller & flatter than that of the Baron, but it was so much cleaner, that I decided I did not want to make this trade off.

In ’97, or there abouts, I bought a used pair of Audio Research VTM 120s, sight unseen, from a classified ad in the back of Stereophile.6922s up front and four 6550s a piece up front. Those ARCs could do it all. They could scream when I wanted screaming, or they could whisper when I wanted quiet. I bought a better used Cary preamp in ’99, and after I got done retubing everything via Andy @ Vintage Tubes, I was happy for a while. Ecstatic on some nights. What did make me unhappy was that the ARCs had a bad habit of blowing grid resistors when they started up. I used to grit my teeth when I flipped the switches to ’ON.’ I kept a supply of grid resistors on hand & my soldering equipment handy.

It was that unreliability which led me to buy my current Amp, a Cary V-12 (EL 84s & 6922s up front and a dozen EL34s in back) and switchable between 50 watts triode & 100 ultralinear. There were times that this combination made me happy & satisfied. I am sure that I told myself that it sounded as good as the ARC based system did. In retrospect, I am not sure whether it did or not.

Regardless, I found all those tube amps (that I mentioned) that I have had in my home over nearly 30 years to have sonic qualities in common and also qualities that were, in my limited experience, to be unique to each. Tubed stuff seems, to me, to be like living beings. The tubes themselves seem to have personality quirks and some days the equipment seems to have good days, and on others, days that are not so good.

The room sounds like it’s bright to me. A good tube amp will not differ much from the Hegel. A bigger and/or a newer one might help you.

Or go all in with Atmosphere.

For me, the biggest difference going from a SS to Tubes is your ability to create your own sound through tube swapping.  I started with a Raven Reflection MK2 integrated amp that drove Wilson and then Sonus Faber speakers.  I then went with monoblock tube amps.  The sound is just lush and very musical with tube amps.  I like your thought on Joseph audio speakers.  This is a hobby that we tend to buy and sell equipment searching for that elusive end game sound which we will never find...lol.  There are so many options in the $7-10k price range.  I am to the point where I have end game Amps, DAC, Speakers and Music Server.  Now I am testing different Power Cables, RCA and SPDIF cables.  You did not mention what cables you have but they can make a big difference in SQ.  

My experience over the last fifty years has been a slow nearly inpercetible move towards tubes. First to an Audio Research tube preamp, then an Audio Research tubed phono stage, then ARC tubed amp… and finally an ARC tubed DAC.

Each step added musicality and better midrange bloom, lower noise floor, and absolutely no fatigue.

Of all the integrated amps I have heard, I like the ARC VSI 75 the most. To me it really captures the essence of what is beautiful about tubes. incredible mid range, well articulated bass. Would be a huge upgrade to your system.

I would recommend finding a dealer and listening to it. Worth a trip to a nearby city if one is not near.

You could look to swap to warm interconnects and cables… but give you have an opportunity for such a large upgrade… well you can’t do that with cables. Also, it sets the stage for future sound quality improvements to source components. There is a big difference between a $4K integrated amp and a $10K integrated amp. You should be able to trade in the Hegel.

Wives will frequently say they like the sound to discourage additional audio purchases. Females have much more sensitive hearing… if I thought my system was fatiguing (and I can’t tell you how intolerable that is to me) then your wife should be screaming in pain. My partner finally absolutely loved my system only when it became an all tube system. I would bring her along on auditions for her to inform me of high frequncy hash and distortion, just out of my hearing range that I would discover later.

My wife, a professional orchestra and chamber music player and singer much prefers tubes. Me too!