2. amps-preamps
  3. 180439-151312

Tube preamp options

My system from the preamp on consists of a rouge rp-7, rogue m180 monoblocks, and vandersteen quatro wood speakers. My main source is a brinkmann Bardo through a Rogers PA-2 phono pre. It all sounds great. But there's that itch, you know? I get tremendous soundstage but not that much depth. Clarity is great, mids are nice, bass is excellent. But it doesn't quite have that in the room sound that I'm looking for. The RP7 sounded too solid state and analytical for me out of the box with the stock JJ tubes so I've done extensive rolling. Been through all sorts of NOS tubes and landed on amperex as they seem to have the best balance of warmth and clarity. My thought is, maybe I can find a pre that has those attributes out of the gate without all the rolling. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of being able to tailor the sound with trying different tubes but I feel like maybe there's a brand out there who's house sound I like better. I haven't listened to anything more yet but brands that are on the list to check out are Backert labs, maybe a used ARC Ref 6, VTL, VAC. There are a million little boutique brands tho and I'm asking what people have heard in the 10k price range, new or used, that might be a good fit for me and why. 

Thanks! 

rmdmoore
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,841 posts
 

I am not sure that is 100% a certainly… The cartridge can feed out as balanced or wired to be single ended.
I am pretty sure that it is possible to bring in the RCA into a balanced preamp with a custom made cable. (I have done it.)

Sonically it did not seem to be vastly different.

It is probably a good time to get @atmasphere to opine on the phono and preamp…

Cartridges are balanced sources; when you run them single-ended but you wind up with that weird ground wire no other single-ended source seems to need. The advantage of running balanced is lower noise presented to the phono section at its input and less 'sound' (artifact) from the tonearm cable itself- balanced operation is more neutral.

You can run an RCA into a balanced preamp, but in the case of a turntable why do it? -unless your tonearm has continuous wire from the cartridge to the output connectors. Usually its a simple matter of just changing out the tonearm interconnect cable.

 

mbmi's avatar
mbmi
572 posts
 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/224595776364      Balanced to unbalanced and unbalanced to balanced.....much better than the cable.....recommended by Leo at Orchard Audio.  Works Great. I have 2.

rooze's avatar
rooze
638 posts
 

Allnic Audio make great preamps. 

jbuhl's avatar
jbuhl
990 posts
 

I heard the octave audio HP 300 SE at RMAF.  Really nice equipment.  Had it paired with the own amp and some Dynaudio towers.  Sweat sound. 

testrun
234 posts
 

The simplest way I can describe is it brought life to the music.  Maybe more detail, space and deeper soundstage.  It made everything a little bit nicer at least to me.  

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