Lush and Romantic Tube Amps


Hi All -

I am on a quest for a lush, warm and romantic tube amp. Ideally, it should be 75 watts and upwards. I’m in a large room and my speakers are 87.5 sensitivity and 8 ohm. The room is large. 

The system:

LTA preamp 

Innuous Zenith music server 

Merason Dac 1 

Cardas Clear cables 

 

Suggestions are welcomed. 
 

128x128bluethinker

@papafrgog ​​​& @vthokie83-

      While I totally agree with your assessments, regarding rolling amp valves; I'll bet the OP could save a passel of $$ (not to mention: possible sensitivity/efficiency matching headaches), were he to roll some warmer ones into his LTA preamp.

       Especially: if he's satisfied with the SPLs and performance of his existing amp and speaker combo, aside from that longing for a cozier presentation.

                                          Happy listening!

     

What I learned along the way is that NOS rectifier and driver tubes are vastly superior to current production versions.

                                                  Fact!

Like some have suggested, I highly suspect that the warm sound the OP is looking for is only available in lower powered tube amps.  This will require an efficient speaker.

In addition to my 89db neutral speaker running on a 300wpc neutral ss amp, I have a 100db speaker dedicated to flea watt tube amps starting with the 300b.  Bummer it’s not efficient enough for 45 2wpc tube SET amps some say sounds like the best SET tube - I’ll need a much larger speaker (which won’t fit my rooms) to increase efficiency.

Surprisingly, the setups I've heard so far that could be described as lush, warm, and romantic utilized SS amps. One used a Vitus integrated and another an Esoteric Class A power amp. 

My experience with higher powered tube amps is that they give highly realistic sound with plenty of excitement. I am using one, a Lab12 Integre 4 MKII and I definitely won't describe it as warm and romantic. 

Jadis are known for the type of lush sound you are looking for.  Very expensive new, however, more reasonable on the used market and very well constructed.

FWIW.. For lush sound,  the type of tubes you are using plays an important role here.  As for brand of amplifier,  I have always found Quicksilver Audio's amplifiers to produce this type of sound.  Have had my Quicksilver Mini Mite monoblocks for nearly 17 years now and have yet to tire of them.