Dear Raul,
"well you don't know every one and certainly not the best integrated units"
sure my notes are made out of my experiences and I cannot have tried ALL high class units. The mentioned ones have been the ones I was living with for a longer time, but I heard more in different systems (most of my audio friends made the same experiences like me and listening with step up transformers now). Do I heard the best integrated units?...I dont know, but I had one of the most regarded and exclusive solid state phonostages which is said by many people to be clearly above the level of most SS designs, the Gryphon Orestes. As mentioned this one was very good, even slightly "better" in some specific hifi terms such as bass power BUT it doenst let you forget about the technical aspect of music reproduction as my actual set up. My maybe limited experience is enough to make my say that a good transformer is at least not a bigger compromise than a SS unit in general. There might be units like the Atmasphere preamps with high gain tube MC stages which might be a good way of getting rid of the transformers. I just heard the MP3 which was ok but doenst convinced me.
Before getting my actual stuff I was running an all Gryphon SS system never giving a thought about tubes and transformers. But after getting my actual preamp "by accident" I was almost shocked what I was missing all the time. Here we are for sure also on the area of personal taste and I have experience that different people have different ways of listening to music. For me, the more a component lets me forget about hifi, gives sense to music and touch me emotional the better I find component, but I also have made the experience that a lot of people rather focus on things like dynamic, detail, frequency extension instead.
"well you don't know every one and certainly not the best integrated units"
sure my notes are made out of my experiences and I cannot have tried ALL high class units. The mentioned ones have been the ones I was living with for a longer time, but I heard more in different systems (most of my audio friends made the same experiences like me and listening with step up transformers now). Do I heard the best integrated units?...I dont know, but I had one of the most regarded and exclusive solid state phonostages which is said by many people to be clearly above the level of most SS designs, the Gryphon Orestes. As mentioned this one was very good, even slightly "better" in some specific hifi terms such as bass power BUT it doenst let you forget about the technical aspect of music reproduction as my actual set up. My maybe limited experience is enough to make my say that a good transformer is at least not a bigger compromise than a SS unit in general. There might be units like the Atmasphere preamps with high gain tube MC stages which might be a good way of getting rid of the transformers. I just heard the MP3 which was ok but doenst convinced me.
Before getting my actual stuff I was running an all Gryphon SS system never giving a thought about tubes and transformers. But after getting my actual preamp "by accident" I was almost shocked what I was missing all the time. Here we are for sure also on the area of personal taste and I have experience that different people have different ways of listening to music. For me, the more a component lets me forget about hifi, gives sense to music and touch me emotional the better I find component, but I also have made the experience that a lot of people rather focus on things like dynamic, detail, frequency extension instead.
