Digital Source with Tube Amplification

Your asked a pretty general question and were given some responses, what specifically are you trying to ascertain?

Digital has come a long way in last 15 years or so and good digital these days can be hard to distinguish from analog. The best of each tend to sound similar to me. If I had to choose, in theory, I would prefer the best possible analog source to the best current digital source available. That source would be a large format RTR tape, not phono. In most cases, with most recordings, what sounds best will vary case to case. But digital is probably still not able to match the best analog POSSIBLE with technology to date. BUt in most cases, practically, it is so close that it really does not matter in practice for most.

In general tube amps may sound similar to SS amps but some tube amp sound might be quite distinctive and hard to replicate with SS. Its a different flavor of sound, not necessarily "better" though in this case.

SS versus tube amplification is an even tighter race to call. The best I have heard of both tend to sound similar.

Is it not possible to state an opinion without 75% of the post being caveats?

No, IMO there are way too many variables involved to be able to make any generalizations that would be meaningful and useful, the variables including even the recordings as Mapman indicated. And whether the goal is to make the (sonically) best recordings sound their best, or to make run-of-the-mill recordings sound as good as possible.

FWIW, though, since you are asking for experiences, my system has evolved over the years such that I now use a solid state preamp for both analog and digital sources, and a tube power amp. I've never used an integrated amp.

Regards,
-- Al

I think you should check out the Oppo 105 with the Modwright tube mods for CDP and the Lampizator G4/L4 or higher DAC's.

You asked for general observations. Well here's mine. it doesn't matter. Analog Turn Table to either solid state or tube phono stage (depends on which sounds better and this totally depends on the design/construction of the phono stage), to either solid state or tubed pre-amp. Again, depends on which sounds better to me, which has absolutely nothing to do with solid state or tube, but ultimate sound. Then on to tube or solid state power amps. Again, same thoughts. As compared to Digital source CD transport to DAC then to pre-amp to power amp. I have found that many times for me it depends on how the music was first recorded. If it was recorded analog to disc, I found a turn table set up sounds much better than if it was recorded analog then mastered to digital and played through a CD player/transport/DAC system The analog signal was cut up and converted to digital, thereby, some information will ultimately be missing because it is sampled to digital. There is no way to get around this fact. However, you can minimize the losses if the sample rate is really high. But, there will still be losses and therefore, the analog system will be better. Now take a recording that is straight to digital. Take that digital recording and remaster it from the digital tape to analog and play it on both the digital system and also on the analog system. I have found that they both are too close to call. The proble with having an all analog system is that many times you simply can't find all the music. Especially the new music. Yes, you can find new music in analog format (album), but not always. So, having both analog and digital equipment is best. But remember, when comparing analog and digital systems, try to listen/compare apples to apples. Analog recording on album to the digital master from the analog tapes on CD. Same recording. or Digital master converted to analog and listen to both the digital cd and the analog version converted from digital. Hope this helps.

enjoy