Tube sound with no tubes

Spaz, you didn't tell us your speakers, but if you want a full bottom end with little to no roll-off, choose a tube pre very carefully. The Calypso's output impedance raises to about 3,500 ohms at 20hz, so even your 20K input impedance (balanced) may not be enough for full-range speakers. The Calypso did not provide a solid bottom end with my DNA 500, which has input impedance of 10K ohms. OTOH, your Line3SE has output impedance of just less than 100 ohms, and should be fine. I owned both, and liked the Line 3SE better than the Calypso with my McCormack - the Calypso sounded too neutral without enough body in my system. The Line 3 SE is a pretty good preamp, if you want a large step up, you are going to have to pay a bit to get better, and not just different. There are also some very good SS preamps out there, but not many that have dimensionality that challanges a good tube preamp.

My speakers are Aremis EOS/sig.W/large bass modules.Front end is Also Sonic Frontiers cd-1

hi spaz:

when you say tube sound, do you mean the classic tube sound, or the modern tube sound ?

if you mean the former, there is no component in production which will provide this for you.

if you mean the latter, the difference between tube and solid state is converging. you should have no trouble finding one. have you listened to a nuforce preamp ?

i heard nuforce amp and pre and speakers at ces. it is worth a listen.

only your ears can decide whether a transistor pre amp is satisfactory. listen, listen listen . any of the well known brands are worth a listen, such as conrad johnson, edge, krell, etc. .

Sorry Tvad,
I missed your question to me.
Tube-like sound from a Plinius amp: warm, mellow, rich sound with more feeling and emotion within the midbass, extended deep bass, sweet soft high end.

You may find a SS preamp that gives you "warm" sound but I'm doubtful you'll get "holographic" from anything SS. It's been a long time since I gave up the search and went with tubes but since I have, I'll never go back.

I've owned five different tube preamps over the past 15 years or so and in all that time only one Chinese 6SN7 went bad. Heck, I've got Telefunken 6DJ8's and 12AX7's with many years on them that I've used in Cat preamps which are known to be hard on tubes and they still test like new.

Sorry, if you want tube sound you'll have to break down and buy tube equipment. There ain't no gettin' around it.