Tube sound with no tubes

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.

Best tube-like sound comes from the tubes.
In power amps we need many compromises, many goals and to axhieve some of them with tube is simply impossible.
In preamp, all objectives (sound, reliability) can be achieved and thus compromise in sound quality is not needed.