midrange forwardness

04-19-08: Sogood51
It doesn't take much...a good tube preamp is all you need. Just make sure you buy one that uses tubes, that have flavors you are looking for....after all, thats what tube rolling is all about.

This hasn't been my experience. I paired several tube preamps with SS amps, but it never gave me the warmth that a tube amp offered.

Mingles

I have tube amps...he didn't say he wanted warmth?

Dave

get some acme silver fuses. and perhaps upgrade mod your cdplayer. you should also use good powercords.

DazzDax,

The reason why many solid state amps may not sound right with the rising impedance in the low end on SoundLabs is that SS amps typically double in power with a halving of impedance. This also works in the other direction...they halve their power when the impedance is doubled. Tube amps tend to perform much better into a rising impedance...they typically either hold the power constant or increase power slightly into higher impedances.

You are right that SS amps do much better than tube amps into low impedances (particularly at low frequencies), but the SoundLabs have a rising impedance in the low end and most SS amps will put out less power into the low end than the rest of the frequency range. This can make the lower midrange sound anemic.

May be something to think about. Many people have found tube amps sound significantly better with the right speaker...I think the Soundlabs qualify as being a "right" speaker for tube amps. I'm sure they can sound wonderful with the right SS amp too, but I'd bet that a SS amp that sounds wonderful with this speaker is harder to find than a tube amp that sounds wonderful with this speaker.

Good luck,

Jordan

So why would the Soundlab sound relatively louder in the treble with a solid state amplifier?

It won't.

It will give you more bass (where impedance rises) - so if anemic bass is your problem then a tube will help.

If you want more midrange then a tube amp will unfortunately reduce the output but you may get some more harmonics in the mids (more warmth) - if that is what you need then tubes are a good solution => more bass relative to mids and more warmth overall. (note warmth is related to loudness in a sense so although mids may lose some power they may sound more "rich")

Good luck!