Can tube preamps be as 'detailed' sounding as ss?

Bartokfan...no, I'm not even gonna say anything...

Machman20000: You could make the argument that, since a tube preamp will always have a higher noise floor and a longer rise-time (slower slew rate) than a SS preamp, that tube pre's (or amps in general) can never really be quite as 'detailed'. Although probably technically true, how tube vs. SS actually translates into the listening experience doesn't seem as simple as this. But to answer your other question, yeah, it's quite likely that trying a better tube preamp will yield improved detail.

"To my eyes, the guys of any ss amp/pre are disgusting looking. Really gross."

Well Bartokfan, you've absolutely got me there. But how can you even see me through the keyboard like that? Amazing...

Atmasphere: Mr. Karsten, I wish I could believe your explanation were the whole story, but to me that's the first post of yours I've seen that just sounds too pat and self-serving. I like and own both tube and solid-state gear, so I have no special agenda in that debate, and I'll be the first to admit that like most audiophiles I'm not technically competent to debate the point on your level. From what I've heard (not nearly everything, or even very much by typical audiophile standards, including none of your own gear), good apparent detail transmittal is available from both technologies. As I noted above, I don't think it's as simple as saying that SS has a lower noise floor and therefore must be more detailed, but neither do I think it's as simple as saying that SS always suffers from distortions that give only a false impression of detail and therefore tubes offer more real detail. Personally I think tubes can suffer from at least as much in the way of audible anomolies of various kinds as can transistors. But I also think painting either approach with too broad a brush is to downplay the importance of design, something I'm a little surprised to see a designer such as yourself endorse.

Atmasphere wrote:

"There is a bit of a strawman going on in your post though, as I was commenting on the fact that audiophiles often interpret brightness as detail (although they don't always like it, thus the term 'clinical')."

Strawman? I must beg to differ. The uncontroversial sentiment about the danger of mistaking brightness for detail wasn't all you said in your first post:

"...transistor preamps might sound more detailed at first blush due to the presence of odd-ordered harmonic content (at low level) which serves as a loudness cue in the mids and highs. This causes them to seem more detailed, but a good tube preamp will have actually more detail yet be laid-back at the same time."

That's clear and unequivocal, and it's what I responded to. Taking for granted that we're talking about good SS preamps, I personally doubt anyone has solid empirical evidence correlating measured performance with psychoacoustic listener response to demonstrate that this alleged phenomenon is actually the case.

Which, of course, doesn't mean that it can't be your honestly held opinion. But then we must acknowledge the flipside of the coin, which is that many audiophiles (and doubtless designers as well) are of the opinion that tube gear might sound 'pleasing' because it allegedly deviates in such a way as to help obscure some possibly 'unmusical' elements of a transduced recording -- a position I assume you don't agree with.

In my mind, I often find an analogy to this debate in the world of reproduced moving visual images, as transmitted to my eyes via the miracle of television. Neither film nor video presentations can be mistaken for seeing real life. But although high-quality video usually seems objectively more accurate in many ways, subjectively I'd rather watch high-quality filmed material from the 'golden age' (roughly from the late 30's to the mid 60's) every time given the choice. In fact, this often 'feels' more like real life to me watching it, even if strictly speaking it doesn't really look it. However, this sensation is primarily a function of the 'original recording' -- not the transmission or reproduction gear, and again I find an analogy here with the recorded audio sound that I like best, from a 'golden age' which pretty much coincides with the filmed one.

Admission: I didn't, and still don't, know what the acronym 'IOW' means...

About the amp thing, I play electric guitar, which as you know is often intentionally distorted, either via amp overdrive or by a fuzzbox, and think I'd have a pretty good sense of it if heavily distorted sound were actually perceived as being louder than undistorted sound measuring 30dB higher in level. I understand that the ear/brain is supposed to increasingly identify and object to harmonic distortion with increasing order. However, I don't think it's universally true that SS gear produces more of this content, although it may be true that tube gear generally produces more low-order content which helps mask it. (Although what you're alleging sounds as if it might have more to do with TIM than THD.) You are right though, I'm not aware that the ear/brain uses harmonic content to help determine loudness -- do you have a citation on this?

Thanks Atmasphere. I can well believe that it's a murky business trying to discern volume differences using pure sine waves, and also that incipient high-order distortion can cause listener fatigue. But I always regard at arm's length claims which seem to equate A) music signals with sine waves, or B) amp behavior below clipping with amp behavior around clipping (particularly when it comes to preamps, which shouldn't even get anywhere near approaching clipping).

Speaking of preamp distortion, the new Stereophile has THD measurements from JA on the Mac C1000 (figs. 5-6 and 9-10), which for practical purposes seem to indicate all but indistinguishable (not to mention negligible) distortion behavior between the unit's tubed and solid-state options, at least within the limits of the test conditions.

Tvad: Because the question and the discussion may please the questioner and the discussers. Chatting about audio is a wholly different activity than listening to it, enjoyable for different reasons.