Cary SLP-05 Vs High End SS or Tube Preamp's

Too me the higher you go up in price the closer they sound alike..Thats a compliment really..I would think the lower price tends to put limitations on the maker and tube equipment ( generally ) is more expensive ..( in a perfect world ) ..I think I would tend to be more interested in what works best with your current system and what your personal demands are considering music type...I have owned plenty of both and it is really a tough question to answer..Really a personal thing in my mind..but I am sure many others will not agree with me....

I am somewhat confused by this second post of late which refers to impedance matching in a preamp. I would think that all preamps would have a fairly standard range for resistance in and the ability to cope with an easy after-load. What am I not understanding.
I never thought of them like a tube power amp's power out against a load that it is designed to play with. With amps the range is so great from 2 kilowatt Macs to 3 watt 2A3 or 45 SETs that you must be selective interms of what will work. Trying to use big Maggies with a flea powered SET is plainly ludicrous. If you choose 16 ohm resistance high efficiency speakers then you stand a good chance that you will actually get the system to play music.
Also as I understand it the Cary is not particularily sensitive to load variance due to it's potent power supply and the coupling transformers.

I have heard many, many, many preamps in my 30 years of audio 'nutzville'. FWIW, I have never heard any SS preamp that could contend musically with a tube preamp. I've heard many top SS contenders from Krell, ML, Coda, Threshold, etc. None could beat even less expensive tube preamp models from Cary, VAC, BAT, ARC, etc.

The bottom line is that tubes just sound more like music......at least to my ears.

Cheers,
John

Even though I agree with Thorman on the solid state and tube converging when the price goes up statement, but I agree with John more on tube still create a more life like imaging, texture, and ambient than solid state. This also applies to power amp unfortunately.

I'm in Johns camp,I've owned many pre amps over the years and I have yet to hear a solid state pre amp that compares to the musicality provided by tubes.As usual Tvad is on point,the key is correct matching between amp and pre amp.