Grant Fidelity B-283 Tube Buffer: Worthwhile or No

Sugith, I take it then you have tried the actual combination of B283 & tube CD player, yes?. What specifically was it about this particular combination you did not like? and for reference what was the tube CD player you used to formulate your opinion? TIA.

I bought one of them, it is connected to my cambridge 840C CD player RCA outputs (the other XLR outputs go directly to my integrated amp XLR inputs), it is difficult to notice the difference when switching between inputs because there is a voltage difference between the XLR and RCA connections on my CD player, so you must first level them and then judge the differences, in my opinion it is not a bad unit, but it will not turn a solid state amp into a valve system.....in my particular case, I am using a class D integrated amp and I´d rather prefer the transparency on my system against the "sweet distorted" sound of the buffer, my idea was to use it while playing MP3 or other compressed music but in the end I rarely use it.....hope this helps!

Demianm,
yes that does help. I do think buffers in general are worthy of greater discussion, too often people turn their nose up at them & take an anti position based on tired old formulaic nonsense about wire + gain which I am sick to death of hearing about because in a lot of cases it has got nothing to do with actually "listening" to different system set ups & more to do with entrenched pre conceived ideas.

Morning David,

Last year I was privy to a session in a private home"featuring " Products

imported/distributed by Grant

Fidelity--a fancy looking CD player with flashing Blue Lights(!)

which name escapes me, and

some massive Chinese Amps--Sheng-Ya.

Both the above were poor to average to say the least ( Speakers were Von Schweikert VR7's Not Grant's)

The Ls35a " clones" they sell are in the same boat in my opinion.

Caveat Emperor that's all I'm saying

Good Luck,

Des

> What's an inexpensive tube preamp of fairly
> good quality?

What's the budget?