Amplifiers matter because of noise, white noise accumulated through signal conditioning and amplification stages. Dead quiet to loud matters. Tubes, like jfets, and mosfets do not have a lot of current input and therefore have almost zero current noise. Voltage noise can be mitigated relatively easily. The listening experience that enlightened me is from a Counterpoint Solid 2, blown up, that I fixed and changed minutely to drive, any speaker or simply weld to music. I was completely blown away after getting it going.. I wanted to listen to this thing, testing forever with my elac 6.2 debut monitors. My friend Dave, the amps owner was blown away too. Preamps because of noise, and of course speakers the biggest deal.
How Do Amps Affect Soundstage?
I'm not that technically strong on audio yet, so please refrain from mockery on this....
My DAC, premamp, and amp combo (all tube) throw a nice soundstage. If I substitute (at least some) solid state stereo amps, soundstage is constricted. If the amp is basically just increasing the signal that it is receiving from the preamp, I don't get how the size and shape of the presentation is altered materially from what the preamp is delivering. (I get that the signal could get distorted, etc.). How does the amp play such role? And do monoblocks enjoy any design advantage in maintaining the soundstage received? Thanks.