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Over Tubing it?

I am pretty sure this has come up before, but I am wondering folks opinions on whether one can "over tube it" with integrated amp and DAC.  I have a tube integrated amp (Black Ice Fusion F35 with KT-150s) which I quite like and wish to keep.  I am now auditioning the Denafrips Ares 2 DAC and my Black Ice DAC which has tubes.  

Anyone have thoughts on whether staying with the Black Ice tube F35 amp, and tube DAC, versus replacing the tube DAC with R2R (e.g. Ares or Pontus) or other for maximum quality, paired with my tube integrated amp? (Quality meaning 3d holographic soundstage, transparency, detail and other buzz words), etc...

Put another way, what do you all think the best placement of tubes in the chain yield the best results, and is it possible to "over tube"?

I stream via roon server and Optical Rendu exclusively.

Would love to hear the community's thoughts and experiences with this.

Thanks a lot.

 

bogbeat

Showing 3 responses by invalid

invalid
1,097 posts
 

If it sounds good to you it shouldn’t matter how many tubes are in the chain. I just added a tube dac to my system that already has a tube preamp with a separate power supply that uses two 866a mercury rectifier tubes, it seems to sound better with every tube piece I add. 

invalid
1,097 posts
 

Ten of the tubes are in the $1,500-$2,000 each range, and the rest are not cheap either. 

 

 

 

Sounds like you are running NOS western electric 300b tubes at that price.

invalid
1,097 posts
 

 The phono stage is particularly odd because it runs two 300b tubes as rectifiers.

 

 

 

I have a tube preamp with a separate power supply that can use 300b tubes as rectifiers, I haven't tried the 300b yet as I'm using 1616 rectifier tubes currently.

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