Brian, welcome. Very insightful, and appreciated from your point of view. I have been at this audio thing for almost 50 years, and was in the consumer audio industry ( NYC ). I knew many musicians, and spent some time in studios. Most of the equipment back then was analog ( really liked the Allen and Heath units, and some Yamahas ). Never saw tube amps in the studios to drive the monitors. Recently, I decided to modify an 80 wpc Yamaha pro amp ( of which I have several pro amps ), and since it has input level controls ( as all pro amps do ), I decided, for the 1st time ever, to go straight from my dac to the amplifier. Why haven’t I ever done this before ? Well, spending mucho dollars on preamps, and modifying many, I just assumed I needed the preamp. Well, to my surprise, I like what I am hearing. On certain discs, such as the Bob James " Cool ", " The Sheffield Drum Record ", M.D. " Kind of Blue " , and so many other wonderfully mastered pieces of music, I am hearing, so much more " life " to the performers, their instuments, their voices, and the 3 dimensional illusion of the space they are in. Even on Jethro Tull " Aqualung ", which imo is very compressed, I can hear more of everything. I have never been good with tubes ( rather than saying tubes have never been good to me), because I favored non coloration, dynamics, speed and detail, which I always favored good ss. I know the attributes of tubes, and owning horns, I have had many pieces in and out. But the noise levels, microphonics, colorations, and the lack of prat ( pace, rhythm and tempo ( with all the tube products " I " have owned and tried ), did not satisfy me. So,
ow I am looking for a good passive unit, with multiple inputs, as there are many amplifiers in my stable without input level controls. Just my 2 cents. Enjoy ! MrD.
Pre amps cost vs. value ... what I discovered last month.
Greetings all.
I’m a mastering engineer. www.magicgardenmastering.com . We use Acoustic Zen balanced cabling, highly modified Cary 211 FE tube amps, Bricasti M1 SE DAs and Joachim Gerhard’s Allegra speakers. TORUS balanced power comes 220 from the street. The room is excellent, and you would love to hear it.
For 15 years the pre amp/router was a Crane Song Avocet. I paid around $1800 for it.
Recently decided to try a couple of audiophile products in the pre amp stage and was shocked and saddened how bad they were. Yes, the studio designed Avocet has a relay click for each 1db step, and yes it has a rack mounted 2U body with a corded remote, but it’s clear folks are really getting taken to the cleaners on pre amps. The older and highly regarded Boulder 1010 (used price $5500), was just terrible, truly terrible. The new and fully broken in BAT vk-43SE (demo price $7500) was much better, but still had a cloudy tone as compared to the class A Avocet. Not sure if that’s the cap or the transformer, but it made everything less clear and more generic, more distant from the music.
That’s all. Happy listening.
I’m a mastering engineer. www.magicgardenmastering.com . We use Acoustic Zen balanced cabling, highly modified Cary 211 FE tube amps, Bricasti M1 SE DAs and Joachim Gerhard’s Allegra speakers. TORUS balanced power comes 220 from the street. The room is excellent, and you would love to hear it.
For 15 years the pre amp/router was a Crane Song Avocet. I paid around $1800 for it.
Recently decided to try a couple of audiophile products in the pre amp stage and was shocked and saddened how bad they were. Yes, the studio designed Avocet has a relay click for each 1db step, and yes it has a rack mounted 2U body with a corded remote, but it’s clear folks are really getting taken to the cleaners on pre amps. The older and highly regarded Boulder 1010 (used price $5500), was just terrible, truly terrible. The new and fully broken in BAT vk-43SE (demo price $7500) was much better, but still had a cloudy tone as compared to the class A Avocet. Not sure if that’s the cap or the transformer, but it made everything less clear and more generic, more distant from the music.
That’s all. Happy listening.