Primaluna?

@aseaman007 

Great questions. Could I suggest you post this as a new thread and delete this. It is a great question. But this is already a long thread.

I’d be happy to respond. Big questions.

I bought a Primaluna integrated ten or more years ago for my office system. I have been very happy with it. Detailed and pretty natural sounding (I never bothered fiddling with tube upgrades, I am sure this could make it substantially better). I lent it to a friend of mine who is just starting out and it has allowed his system to get to a level where he could start hearing it’s potential.

Always replace matched pairs or quads or whatever the tube config is. Typically big power tubes last less long than small tubes… so it is ok to just replace those if one develops a funny noise or fails. For my main system I keep around a backup set of tubes, but I listen for three hours a day. For my other systems I don’t. I’s only a couple days or a week to get replacements.

Thumbs up for PrimaLuna.

It does depend on what you are looking for. Good solid performance for the money (PL great), or state of the art… ARC, VAC, CJ, or there are mid tier solutions.

@brylandgoodman 

Sorry to hear you’ve been somewhat turned off by Kevin… I don’t know him, but I completely understand where he is coming from. He is really knowledgeable and very enthusiastic. I have been very serious about high end audio and very early on recognized the 100% correlation between weight and sound quality. I am sure someone will come up with an exception… but after auditioning and owning hundreds of components the rule holds. If he had told me one weighed much more than the other, that would be it, I would have shut my mouth and accepted everything.

Power management and current are everything in high end audio… and it weighs a lot. A lightweight preamp or amp is just not going to cut it. So, I see your point… he assumed that this comment would be self evident. From what you said, he was very honest and enthusiastic about what he told you. But maybe didn’t read you right.

Actually my experience with heavy weight as an indicator of sound quality includes CD players, DACs, streamers speakers, as well as phono-stages. This is not a causal explanation, but a virtual 100% correlation observation. Some of comes from very heavy cases for vibration dampening and heavy reinforcement every thing plus heavy duty power management. I have not dissected equipment to figure it out… but it is an observation. I mentioned this to a friend that owns a high end audio store for twenty years. He could only come up with a single exception to the rule of thumb… a piece of equipment I had never heard of.

Consider bass traps in corners. Photos of your system in your profile would be helpful. 
 

I am sure people with Harbeth will chime in to comment. I would think this is a frequent combination.