Questions about Preamp Tubes

Peterb is right, although to clock 10000hours or over, you'll need premium types. The pres you mentioned are very well designed. They are anything but tube killers. In my opinion you need not worry but insist, should you buy, that the tubes are in good working order and not noisy in the critical places. A bit of tube rush is normal, but it should not interfere with your listening pleasure, even in very soft passages of music.

I am currently comparing two highly touted phono-preamps and to my ears it is exactly as Newbee has pointed out. There is the SS, which was raved about in all the mags, incredibly fast, delivering a mass of highly defined and detailed information, so much so, that at first listening I sat there with my mouth open, but soon I found the sound had an unnatural edge, a brightness which made me uncomfortable. On the other hand the tubed unit, where I found rise and decay in its micro timing much closer to what I am used to hear in a live event at my usual row in the hall. Where the SS unit almost explosively assaulted my ears, in perfect timbre yes, every instrument placed clearly on a magnificently delineated stage, the tubed unit did everything almost as well, just a tad less "dramatic", very liquid, but this had the SS unit too, apart from the fact that I heard practically no grain, no veil in its musical rendering, but the tubed unit had something galore, which is rare, it had bloom, it gave an idea of the aura around instruments, which you hear clearly in reality, but rarely in front of your rig. Now what we call bloom, to my mind and knowledge will only be made possible, if as Newbee has mentioned, the rendering of transients, rise and decay times are closer to the real thing, although per se it is a different kettle of fish from what we call a perfect rendering of transients, I believe.

Had not the "gestalt" of music been formed from early age on by live music for me, I would have fallen for the SS- unit. Its totally grainfree, incredibly detailed, dynamically effortless rendering of any kind of instrument, music and voices placed on an impressive sound stage is simply breathtaking. But something is wrong: You cannot say that there is no air. There is, but in a very subtle sense the music does not "breathe", one note is hardly finished and you already have the next thrown at you , perfectly carved out in absolutely perfect timbre everything, but in a very, very subtle, -exaggerated by me, however nonetheless irritating - sense. It is as if each note were somehow alone, does not properly coalesce with the next, as would be the case in the real world of music. The tubed unit does this right. Its musical rendering is much closer to my idea of the gestalt of music. But where bright lights are thrown, as if were, on the music through the SS unit, here the lights are a tad more subdued.

I won't mention names, the tubed unit his highly renowned but has never been properly reviewed, the SS unit is famous amongst reviewers. They describe it in the most glowing terms. Possibly they are less familiar with live music as the music lovers amongst us audiophiles. But then (grin) perhaps my set up is faulty, a fault most certainly kindly glossed over by the gentle and euphonic distortion of tubes......(;