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Review: Tube Audio Design TAD 150 Tube preamp

Category: Preamps

The Tube Audio Design TAD 150 Pre-amp is a reference level pre-amp that I believe will rival ANY pre-amp and ANY price.

The TAD 150 replaced a ten year old Musical Design SP-2B which was very good for its day, but the TAD 150 really did pick up where the Musical Design Piece left off.

The improvements were from top to bottom, the separation, and detail are much improved as well as this unit's ability to dig deeper in the music, and I hate to use this because it sounds so cliché, but yes, I'm hearing things that was just hinted at or simply not there at all with my previous pre-amp. The tone, accuracy, and soundstage of this unit is truly holographic and 3D. It is the most natural sounding pre-amp I have ever owned or Auditioned, but even more spectacular is it's stability it sounds so effortless, you know the types that sound either like they are trying to hard, or trying to keep up, this unit never sounds strained or harsh even at loud volumes or complex passages! No matter loud or soft this unit integrity stays in tact.

So I could go on about how quiet it is, how covenant having a remote control is and so forth but I think you catch my drift. My recommendation is to at least audition the unit, you get your money back if you somehow convince yourself that you don’t like it, but to be fair it may or may not be for everyone based on your taste, but I can almost guarantee that you would have to pay at least $5000 dollars to get anything that comes close.

Associated gear
Musical Concepts CDT-4 transport

Musical Design DAC 1A20 Platinum.

Custom built (By Bizzie Bee) S.E.T. amp using 6AS7 tubes(5W.P.C.)

Bizzie Bee Frozen interconnects throught whole system including Digital Cable.

Speaker Cables are a home brew using Radio Shack RG-58 Coax.

Speakers are Klipsch Quartets. Highly Modified with Auricaps, Goertz copper foil inductors and solen Fast cap.

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jswillis73
jeffaguilar-db90
1 posts
 
I also bought a TAD 150 tube preamp.

What a difference it has made in my setup too. I currently have a TA-30 and a ShengYa CD-S10 tube cd player too.

The TAD 150 was a fantastic upgrade of my system. The soundfield really expanded and the clarity increased too. Now the music comes at me layered. The voices come in at a higher plane than the instruments do. Quite fantastic. I really like what changes this preamp brought to my system.

Jeff Aguilar
https://home.comcast.net/~jeffaguilar/
pborchard-279d
1 posts
 
As a mostly classical music listener, the difference between Paul Grzybek's little wonder and the mainstream solid-state offerings (Adcom, NAD, Rotel, etc.) in the same price range, it's rather amazing. Soundstaging is wonderful and doesn't collapse in loud passages. It's sound is open and overall, effortless. Hard to complain.

I have no prejudice for tubes over solid-state or vice-versa. When the music is more important than the hardware, the TAD-150 is a real find.

My speakers are B&W N805s, power amp is the current smallest Rotel (dandy for a condo-dweller) and my CD player is the Marantz SA-8260.

Peter Borchard
fatjer
4 posts
 
I just purchased this pre-amp from Paul, and I can't believe how much it improved the performance of my Cayin TA-30, an already fantastic sounding piece of kit, with the added bonus of now having remote capability. If you have a Cayin integrated, or a solid state power amp that sounds a bit "Lean" with your solid state pre-amp call Paul and order the TAD-150. It's tubes will flesh out your sound. Hell, with a return option you have nothing to loose, and Paul is a great resource to help you tune your system to get the best out of it.
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