Sound of transformers in preamps?

Not sure at all that the Dude has transformers in the signal path. I just remember on comment in this forum where somebody mentioned it. I haven't seen anything official.

Bob

I got curious and searched Audiogon for ‘Dude’ and ‘transformer’ and found a comment by Grannyring where he talked to the Dude designer Paul. He said that Paul didn’t like transformers in the signal path. I guess I was wrong about the Dude.

Bob

The VRE1 manual is available online. On page 6 under Design Highlights Steve McCormack claims a couple of advantages. He says that the input transformer confers a tube like musicality. He also states that it also gives great noise rejection and isolation from DC voltage levels. I can understand the electrical advantages but I am confused what he is talking about with the tube qualities. Maybe he is talking about the second harmonic distortion that Atmasphere talked about. Maybe there are other effects of transformers that give the tube like musicality too like saturation and hysteresis. I don't know.

Bob

Dover, thanks for the link to the transformer information. That was very informative. It is probably a little like finding out how sausages are made though. One part of the picture lost is the problems created if you don’t use transformers. The alternatives have a lot of issues and problems too. One time at NASA I tried to find a linear capacitor. That was hard to find. I would think that isolation would be a very significant advantage of transformers, especially in a preamp.

Bob