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Think I want a tube system?

I've haven't listened to a tube system in 30 or 40 years. (I'm retired). I have several general questions. I hope y'all (South Alabama) will help me. I have a fair solid state power amp (Onkya M-504 165w per channel) No pre amp.
Which is the most important a tube pre amp or a tube power amp or both tubes. I would like to keep the power amp, but would sell if necessary. My second question is a little more complicated. If I play music from cds or internet download, isn't that digital. If I recall,digital is not an analog wave form but samples taken along it's path to reproduce an analog wave. The more samples the closer to analog. However, many people felt that no mater how many samples were taken, the nuance of a pure sound wave would be lost. If this is the case, what can tubes give me if my source is digital. Back to vinyl? Even then do they now record digital? I hope this is wrong.
rryall
daveyf's avatar
daveyf
2,871 posts
 
Unsound, you might want to try a great tube preamp in your system and then get back to me.
Tom, take your very nice BAT preamp out and replace it with a cold ss preamp and I would be interested to see what you would think then, OTOH, leave the BAT in the system and replace the tube amps with a ss amp. I suspect you would way prefer the latter. Just IMHO..:0)
daverz
487 posts
 
The input impedance of the Onkyo is 20k Ohm, at least according to this info:

http://www.ehow.com/list_7326410_onkyo-m_504-specs.html

This will probably sound too lean with many tube preamps.
rryall OP
5 posts
 
Thank you everybody for the help. I probably will buy a good tube preamp and try from there. I didn't mention my speakers are mg1 magnaplaners and they need a lot of power, but my wife hates them. She wants aesthetic value and I want good sound. Since she has lived with the mags for a while. Maybe I should lean towards aesthetics but still have sound. What would ya'll suggest.
sebrof's avatar
sebrof
835 posts
 
I'm not sure how anyone can make any recommendation at all unless you list what speakers you have or plan to use.

IMO - Clearly, the "tube sound" comes from the interaction between the amplifier and the speakers, not having tubes in the chain.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,803 posts
 
Sebrof, FWIW, while it is true that tubes manage speakers differently from transistors, you can hear their effects elsewhere in the signal chain. Tubes sound the way they do because they more closely follow the rules of human hearing than transistors. Most notably, they are more linear, and so require less feedback, perhaps none at all, and they make less odd-ordered harmonics at any signal level.
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