Usually Parasound and Pass come to mind as having warm almost tube like sound. I believe both are balanced but you need to try them for yourself.
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"I’m not liking the idea of what people say, tubes must get warmed up first. I also am a bit worried of injecting noise." You're reading too many audio threads. Stay with whatever you have. NO TUBES FOR YOU! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOpfsGrNvnk |
Or a hybrid! Rogue RP7 was a great preamp in my system. Just 4 tubes that last a very long time and allowed me to tube roll. In fact, changing just two of the four would influence the sound about 80%. It was my first foray into tubes as I wanted to try that tube touch, but I wanted it simple and low maintenance. The RP7 uses a very common tube which allows many choices in NOS or new manufacture. I now have a line preamp with 12 tubes which is phenomenal, but not maintenance free! Next stop is SS passive and/or DAC direct. This is such a fun hobby! |
I think this is similar to that old line about if you’re questioning your sanity you probably aren’t quite crazy yet. If you’re worried about being able to handle tubes your question has already proven you probably are. What’s the worst that can happen? If you forget to turn it off, you might waste a little tube life. That’s okay, preamp tubes last thousands of hours. There are a lot of preamps you could probably leave on 24/7 and just change the tubes once a year. Maybe you won’t like it. Maybe you will. Buy a used “starter” pre to test it out. Get a taste for it. Experiment a little. Find out what type of tubes you like. Then step up to a better pre after you know more. You can always go back. It’s only money and time that you’re trading for experience. |
I can imagine being reluctant to buy a tube amp... but not a tubed preamp. Most tubed preamps don’t radiate much heat and small tubes last thousands hours. The most enjoyable preamps I have owned have been tubed. To my ears and tastes Audio Research creates the most engaging tubed preamps, showing what exceptional preamps should sound like. They are not tubey sounding, but are detailed, natural, musical with excellent bass. I have some friends that really like Conrad Johnson as well. I have heard outstanding solid state preamps, but as natural sounding and musical as they are, they are always missing that little bit of magic that makes them engagingly magical. |
Get a Schiit Freya + preamp and have tubes, no tubes (it actually turns the tubes off), or a passive setting, and it costs less new than anything mentioned here yet. 900 bucks...I have one (original version) and its most recent quad of NOS GE tubes has lasted nearly a couple of years of hard use. It sounds fabulous. Unlike any other tubed preamp I know of, you can check the tube stage against the non tube stage instantly if worried about the tube tonal life. |
Like others have said, not sure what "mature enough" means. What I will say is that if you were to get a tube pre you're likely going to want to switch out the stock tubes. Most of the new production tubes are so clean that they're almost like transistors. You're likely going to want to roll in some NOS Mullard's or mazdas or brimars or amperex to get that "tube" sound. |
OP, I couldn't resist, the wife is away, she's 5 feet tall, has size 5 feet, and a 6' redhead drifted by in my waking dream. What's that song, 'The Impossible Dream'? I'm 72, got into high quality sound age 25. Many friends over the years, a few now who are experienced listeners. We all come down to Tubes. Read, ask, talk, listen, why? I simply sum it up in my mind: Analog 'gets' everything about the fundamentals and their overtones 'better'! So I believe what you want is unachievable. From what you say, preferences and concerns, I suggest you change your long range thinking to two systems, one SS, other Tubes. I also think you are exaggerating the 'trouble' with tubes (they do add a level of effort). You can have noise free tubes. My Tube Preamp & Tube Amp combo is noise free, not a little tolerable noise, noise-free, thru extremely efficient horn tweeters that reveal any 'idle' problem more readily than others. New: 60 hours break-in is all you need (no signal needed, just leave them on, done in 3 days). 20 minute warm up is all I need, easy enough to turn on, go do something else. Many/most tubes we use last 10,000 hours (exceptions of course, just avoid them). IF 'better', that's easy work, actually enjoyable, you personably make a difference! I had two systems for many years, 30 wpc tubes; 300 wpc solid state. two sets of speaker cables to WBT tighten-able banana jacks that I could easily reach at the speakers. I have a preamp with two sets of outputs which made it easy. (there are other ways to get the preamp to the selected amp). I, and many others recommend finding efficient speakers you love: that is the key to keeping power needs low, which opens the door to many more tube amp choices: less cost, less heat, and importantly: less weight, smaller size: both increase placement options now and future changes, and ease of movement to mess with rear inputs. |
Grandinote looks like what you’re after http://www.grandinote.it/technology%20-%20en.html As long as you don’t mind Italian. |
@rird... A suggestion: You can find many tube preamps for quite reasonable money on the Bay of E. Everything from kilobuck examples down to a couple hundred bones. You really can't go wrong with something from ARC. I would stay away from the cheap Chinese knock-offs as some of them while having tubes, do not have them in the signal path. IME, tube preamps are not black magic. Yes a bit of warm up time is helpful but SS sounds better warmed up too. And if you decide tubes aren't for you, you'll likely be able to recoup your investment. Good luck and Happy Listening. |
if looking for a tube preamp and it’s your first, then try to look at finding one that is very good at clamping output transients. Sometimes it’s the other way around. Eg, the Moscode 600 (tube/ss hybrid amplifier), in my experience, is phenomenally good at cutting out extreme transients, and saving amplifiers and speakers. In more than probably 100 cases, in the one living room, it cut out the speaker relay when confronted by the injected RF and carrier noise from a cab driver’s radio. The noise was injected into a tube preamp (Paragon system E, heavily modded out). This is a tube preamp that is good for about 40V-50V RMS and more, on it’s output. when it was hit by that RF modulated RF blast, the output would swing wildly. The Moscode 600 amplifier would cut the signal out entirety, and all would be good. Then it would come back on line when all was clear. The Paragon, designed to sound as clean as possible with no interfering extra components and circuits in those areas... gives zero Fk’s about it’s output transients... and counts on a responsible application, by it’s owner (like good fully automatic shotgun handling in close spaces) of a what is essentially a hair trigger transient bomb machine. To avoid possible turn on/turn off sequencing and power outage problems and possible cable problems, etc...it would be best to find a preamp that is good at controlling it’s output via relays at the output and protection circuits being involved. Just to use that item as ’tube preamp training wheels’ for tube preamp newbies. Tube preamps, when well done and well made, give much reward (all of it, the sum total of available and possible reward, actually) in the area of actual live and correct dynamic scaling and micro detail and the associated correct warmth in correctly expressed real world harmonics. Accept no SS substitutes. The only transistor that does it right is a V-Fet or properly designed SIT transistor (both) for line level signals. And there were only about....4 made. Four single models of small signal V-Fet transistors. that’s it. The near parallel development (in time) and release of the less expensive FET transistors killed the transistor equivalent to a ’line level’ (small signal) tube, before it was truly born..and audio has been suffering for it, mightily, ever since. Since we now know this, we can go back now.. and get correct and linear gain small signal transistors, for pennies more each than the FET transistors of today.... and finally move past the approximate 40 years of correct sound reproduction -that was lost to the ether. The next point, is that everyone’s ears were trained incorrectly re the idea of reproducing sound, due to the incorrect non linear gain transistors (BJT and FET transistors, ALL of them!) being in play. What was an acceptable seeming quality downgrade...became a norm, even though it is inherently wrong. You know now, if one can read and cognate this post... that this statement is possibly very true. for you know of many other (outside of audio) legacy conditions that are inherently incorrect. This is just another one of them. Apologies to anyone who disagrees with this..they are easily proven wrong (via analysis of the data and facts) ..and they really need to go and deal with it. Linear gain is unbelievably critical to sound reproduction being properly presented to the human ear. The device in play MUST inherently be of a linear gain nature. It’s where we started, re triode tubes....and we lost the magic along the way, due to ease of use, gaming circuitry and lower costs, more availability, etc. Here's the kicker, the clue the single critical data point in all this. Even& Odd ordered harmonics, that are incorrectly scaled and not put in proper place, in time and level, WILL be heard by the ear, very easily. so those incorrect signals are heard by the ear/brain combination easily, due to human design and wiring. We then mistake this incorrect but easily noticed stuff as detail. Incorrect detail is literally presented to the ear, and very much is heard, as we are designed from the ground up to recognize, first, things that are out of place. it’s part of the human survival mechanism. this would be a long story on human physiology and inherent animal level design of the human body. It’s there and it’s very very real. the trick is to recognize this, consciously and work the logic - from there. We threw it all away, for a very dubious set of gains. To be fair, we did not know how important linear gain devices were, at those times. Nor could a few clear headed audio enthusiasts steer an entire electronics industry that cared not one whit about the tiny (in comparison) audio world. Some did know, but few were listening. eg, the Sony engineers who came up with the V-fet and pressed it into service in audio. |
A low cost option is to buy a Yaqin SD-CD3 tube buffer for a couple hundred bucks and try it to see if you like what it does. I've got mine hooked up between one of my CD players and the preamp. You can also insert it into the tape loop if you have one. I can tell you from my experience the difference it makes is pretty subtle. |
Toss in my vote for Schiit Freya +. Has three setting to choose from. Straight through, JFET buffer (not sure what this is technology wise), and a tube stage. Volume is a 128-step relay-switched stepped attenuator with remote. I have this and have had fun with tube rolling. Right now have sylvannia bad boys in gain stage and stock tungsols in the input stage. Great 3d wide soundstage tight bass. Would love to find some nos telafunken’s that are not 500 per tube but the search is part of the game that this hobby’s quest is. Like crossing the bridge of death in the search for the Holy grail! |
Since you gave no system context you get suggestions that spread all over the place. A tube preamp is not a challenge to own or use. Dual triodes last a long time before degrading and they can offer superb sound quality even in quite affordable implementations, and are widely in circulation used. If you want a no-hassle tube preamp look for a used Conrad-Johnson in your budget range, or a re-imagined PAS from Ehrhard or Vacuum Tube Audio, and enjoy! If your pockets are deep enough, look at VTL. |
