tube pre amp or tube amp


I go through a phase every few years where I choose to "upgrade" my system or make a change just for the sake of doing so. My current system sounds beautiful but today I am curious
I am running an AudioResearch CD9 source through an AudioResearch REF5SE pre amp followed by VAC phi300i AMP
I was considering inserting a high end solid state piece into the system such as a PASS XA60.8 mono blocks instead of VAC. 
I was considering changing out the Audio Research pre amp to a LAMM pre amp (hybrid)
If I would like to interject a solid state component  into my system, would it be more advantageous for that piece to be the AMP or the PRE AMP?
wahoo101488

Showing 2 responses by atmasphere

Bass is the one thing that makes me hesitant about tube amps. I do use subwoofers, so I guess I really should not have a concern because I can always adjust it to make up for what I feel is missing on the low end.
The amp I play has full power bandwidth to 2Hz and my speakers go right to 20Hz (the woofers have a free air resonance at 22Hz). I've had solid state amps on these speakers (Classic Audio Loudspeakers T-3) and they just don't play bass as well. Less impact, less definition.
But that has a lot to do with how the amps and speakers play together. The CARs were designed to be easy on tubes and so are 16 ohms. Transistors have trouble making power into impedances like that (although the flip side is they have less distortion too and so sound smoother).

IMO rather than changing out the amps in the OP, a better move might be to get a speaker that is friendlier to tubes. There is no point (from the standpoint of an amplifier designer) to make the amp work hard regardless of what kind of amp you have. The easier the amp has it, the less distortion, the less distortion the smoother and more detailed.

SS power does develop better bass than will tubes.


This is not universal!

That depends a lot on the relationship that the speaker has with the amplifier. If the speaker is easy for the amp to drive, a tube amp may well make better bass. An example is the Sound Lab ESL, which has a high impedance in the bass- and solid state amps have trouble making power into that high impedance, where tube amps don't.