Tube Pre/ Class D Amp - Who has done it?


Open forum for those who have actually tried this.  Really curious to know who has been happy, or maybe unhappy, with a tube preamp driving a Class D amplifier?

Of course, tube pre with a solid state amp is a classic pairing for hard to drive speakers, especially ESL's.   This is a little different.   I'm really curious to know what pres and Class D amps have had great synergy.

erik_squires

What a great question.   Sometimes this works, it's not always so easy.  I had a rogue tube pre going into 2 mono blocks from Auralic and it was very good, but lacked a bit of detail.  Soundstage was huge and imaging very good as well.  When I swapped in a solid state amp from ML when they were called Proceed, the sound was surgical in its precision, but lost some warmth and bloom.  

definitely worth experimenting, but IMO you can get superb sound with a SS pre and do not necessarily need a tube pre. 

I had an AR 150M (class D) with an AR LS26 (tube) running electrostatics and it sounded sublime.

I had a Modwright tube preamp with a Bel Canto class D amp----lots of power but I kept getting some noise out of the preamp. Traded them in for a Luxman integrated. 

I started with Rouge 7 and Bel Cantos m600’s.  The sounds stage was poor, midrange was very laid back.  Overall not very good.  I decided the Bel Cantos were not my cup of tea.  So I replaced them with AGD Audions and everything got better except the sound stage still sounded small and not tube like.  So I replaced the Rogue with a Cary SLP 05 ultimate NOS Tubes and now I couldn’t be happier.