Tube Vs. SS Preamps

ralph - first of all happy holidays to you and yours 🎄🎄🎄

re your comment, i never had the pleasure of having citation gear back in the day, am sure they were wide bandwidth as you say ... my thoughts were based on my own, generalized experiences in the late 80’s, 90’s, 00’s using/trying tube pre’s from cj, macintosh, dynaco, cary/dennis had and arc...

agree that lesser tube gear often pleases, especially in the case of those coming from similar priced solid state, which exhibits classic ss harshness and lack of dimensionality - but this pleasing nature comes at the expense of speed and clarity

let’s diaggregate a little

lesser/older tube gear provides

1. rolled off treble
2. little to no deep bass, poor bass damping
3. enriched/expanded midrange and midbass
4. lower sense of drive and rhythm and attack when needed
5. improved imaging and sense of natural ’decay’ on notes (think piano natural reverb)
6. reduced sense of grain and grit in treble and mids (pleasant smoothing effect)

better/top tier tube gear provides

• extended ’hear through’ treble but not forward like all but the best solid state
• very good deep bass with still a somewhat enriched midbass
• somewhat but perhaps less bloomy midrange (than lower tube gear)
• excellent sense of slam and prat (if still a touch less than the best solid state)
• outstanding expanded, ’holographic’ imaging, natural attack and decay of notes, excellent cohesion top to bottom
• clarity without any traces of electronic artifacts

hope this helps those progressing on the experience curve

I know what you mean. IMO it has to do with the distortion signature- neither a tube or solid state preamp will be making any significant distortion but its a simple fact that distortion is inescapable.

Its been shown that the lower ordered harmonics serve two functions both of which are helpful. The first is that if they are there at sufficient amplitude, they can mask higher ordered harmonics that otherwise are perceived as brightness.

The 2nd and more important function is that somehow the 2nd and 3rd harmonic are helpful to the ear in some way in helping it to perceive soundstage width and depth. You might be easily convinced that this is some sort of effect rather than being neutral, but if you listen to a direct microphone feed and compare that to the actual musical performance you find that the sound stage is simply being presented in a more natural fashion.

I think more research could be done in this area, but I’m not holding my breath for it to happen. But it is a documented phenomena.

makes sense ralph, thank you

wishing you (and all others here) a happy holidays!

@atmasphere 

ralph, if you don't mind a somewhat related sidebar question - i am curious to know what you believe to be the source/reason/technical underpinning behind top level tube gear being able to generally (exceptions exist of course) provide a greater sense of air and vast imaging (size, depth in particular) - compared to similarly high level solid state gear?  

@fuzztone 's pithy reply is well stated imo

high level solid state is not fatiguing at all, if well matched through to the speakers

but top tier tube gear gives a degree of bloom, palpability, richness of tone, and expansiveness of imaging that can sometimes be elusive for all solid state systems