Here's a combo that I found that gives me what I would call the best of all worlds. Your equipment and CABLES will impart their own imprint on the sound of course as well as your speakers but I guess you know that - sorry.
My first listen was with all EH 6SN7's. Amazing transparency, amazing detail, soundstage, decay but a bit strident for my system and lacking a bit in mid range warmth. I then used brown based Sylvania's. This tipped the presentation the other direction. I lost some of the transparency and air I was enjoying. Bass was bigger, deeper and everything got softer. It was nice but I was spoiled with that air. I picked up a set of Ken Rads VT231's. These I found dynamic and all was well - sort of. Never letting anything rest, I started swapping tubes in different areas, input buffer, output buffer, balanced output, trying different combinations of the 3 sets of tubes. It got confusing so we started documenting the changes and writing what we heard with every change. Bingo, we hit magic. First of all the biggest change for us was in the balanced input (the 2 tubes on the right not counting the headphone tubes of course). These 2 tubes seem to set the tone pun intended. So we went back to the EH's which gave us all this air and transparency. The back 2 negative phase gain got the Ken Rad's. The front 2 positive phase gain we stuck the brown based Sylvania's in. Wow. This really worked for us. This is when I entered the room of one of the best systems I'd listened to, and it was in our room! Points we noted were as follows; missing midbass showed up! Texture and presence yet balanced to the rest of the sonic picture. Vocals are now full bodied and no longer a picture of the person singing and cool we still have discovered that most recording artists use reverb and vocalists behind their own vocals (a recent discovery with the all EH tube setup). Glare has been diminished but still can be troublesome at times. Cables maybe? I love the decay of musical instruments. It goes away with some tube combinations. It's not fully back but still very palatable. Turn it up factor. Depends on the recording. Still feels like a cable issue but we're talking wayy up as my wife likes music LOUD!!! Depeche Mode was amazing, Radiohead - you were having trouble listening as you wanted every last nuance of sound but also wanted to laugh aloud it sounded so amazing.
Now we are playing with various innerconnects and power cables/conditioners. Big story their as well but that's for another thread. I've actually retreated a few steps in SQ as it somewhat lost it's magic BUT, the cables are new and need some time to settle in.
I hate turning the Cary on and off a 100 times just to find the right combination but I guess that why tube folks own tube equipment. I either qualify now or will get disqualified in this forum after this review. LOL!
