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What preamp creates the largest soundstage?

I have always loved a large soundstage.  I have a small listening room (10x10) and have mini-monitors, driven by a tube amp.  I have played a lot with speaker placement, room acoustics, listening position to create a large soundstage.  I have rolled tubes on the amp and made dramatic improvements. (I have purposely left details on the brands of tubes, amp and speakers out, because I don’t want side comments to distract from my question)

i have a digital source into a solid state naim preamp.  I home demo’ed a well reviewed preamp, and was surprised at how much the soundstage shrunk, both side to side and top downward.  It was deeper, and did have much of the tube magic, but I could not live without the big soundstage.  

so my question is, does anyone have experience with a preamp that produces a big soundstage?  I am looking for recommendations on what to demo next. While I lean toward tubes, I am open to solid state.  I am okay either new or used, and could spend in the 5k range, but would be happy to spend less.  Also comments on specific brands (i.e. xyz is known to have great soundstage in all their preamps) as opposed to models, are welcome.

and I will be the first to admit that perhaps the very large soundstage is not “accurate”to real music, but boy is it seductive and I love it and can’t live without it.

meiatflask

Showing 3 responses by heaudio123

heaudio123
689 posts
 
sebs,

See my post above about rooms and speaker room interaction. I think the "Not sure why many of us chasing for perfect sound swapping gear but not adapting rooms acoustically... ", comes from the "throw money at the problem" approach, because it is easy and you feel you have done something, even if you really have not. It is much easier (and often cheaper) than the much harder job of actually fixing the problem.


I gave a talk at a well attended audiophile club meeting. I asked how many people owned a measurement microphone and software, something that can be purchased for $100. Maybe 15% put up their hand, but you know the average system price in that room was well north of $10K, not to mention the value, even un-modified of the room it often dominates.
heaudio123
689 posts
 
There is no "soundstage" below about 80-120Hz.

Real stoundstage is a combination of monaural clues, so not really impacted by phase-shift except perhaps at speaker cross-over frequencies and perhaps room nodes, and differential timing, i.e. the time differential of the same signal between your two ears.  Assuming the phase-shift between the two channels is roughly the same, then phase-shift due to amplification will not have a big impact on perceived real soundstage. Artificial sound-stage effects, can be caused by frequency filtering mainly through the mid-range, i.e. height effects, and distortions, noise, etc. that can give an impression of "space" that was not on the recording.


heaudio123
689 posts
 
The first step to solving a problem, is admitting you have one ... and you already have done that below :-)


I am pretty confident in the position that electronics do not recreate a soundstage (that probably was not on the recording in the first place), at least intentionally. That comes from timing and levels in the music, and speaker and room interaction including reflections that create a false width to the sound field that while not accurate, is enjoyable to probably most people. No intentionally un-colored preamp should mess enough with phase (and step response) in the audio band to impact timing, nor frequency response, nor have much in the way of THD, IMD or noise.


So I guess the question is, is the new "flat" preamp, more colored, and hence interfering with the natural sound field you have come to enjoy, or is the one you have now more colored. Without figuring that out, I think it will be hard to know what is going to work better for you.

and I will be the first to admit that perhaps the very large soundstage is not “accurate”to real music, but boy is it seductive and I love it and can’t live without it.

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