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.
If DHT preamps are not the best at creating 3D soundstage why would manufacturers use them? Perhaps they are just stupid?
They're not stupid. A good designer can work to achieve the goals that a preamp has to provide in a number of different ways. Its not hard to build a DHT-based preamp, and one of the advantages is that the tube doesn't have a lot of gain, which works nicely with digital sources. All you have to do though is to be sure you get the *bandwidth*; keeping the distortion down isn't that hard with almost any triode, DHT or not.
The designer might like the linearity curve, he also might realize that to set his preamp design apart from others he has to do something different and using DHTs is a good example of that. When we introduced our preamp (the MP-1) it was the world's first balanced line preamp for home audio; we did that as there are so many advantages of operating balanced (as long as the balanced standard is supported), but also for the simple fact that in 1989 when we did this, placing yet another single-ended preamp on the vast heap of such preamps available at the time was done at one's own peril. Another way to put this is 'marketing' :)
Now as to DHTs in general, most of them are used in SETs. SETs have many disadvantages, but one advantage they do have is that as power is decreased the distortion becomes unmeasurable. If you have a speaker with great enough efficiency to take advantage of this, you can show off that 'inner detail' for which so many of them are known. With most push-pull (not all) amps as power is decreased there is a certain point (generally about 5-7% of full power) where distortion reaches its minimum and then goes back up! So SETs can have a very musical presentation especially if you have a high efficiency loudspeaker.
Its one way to get there, but by no means the only way. We make OTLs that **also** have the same quality of distortion decreasing to unmeasurable as power as decreased. They are also triode and no feedback, and have that relaxed organic quality SETs are know for, but with power, speed, detail and bandwidth that SETs are not. And that's just one example... the bottom line is no matter what, engineering has to be the over-arching principle, that and the understanding of how the ear perceives sound.
If DHT preamps are not the best at creating 3D soundstage why would manufacturers use them? Perhaps they are just stupid? DHTs are a lot more difficult to use than dedicated preamp valves.It also seems odd that for those that have worked out how to make them they become their premium model .The Coincident mentioned above by Brownsfan is a DHT preamp [101D].
The "make your own reference recording" is a great idea and easily done. Outside of DSP or some effect, I think the soundstage comes from the recording. I do not want any component "blocking" the recording’s soundstage in any form. Or any room obstacles as well. I find even great mono recordings can have a wide soundstage.
Ralph, would monoblock versions of a stereo amp have any improvement of the soundstage?
DHT preamps produce the most 3D /holographic soundstage.Probably because
those same tubes do the same thing when used in power amps.
This statement is entirely false. Soundstage is not created by how the filament interacts with the input signal! And we can also show easily enough that SETs don't rule the roost when it comes to creating a 3D soundstage.
To get the soundstage right, the circuit has to have bandwidth such that phase shift does not exist in the essential regions where it makes the most difference to the human ear. For the most part this is the Fletcher-Munson curve frequencies, about 3-7KHz. If the preamp lacks bandwidth past 30KHz its not going to get this right.
So a DHT preamp would only work if its bandwidth met this criteria. It would be doing this because of bandwidth and low distortion, not due to the DHT.
I recommend to anyone that is interested in getting to the bottom of this sort of thing to get a decent set of microphones and a good studio quality recorder. Go out and make a good, 2-mic recording that you can stand to listen to over and over- and then produce it on LP and a digital format. In the case of LP you don't have to produce 500 copies or the like; a test LP is fine. Now you'll have a real reference- because you were there at the recording session and you have the master tapes or master file.
DHT preamps produce the most 3D /holographic soundstage.Probably because those same tubes do the same thing when used in power amps.Which is why so many people love SET amplifiers.Except you are better off getting those qualities in your preamp and using any type of power amp that lets those qualities through because SET amplifiers are incredibly speaker fussy.Plus a really good DHT preamp will cost you a lot less than a really good SET power amplifier.
Heaudio123, I do measure but found that friends in same hobby do not understand graphs, waterfalls in eg REW. Furthermore, once all setup is done mic etc would not be used untill any change to the setup. So firstly lack of knowledge and secondly waste of money for them. I found aswell that propaly integrated sub add another layer to the sound stage, you are able to sense/know in what kind of space recording took place. Since I move to new home few years ago I start having huge issue in 30hz range and no reasonable bass trap or listening position move could solve it, I start using peq upto 100hz range and difference is staggering, tight, quick, controlled lowest octaves. But as will everything some people would argue that manipulation in signal degrades it, I would say that even if it does, the positive change in overall system sound by eq bass overwhelm potential losses.
This is true. But if the low frequency cutoff of the amplification is only 20Hz, phase shift will exist up to 200Hz. Admittedly, not a lot going on there either. But the phase shift can affect impact of bass notes so its worth getting that bit right as well.
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.
The biggest 3D soundstage comes from directly heated triode [DHT] preamps.
This statement is false. To get a proper soundstage that is faithful to the input signal, the preamp must have wide bandwidth so there are no phase shift issues in the audio region. To do this the bandwidth must be 10x lower than the lowest frequency to be amplified (2Hz) and 10x the highest frequency to be amplified as well. Because phase shift will only be to 10KHz, you can sort of get away with 100KHz on the top end, 200KHz is better. This insures that all the phase relationships that are vital to the soundstage information are amplified correctly.
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.
Guys are you saying best preamp is no preamp? In my experience preamp make huge difference in how soundstage is build and if that is because as per mijostyn: "The job for electronics is to replicate whatever the source is and then perhaps modify it in a very specific way. Some tube electronics give you a sense of more depth which I think is why a lot of us like them but it is a distortion of the truth.". Bottom line is preamps are manipulating this holographic effect in one way on another. In regards to tube preamps I have not heard (DTM) mention by jtgofish but IMHO solid state preamps gave me more of that 3d effect then tube. Question is what preamp will produce vastest, deepest stage stage and 3d effect without over exaggeration. Obviously huge part in all our digressions is the room acoustics which nobody is talking about. Same system will sound completely different in every room. Not sure why many of us chasing for perfect sound swapping gear but not adapting rooms acoustically...
The biggest 3D soundstage comes from directly heated triode [DHT] preamps.Especially if you can use meshplate tubes .Coincident,Ming Da,Manley and Supratek make DHT preamps.I use a Supratek 300B preamp and it has a very big room filling soundstage.The Ming Da DHT preamps are surprisingly good.Not Supratek or Coincident standard but still very good.
The one that’s isolated from the nefarious extremely low frequency vibrations coming up from the floor. 🔝 By the way, all the information you need to obtain a large expanding soundstage is right on the recording - all 3 physical dimensions of the recording space plus the time coordinates. ⏰ The trick is to extract that information from the recording completely and accurately. 🤗
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.
I do not think electronics create sound stage. They may be able to harm it but I do not know that for a fact. The job for electronics is to replicate whatever the source is and then perhaps modify it in a very specific way. Some tube electronics give you a sense of more depth which I think is why a lot of us like them but it is a distortion of the truth. The Atmasphere and ARC preamps do not do this. I think the MP 3 is a great choice. As for as SS preamps go and if you really want to have a wild time with your system and are computer savvy check out the Anthem STR. Anthem is a Canadian company. This preamp has effective room control and great bass management. You will see exactly what your system is doing and learn what changes do to the sound. It is an incredible learning experience and the improvement is sound quality is very noticeable , particularly the imagine. The frequency response of any two speakers is not identical. On top of this they are in different locations in the room which generally separates them even more. I have seen identical speakers vary up to 10 dB at points. This smears the image as whichever speaker is loudest at any given frequency will own that frequency. You literally have part of an instrument coming from the right, part in the middle and part in the left with obvious results. Room control makes the speakers in their locations perfectly identical with obvious results. Then there is digital sub woofer management. There is no better way to easily integrate subwoofers. Not only can you choose cross over points and slopes but the frequency response of the subs is made flat and identical at the listening position and they are perfectly time and phase aligned with the satellites. The subs disappear and all you have is great bass. This type of device scares the analog guys. IMHO there is no analog preamp that can compete with the Anthem STR or the Trinnov Amethyst a much more expensive unit made in France. I use a TACT 2.2X. TACT unfortunately went out of business years ago due to poor management and a bad business model for that type of device. Boz (Radomir Bozevic) assumed that his customers were as smart as he was and that everything was obvious, a very bad assumption. He became swamped with customer questions and complaints. His owner manuals were particularly poor. Those of us that had an idea of what we were doing had to learn on the fly. I watched the forum and guess that 50% of the people really had no idea what to do or what they were doing which is understandable given the complexity of the units. The newer Anthem and Trinnov units have been simplified. You can get into the nitty gritty if you so desire but most will not. The Trinnov is usually set up by the dealer. The microphone costs $800 and is an option. With the Anthem you get everything. It is a much better value.
I will agree but only partialy, yes recording plays huge part in creating soundstage but preamp is egually important. Even best recording from eg chesky records will sound flat, 2d if preamp is not capable of creating holographic, 3d soundstage. I have own preamp from Rotel, Rogue Audio, PrimaLuna, Hegel and currently testing Cyrus. Rotal and Rogue could not create 3d image at all. Primaluna is one of this that acctualy can create soundstage extending beyond and allow speakers to disappear but not at the same level with Hegel or Cyrus. Hegel projects huge, deep, 3d image in all directions, can easily hear sounds to sides of listening position as there were surrounds speakers present, floorstanders complitly disappears leaving only surrounding sound. Cyrus is eqally good but image is moved forward, soundstage is more in front towards the listener and depth shrinks. All this preamp where inserted to exactly same system, cables etc only preamp was changed. Still in quest for preamp, to see what can best hegel p20 and cyrus dac xp with psx-r, both brilliant in this respect.
Doubtful question. "Sound stage" comes from the recording, it is not "created" in the pre-amp, power-amp, the interconnects, or the speakers. Equipment can only reveal or hide what was included in the recording. They cannot magically add what was not there. Close miked multi track overdubbed piece o crap recordings are dime a dozen. Nice acoustic balanced recordings are not that common. Few people ask for or appreciate it. Don’t forget speaker placement and room treatments for minimizing reflections. Reflections will smear the image if one was there to begin with.
I have recently upgraded to the Rhumba 1.3 standard version. The change in my average sensitive system is profound. I am amazed at the life-like presentation that this preamp brought to my system. I highly recommend this preamp.
OP here - thanks everyone for all the input. I now have a handful of candidates and brands to look into. I am heading south for the rest of the winter, and will continue the pursuit when I get back in the Spring. (No music in the rental place)
I’ll continue to peek in on this thread, but won’t be taking an active roll. So feel free to continue posting, but for me, it’s time to say thank you.
I agree I have my go to recordings. I look at the studio and recording engineer and are rarely disappointed. Makes little difference who the artist is that combo will make it shine.
Audiomaze- I could not agree more. If the recording was not miked to give a great soundstage, you will never hear it in your system. I have many recordings with gorgeous soundstage that I keep coming back to.
But, given a great recording, still near the right gear to make it shine.
I had a Mac 275 with a Conrad Johnson pv-1 playing analog through a pair of Maggie 1.7i s and found that the recording determines the soundstage more than anything. Just my experience.
OP here. Just reviewing al, the comments and what catches me is there are no solid state preamps being suggested. Does not surprise me that tubes dominate the conversation, but kind of expected to see one or two solid state units in the mix.....
@rdoc THAT is exactly the same combination I’m running (well almost, mine is a standard Backert Rhumba 1.2, but w/ Audyn True Copper Max output caps), and it is truly a fantastic, synergistic combination. I whole-heartedly agree and concur with your assessment! Crazy great sound, and my good audio friend Bon, (@jayctoy), can verify; he was over yesterday.
@rogerwg1 @rdoc Curious, what tubes you are using, and what power cords on both your Backert preamps and the Pass XA-25. Feel free to PM me so we don’t derail this thread.
I have a Backert Labs Rhumba 1.3 mated with a Pass XA-25. The Rhumba just caused an explosion of the soundstage in all directions. The music is just so exquisite that I find it very hard to stop listening! It is so liquid and involving. It just brings me closer to a live performance than anything I have heard in over 40 years as an audiophile. Isoacoustic Orea Bronze footers have helped as well.
@meiatflask, if your budget will stretch to it I recommend the Mola Mola Makua preamplifier. It can also be specified with a phono board and/or dac. Starting price £7,500
I just added the $6,000 Backert Labs Rhumba 1.3 Extreme to my system.
And I have to say it is the most profound change I have heard in the last 10 years with any new component in my system. It has given me cause to reconsider upgrading my MSB Tech DAC.
The sound is not just detailed but immersive with texture that is hard to find outside of a live performance. From the bass attack to the the texture in the mid range.
I have not felt this passionate about a component in a really long time It is simply the best preamp I have heard under $25,000.
meiatflask ...I am running the PL pre into my Merrill Audio Veritas monoblocks,with zero intention of changing the pre anytime soon..if ever! Before that set up..I was using an Edge Amp Signature One ac/dc preamp feeding a Edge NL10 stereo amp. The combo I am using now is heads and shoulders above the previous Edge system in all forms of musical enjoyment. I would not get hung up on pricing schemes and country of origin for audio equipment.. generally speaking. My Edge Sig One was and is a terrific sounding preamp but the PL pre just plainly spanked it badly. And the Edge pre was 3 times the cost of the PL Dialogue Premium... Of course...ymmv according to one’s own musical priorities.
I actually started with the pre-amp then went to the power amp. I was using a Conrad-Johnson PV6 going into a FET 120 wpc amp. They both had been recapped with the latest upgrades from the manufacturers. The sound was still small although quite listenable. I tried Parasound stuff and they were too 2D. So, still using the PV6 and FET power amp, I upgraded the phono pre-amp to gain a huge improvement (BAT VK-P6SE). The sound stage really opened up and timbre was drastically improved.
Then still using the PV6 line stage I put in a Rogue Stereo 100. It lasted a month and it should have been a week. It was terrible in both image and sound quality. But I blamed the PV6 line stage and replaced it with the Dialogue Premium pre-amp. Another huge improvement in image, but the Rogue still sounded terrible. Finally I replaced the Rogue with the HP and using the stock EL34s it ran circles around the Rogue.
Then came the room tweaks and speaker placement experiments until I finally settled on the near field configuration. I’ve never been happier and, as I said, I listen all day.
People like to flame Prima Luna because it’s assembled in China. That’s baloney. It’s an American and European company that closely supervises every step of manufacturing. And, they use only premium, imported parts. Probably better quality than your phone or your computer or your tablet or the stereo in your car or your TV,
Although I rolled the power tubes to KT150, I’ve yet to start on the small tubes, they are next. Then it’s on to roll the pre-amp and phono pre.
Aolmrd1241- are you using the Primaluna preamp with the HP or other Primaluna amp, or with something different? And are there other preamps that you have tried in your system before you decided on the Primaluna?
i had not really considered the Primaluna preamp. From this and my question to rollintube, I am wondering if I should reconsider it......
Rollintubes- I have my speakers in a near field set up, and have spend countless hours tweaking my room. Sounds like you are in full agreement with me that getting the speaker and listener position optimized is the most important step. And we have the same amp, (I am currently running KT77s & mullard NOS 12au7s), with tube selection having also made a big difference for me. But I don’t want this to get into a tangent on tube rolling, as there are many other discussions on that subject.
but I have a question for you: have you tried other preamps beside the Primaluna?
"One man's 'big' is another man's 'nothing special'", but...I think my Schiit Freya does a nice, big, 3-D soundstage with some air around the notes when used in the tube mode. (It has 3 selectable modes- passive, JFET buffer, and tubes). Nice finish, nice sound, nice price and made in America.
meiatflask
said... "I have not heard that the Primaluna preamps are anything special."
Audiojan ...I can not say enough good things about my PL Dialogue Premium preamp.It really does hit the high mark musically [tons of info online] and is a tube rollers delight. To be able to fine tune with vintage tubes is a huge bonus over ss. Oh...and you could fly a 747 through the soundstage in my system...
I have a room the same size. I have a Prima Luna Dialogue Pro HP (KT150’s) and the Dialogue Pro preamp going into ATC SCM19’s. I have the speakers in a "near field" position in an equilateral triangle at 5’ c/c and 5’ from my head. The sound stage is perfect. I can listen, literally, all day with no fatigue. My source is analogue, although I do listen to some digital if I need some background while I work with my music collection..
I can listen to Bill Evans at the Village Vanguard and I am in the audience. I listen to Grateful Dead and Bobby spit on me. For this small a listening area I would never have believed that I would be able to get such good sound. The key was setting the speakers just right, until I did that I had an awful time with reverb and image.
The synergy of the Dialogue Premiums gives a seamless wire with gain to the ATCs. Give Kevin a call. He will fix you up. I think that you will be very happy.
I have a c-j Classic 2SE and love it too... I have found that with all my sources, DAC , and Vault 2i having remote volume the lack of remote on the Classic is not really such a big deal... this pre checked all the boxes for me. Simple, just volume , source , and power switch. Sounds phenominal, I auditioned mine in a $50k plus system and it was right at home with much more expensive gear downstream.
A few days after I got it I contacted C-J on a Friday night , Saturday morning I got an email from Dr Lew Johnson thanking me for choosing c-j and he went on to say in his opinion the Classic 2SE was one of the biggest bang for the buck products they’ve made. He gushed like a proud Papa. They are a good value on the used market .
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