Thats because musical satisfaction and emotional involvement has not in any case to do with a perfect frequency response or top notch measurement values...I really love my Paragon 12A preamp from the late 70's which sounds magical to me, because it has almost the same analytical qualities as my Gryphon amps but gives every note more sense and puts everything more in the right context.
Why does this old tube gear sound so good?
I have a realtively modest system...Rotel cdp feeding an MSB Link dac, Sonic Frontiers SFL-1 Sig preamp with Telefunken 12at7 tube, Classe 10 amplifier driving North Creek Music Borealis speakers....Kimber and Cardas cables.
Every once in a while I pull out some vintage tube gear that I have collected...in this case a McIntosh C-11 tube preamp and a pair of McIntosh MC-60 tube amps.
I carefully insert the Mac stuff, make sure connections are good and everything fires up OK, and then.....magic.
The normal gear doesn't sound bad by any means, but with the Mac gear it just sounds more like music, more alive, robust and palpable. I know this has been discussed hundreds of times before on this forum, but I am always surprised by how good this 50 year old, original condition gear sounds.
Every once in a while I pull out some vintage tube gear that I have collected...in this case a McIntosh C-11 tube preamp and a pair of McIntosh MC-60 tube amps.
I carefully insert the Mac stuff, make sure connections are good and everything fires up OK, and then.....magic.
The normal gear doesn't sound bad by any means, but with the Mac gear it just sounds more like music, more alive, robust and palpable. I know this has been discussed hundreds of times before on this forum, but I am always surprised by how good this 50 year old, original condition gear sounds.