Wyetech Jade and TRL Dude

I am a Dude owner as well and will add my two cents.

Vandermeulen, your comments are helpful and stimulating IMO. It is an argument you hear about audio in general. Distortion is a part of audio whether we like it or not. Bob Smith at SpTech (now Aether Audio) told me at length about the levels of distortion in speaker drivers and that no one really likes to measure it since it is so horrific. I have personally battled some level of distortion via cables, the room, digital sources, etc. As far as preamps are concerned, the question is how quiet is it, what is the nature of the power supply (how stable, etc), and do you like first order harmonic distortion via tubes. I confess that I like tubes and have always had a tubed pre in the rig. A lot of older recordings used tubed microphones, etc and smoke a lot of digital offerings of today. As far as the Dude is concerned, it is dead quiet, dynamic, with jumbo sound staging, etc. The power supply is a proprietary tube regulated affair that is very stable. You can alter the sound of the Dude by tube rolling. I have landed in NOS RCAs currently.

Gary, it sounds like you already have a tube bias. Depending on where you are, you could potentially demo a Dude. If you live in NC, you most certainly can.....Charlotte.

That's kool. I used to own the AI L1. Very nice little linestage. I liquidated my previous system and thus the L1 went away. The "just thereness" is a good thing to shoot for IMO as well. The Dude does that (I think) and more in other ways that are hard to describe.

At the end of the day, its about system synergy. If you need tubes in the preamp, so be it. If not, so be it. I know TRL had at one time made a battery powered SS pre-amp which I have not heard.

The hard part about this game is that you need to be able to A+B things in your own rig. I know in Minneapolis there used to be a hi end store that would let you take things home! How ideal and how far we have come from that era of real community. The internet age has its drawbacks....

Gary, keep us posted on your journey.

Gary, I missed your post above. Congrats on purchasing the Dude. I don't think you will be disappointed. It is hard to know if it is better than the Jade in an absolute sense. If the Dude does not float your boat, you can always snag a Jade in the future. I will have to check out the Sylvanias. I tried the Raytheons initially and they did not do it for me. It is conceivable I did not have the optimal Raytheon as they come in different flavors. There is an "organ grade" tube that is supposedly optimal. All that being said, it is better to buy from a reputable tube dealer. I tried buying a few Raytheons on Ebay and regretted it. I know the Weitzels would be interested your tube rolling experiences. You should mention this to them.