SS or tube preamp? Which one?

Synergy is important, and Bryston makes a heck of a good preamp regardless of what kind of system is being installed. The Sonic Frontiers Line series are excellent in that they sound fine, or stay the hell out of the way of the music. They offer through-puts for outboard SS processors and have a pretty cool headphone jack for late night listening. Both tubes and solid state can sound great depending on the system so take your time and check things out thoroughly before you buy.
One thing to consider about tubes...........
If they "warm up" the sound like they're reputed to do, wouldn't that go a long way toward taming those harsh transients and excessive high frequencies that exist on sound tracks? I think Musical Fidelity was touting a product that was supposed to do that very thing. It even received a recommendation from Stereophile.
Good luck!

audio999: i meant no offense toward you personally. we all have shortcomings sometimes in trying to express ourselves. the important thing is to keep learning and contributing to a'gon's base of knowledge. -kelly

Check out the Soundstage! review by Srajan Ebean on the new Bel Canto SS preamp. The interesting part is that this self-proclaimed tube-o-phile has re-thought using tubes in the preamp stage due to their inherently higher noise level potentially affecting the weak and ultra-vulnerable signal at that stage. This concept seems to make sense and may be something to consider when choosing a preamp. Of course the right thing to do is find top contenders in each format and try them against each other in your system--the answer will likely become very obvious and will be more valuable than any post you'll read here. Best of luck.

Tim

He did say say 80% movies and 20% music, right? Use a SS preamp / processor, man! Turns on immeidately, mulit-channel for easy integration, no worries about ventilation and tube life, fast dynamics for loud passages, better bass, no rolled-off highs, great for explosions and gun fights, etc.

I love my all tube gear for my 100% music setup but I wouldn't try to integrate the tube preamp into my home theatre. For one thing, you don't want to wait 30 minutes for the tubes to "open up" and sound their best. And how about the complications of matching the two "tube channels" with the rest of the channels?

For your 80/20 requirement, to me its a no-brainer. I vote for Solid-State *in this situation*.

I am switching back to an all tube system and only going to use one supplier; Audio Note. I'll start with the speakers and work backwards; currently use an Audio Note p2se amp and am considering acquiring either a Meishu int amp or a M2 preamplifier. None of the SS stuff sounds as good as the properly executed tube equipment IF mated with compatible components (part. speakers).

Carl