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Agreed, if you have a moderate to high efficiency speaker with a high gain amp, a moderate or high gain preamp is probably not the best choice. In my downstairs system I use low gain amps and a 6SN7 preamp, and it works nicely. In my upstairs system I have high gain amps. And high efficiency speakers. I tried active preamps but they just had too much gain (and also introduced too much noise). So for a long time I just used the Alps pot that was integrated in to my DAC. And it was OK, but I always suspected that it was a bottleneck. And I was right. Lately I switched over to a Transformer based Volume Control (TVC) and wow it's MUCH better than my prior approaches.
walter is very enthusiastic about audio gd.
Well, since it's your TVC that I bought, clearly you were a smarter man than I was for a long time . I will say this, with a pot, it only really sounded good when the volume was set at around 50% on the dial. But with the TVC the volume sounds great at any and all settings. Low level listening in particular is markedly better now. It's like everything just lit up from within.
Hey guys! Side question! How is the 6h30 Pi tube? Seems like all reviews of the Audio Research preamps that use this tube characterize the sound as holographic, warm and rich? And I thought this tube is bright sounding. Do you guys have any experience? So damn expensive though!
My BAT preamp uses 8 of the 6H30's. I would not call them bright. I would characterize them as neutral, but the sound has more to do with the implementation. I heard and almost bought the ARC LS27 with the 6H30 tubes and found it on the slightly warmer and darker side of neutral but very holographic. Certainly, the caps and resistors used play a big part in the sound as well among other things.
Impulse tubes have never been recommended for audio cause bad sound and shorter life, but now the standard valves are becoming rare and price gone up so manufacturers are using and recommending tubes made for high freq impulse use.
Thanks! I didn't know this!
For a more precise information from my vendor in Moscow:i (N sideways) - pulse mode operation, anode conditions may vary radically from "normally designated" valves, always a much shorter guaranteed life in comparison to the standard type, but can be useful.И (i) higher cathode emission for more current in pulse modes operation, anode conditions may vary radically from "normally designated" valves, always a much shorter guaranteed life in comparison to the standard type, but can be useful.
So wish I had kept my Bent transformer based passive preamp...oh well. George
Are they still in business? Most high-end tube pres going transformer coupled like Bat and Audio Note! What is advantage instead of using capacitors?
They are but OEM sales only. The Bent stuff is purely passive using autoformers designed by Dave Slagle (https://instactaudio.com), though the site is down at the moment. I emailed Dave last week, he's very much still in business, hopefully only a glitch with his site.
Contact Walter at Underwood. He often has specials on some of these.
I just sold a deHavilland UltraVerve 3, that would do it.See if you can find a conrad-johnson CT-5, that's at least the equal of ARC gear.
