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I am sure there is pros and cons on each, but i just cant make up my mind.Going with all tube seems to be a bit more expensive and in my situation (low sensitivity speaker) requires two monoblock (100watts), will create alot of heat and take more space. In hybrid, the SS amp will run cooler and it is in one chassis so it doesnt take as much space. Now, is Going hybrid (tube pre+ SS Amp) going to give me that Tube sound?My other idea to is high passed the front speakers in turn to hope they dont require as much power, so i can get a smaller tube amp physically and powerly becuase low frequencies is taken out. Does that even make sense?
In short yes. However it depends on the component. A neutral tubed Pre as oppossed to a lush tubed Pre will show its character through a SS Amp. If it were me it would be a SS preamp for total accurracy and a tubed Amp for the flavor. Both applications will give you some tube sound just a matter of YOUR personal taste. Just remember there is no right or wrong just personal preference. Experiment and find out what floats your boat. Most of all have fun trying. Just do not buy anything until you HEAR it in your system.charles
ricardo, if you go tube pre > SS amp, check that the coupling cap inside the preamp is large enough. They are usually 1uF, which is good for a tube power amp with 100kOhm input impedance. But many SS power amps have input impedance of 10kOhms or even lower. The coupling cap makes a high pass filter whose knee frequency (-3dB point, or halfway through the filter) is determined by the capacitor value and the load impedance it is driving. So if your tube preamp has a 1uF coupling cap into 10kohm load, then the cap will start filtering out your bass at 150Hz, and be about 10dB down by 20Hz. It will also twist the phase which will add group delay, making the bass sound "slow." Upgrading the coupling caps to 8uF will move the entire filter band down below 20Hz when used with 10kOhm load, and even lower if you use a tube amp with high input impedance. There are lots of great caps of that size on the market. Just make sure they are high enough voltage for the DC offset from the preamp output tube. 400V variety should be plenty for any line level preamp. The improvement in bass quality will be worth the $50-100 for great coupling caps. For amps under $2000 SS is usually best value of price/SQ. $2000-10000 usually the tubes win, then above 10k the SS amps tend to take over again. Very low price tube amps have junk or very compromised part sizes so SS is usually better for low cost. Once you get into the range where a tube amp doesn't need to be junk just to run then they show their strengths over cheap SS. They are more linear so they require less feedback, they have lower order harmonic distortion even though it may be higher amplitude it still sounds better than cheap SS amps with low THD%. There is a life to the music in an all tube system. If it's the life you want on a budget, then tubes are usually the answer. As the price rises to $10000 stereo, now you are in the league where SS designers have the time and development budget to make transistors behave and sound as good as tubes, with life and magic intact, in addition to all of their other mundane advantages like high current, low impedance, low heat, low maintenance. It is harder to make a transistor sound as good as a simple tube circuit. It can be done with a deep understanding of the most esoteric concepts in analog electronic design. Of course this is just my own prejudices built from experience. If you listen to hard rock or rap and dance music then you will always want SS for bass slam, and violin tone will not matter to you. If you are opera or chamber music fan you may always want tubes for the natural tone, and open, spiritual feeling, and cello slam will not matter to you. If you like all kinds of music and tend toward audiophile sonic appreciation then you might adopt a prejudice like mine to help choose the amp for the application.
Watts are watts.
We've had this discussion before here at AC and I, many others here, and 99% of guitarists would disagree with you. Whatever reason (different distortion, soft clipping, sharper transients, etc.), tube amps sound louder than solid state amps watt for watt. There is a reason we don't see the flea-watt SS amp. But there are ooooodles of tube SET's out there.
Absolutely....plus the note bloom, decay, harmonics, overtones that are not the same with SS. Jim
in my situation (low sensitivity speaker) requires two monoblock (100watts),
Hi.What is the sensitivity (?dB/W/m) of yr loudspeakers?c-J
that's fine Jim, but it has NOTHING to do with 'watts vs watts' !
If I was doing it all over again in the $15,000 range, and I wanted all of the virtues of tubes without the complexity, the heat, and without taking up too much space (all things you mentioned), I would focus on a pair of efficient floor standing speakers and a really nice low powered tube integrated.Add a good set of speaker wire and you're on your way.(Oh yeah, and add another 10k for the source component and interconnects. )
If I was doing it all over again in the $15,000 range, and I wanted all of the virtues of tubes without the complexity, the heat, and without taking up too much space (all things you mentioned), I would focus on a pair of efficient floor standing speakers and a really nice low powered tube integrated.Add a good set of speaker wire and you're on your way.
Your suggestion defenetely makes sense. But im not sure why you suggest 10k for the source components.
