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As I am bereft of my D800 for the next 3 weeks for upgrade, I unearthed my old 45W tube ampli to survive this stretch of time. Surprise, surprise, I was extremely pleased with my Lua's sound: Lifelike and emotional in a way that I didn't remember for years... well, that's the memory. There are obviously several processes in involved: The attraction of the new, the bad acoustic memory of how my D800 sounded yesterday that typically misleads audiophiles, etc etc. Anyway it's fine to live now in a new audio world, discovering aspects of my music collection.
Having said that, I also notice that the life-impression that's so attractive with tubes depends a lot on the recording. For example, Fred Frith's Everybody's Somebody's Nobody sounded just superb with so much presence, while the vinyl rip Invisible Means does not, which is a different genre anyway.
All that is a lot of food for thought.
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16-Mar-2017, 19:33
(This post was last modified: 16-Mar-2017, 19:45 by GuillaumeB.)
I think tubes can do wonderful things to realism, subjectively speaking of course. I've heard all the arguments against tubes however I still think there is something to be said for that tube sound. I have an Absolute Integrated as a second system which uses a tube pre amp stage and I love it to bits.
Interestingly many years ago Devialet did consider building an ADH amp with tubes. This was possibly before their Phantom world domination ambitions took hold.
Guillaume
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(16-Mar-2017, 19:33)GuillaumeB Wrote: I think tubes can do wonderful things to realism, subjectively speaking of course. I've heard all the arguments against tubes however I still think there is something to be said for that tube sound. I have an Absolute Integrated as a second system which uses a tube pre amp stage and I love it to bits.
Interestingly many years ago Devialet did consider building an ADH amp with tubes. This was possibly before their Phantom world domination ambitions took hold.
Guillaume
yeah, just enjoying Ben Harper. With tubes it's definitely not as detailed as the D, but still very enjoyable and 'positioned' in front of me.
Didn't know about Devialet's tube ambitions.
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(16-Mar-2017, 21:44)Mohmm Wrote: (16-Mar-2017, 19:33)GuillaumeB Wrote: I think tubes can do wonderful things to realism, subjectively speaking of course. I've heard all the arguments against tubes however I still think there is something to be said for that tube sound. I have an Absolute Integrated as a second system which uses a tube pre amp stage and I love it to bits.
Interestingly many years ago Devialet did consider building an ADH amp with tubes. This was possibly before their Phantom world domination ambitions took hold.
Guillaume
yeah, just enjoying Ben Harper. With tubes it's definitely not as detailed as the D, but still very enjoyable and 'positioned' in front of me.
Didn't know about Devialet's tube ambitions.
Maybe that's what is taking the streaming card so long, getting the bias just right on the tubes.
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[/quote]
Maybe that's what is taking the streaming card so long, getting the bias just right on the tubes.
[/quote]
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Tubes and Devialet... May b tube-dclass-hybrid in the works ... That's why the streamer board/AIR got to the back burner of things
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I have had several valve amps, and still have. They sound lovely but valve power amps are almost all technically weak at the frequency extremes. Valve preamps are fabulous but even spending a vast amount of money on the transformers valve power amps are coloured. It is euphonic, sometimes very much so, and very nice, but transparent to source? Not IME.
I still have yet to find an amp to match Devialet for transparency, but I do still haul out and enjoy my valve amp from time to time - I'd probably do it more if it wasn't so heavy.
I used to have huge, expensive and heavy separates over the last 30 years but am very content with the Devialet solution, 5 boxes weighing well over 100kg replaced by 2 smaller lighter ones that sound just as good and cost much less 
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(16-Mar-2017, 19:33)GuillaumeB Wrote: ......their Phantom world domination ambitions took hold.
Guillaume
..sounds positively evil! 
Btw: the link to the streamer card
https://help.devialet.com/hc/en-us/artic...5001996589
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