Thread: Do we have any audiophiles in the house?

Onkyo receiver , bowers and Wilkerson speakers as well as Yamaha . Still looking for a tube amp. Used to Rock cerwins and still miss them . All my lp are in frames on the wall these days.

Originally Posted by shayne

Onkyo receiver , bowers and Wilkerson speakers as well as Yamaha . Still looking for a tube amp. Used to Rock cerwins and still miss them . All my lp are in frames on the wall these days.

Buying a Tube Amp these days is like buying a fancy exotic sports car designed to run on super high octane gas which is impossible to get in most areas so you get the highest octane you can and get lousy performance from the car.

Your correct butane to be honest my ears can't tell the dif any longer between digi sounds and true tube . I play guitar (badly ) have played modern amps as well as classic tube used to know the difference these days it's too close to call . So I guess I am saying I only want a tube amp for the looks because with my set up I really don't need it.

Um not butane but be honest . Stupid me and stupid IDevice

There are plenty of affordable options out there for tubes if you want them. For example, the Bottlehead kits, while getting more ecpensive every day, are still in the affordable range for amps and preamps, or Hagerman Technologies for truly affordable tube kits that even a trained monkey (like me) can build.

In addition, you can do what I do when I want to get new gear... get the magazines from 3 to 4 years ago, and look for those components used. Pennies on the dollar for what will still be the best...like someone else said, the only things that have improved are speakers and marketing. Although I will say that any high end speaker built say after 1990, will still be a great speaker.

If I were building a system from scratch, I would scour Ebay for used B&K preamps, Outlaw amps and Music Hall MMF-5 turntables and mid-90s Definitive Technologies speakers (I think the mid-90's Def Tech stuff is the best compromise music/movie speaker ever made... model BP2000 and BP2002)

With some patience I bet anyone can put together a kickass high end system for what just one new 7 channel high end amp goes for new. Oh yeah and please don't spend a small fortune on cables... make your own speaker cables out of CAT-5 or just get that thick copper stuff from Home Depot...and interconnects? PLEASE... Are you the guy that spent triple digits on a "gold" HDMI? Don't look here... Quality Computer Cables Adapters Home Theater TriangleCables.com

The only thing that might require occasional upgrades is the HT preamp what with the freakin' inputs changing all the time.. in less than 5 years we went from RCA to S-Video to DVI then Firewire for just about 3 seconds then to HDMI... talk about frustrating... I quit after I dropped cash on a B&K Reference 50 S preamp and no sooner was it installed and finally programmed. when POOF! HDMI... that's when I decided to keep video and audio managed by seperate systems...

Originally Posted by mannye

There are plenty of affordable options out there for tubes if you want them. For example, the Bottlehead kits, while getting more ecpensive every day, are still in the affordable range for amps and preamps, or Hagerman Technologies for truly affordable tube kits that even a trained monkey (like me) can build.

In addition, you can do what I do when I want to get new gear... get the magazines from 3 to 4 years ago, and look for those components used. Pennies on the dollar for what will still be the best...like someone else said, the only things that have improved are speakers and marketing. Although I will say that any high end speaker built say after 1990, will still be a great speaker.

If I were building a system from scratch, I would scour Ebay for used B&K preamps, Outlaw amps and Music Hall MMF-5 turntables and mid-90s Definitive Technologies speakers (I think the mid-90's Def Tech stuff is the best compromise music/movie speaker ever made... model BP2000 and BP2002)

With some patience I bet anyone can put together a kickass high end system for what just one new 7 channel high end amp goes for new. Oh yeah and please don't spend a small fortune on cables... make your own speaker cables out of CAT-5 or just get that thick copper stuff from Home Depot...and interconnects? PLEASE... Are you the guy that spent triple digits on a "gold" HDMI? Don't look here... Quality Computer Cables Adapters Home Theater TriangleCables.com

The only thing that might require occasional upgrades is the HT preamp what with the freakin' inputs changing all the time.. in less than 5 years we went from RCA to S-Video to DVI then Firewire for just about 3 seconds then to HDMI... talk about frustrating... I quit after I dropped cash on a B&K Reference 50 S preamp and no sooner was it installed and finally programmed. when POOF! HDMI... that's when I decided to keep video and audio managed by seperate systems...

The problem is who is making tubes these days? The last I looked it was Sovtek and some Chinese outfit. Those tubes are garbage. Just replace the stock tubes with some vintage stuff and the difference will knock you over, tin ear or not. To reoutfit a power amp with good vintage tubes would cost you a couple grand easy and those tubes are getting more expensive day by day.

Great thread. I was in to it awhile back then this thing called straight razors came along. Damn those custom makers. I sold off most of my gear and went solid state home theater but the one thing that survived were my Logan's. Would love to get a tube set up again just to make the Logan's shine like their meant to. When it comes to speakers a great deal depends on what you listen to. I am a vocals guy and the ML's just do the mids like no other.

Right on the money.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

The problem is who is making tubes these days? The last I looked it was Sovtek and some Chinese outfit. Those tubes are garbage. Just replace the stock tubes with some vintage stuff and the difference will knock you over, tin ear or not. To reoutfit a power amp with good vintage tubes would cost you a coupMle grand easy and those tubes are getting more expensive day by day.

Originally Posted by Don

Right on the money.

While I tend to agree that certain tubes like 2A3 and 300B are expensive, they have ALWAYS been mega bucks even 20 years ago. A matched pair of NOS 2A3 tubes have never been cheap and the only substitutes are hit and miss. That said, I had a pair of 2A3 monoblocks that sounded amazing with a nice pair of cheap Chinese tubes and NOS RCA 12AU7s which are still available under 50 bucks. There are plenty of tubes available (NOS RCA, Phillips, etc) for less than 20 bucks a pair or even 3,4 and 5 bucks each (matched pairs always being more...40 to 60 dollars) and I believe a decent amp can be re-tubed for a lot less than thousands of dollars. Depending on the amp, from 100 to 200 bucks can usually get you a nice set of tubes.

Do you have to go the extra mile? Yes... tubes are kind of an adventure and to me, half the fun is searching the net and scouring old TV repair shops wherever I go. CAn you spend thousands? Yes! If all you want to do is click a few times and get a boutique valve (like those mega-buck 300B tubes). I am sure they sound very nice...but I can't help think they are also in the 500 dollar interconnect category (a little...valves actually have design..so that might not be fair)

Looking at the frequency response diagrams of tube vs solid state amps, can you really discern which is which when listening to music in a double blind test (assuming both are high quality devices connected to the same speaker setup)?