Should I buy this tube amp?

November 11, 2017 2:16 PM

Does it make sense to purchase this tube phono preamp if it's going to be hooked up to a mid-range Denon AV receiver?

Until recently my stereo setup consisted of a Rega turntable plugged into an old NAD receiver which only occasionally played audio from sources other than the phono preamp. A few months ago I bought a Denon AV receiver so that I could use the speakers that were previously hooked up to the NAD receiver with my TV and PS4. Now the turntable and NAD receiver are hooked up to one of the auxiliary inputs on the Denon. This setup works and sounds fine but isn't really ideal as the NAD receiver takes up a decent amount of space, and I don't have very long interconnects so the turntable and NAD can't be setup too far from the TV and Denon receiver.

The Budgie amp is definitely smaller (and cooler looking), but my main issue is whether it even makes sense to use the tube-based preamp if it's getting hooked up to the Denon receiver which is almost certainly applying some amount of digital equalizing or other nonsense to anything fed to it.

posted by Venadium to Technology (4 answers total)

I used to work with tube amps (years ago). I don't think it makes sense to get that preamp unless either you want it for its appearance, or you plan to upgrade your main amp some future date. Appearance-wise it's neat, but will gather dust and needs airspace above.
posted by anadem at 2:53 PM on November 11, 2017

I can't be sure, but it looks like a starved tube/plate design (when the plate receives far less voltage than it was designed for) which tend to not sound great and units using it tend to have tubes for marketing rather than great sound.

What problem are you trying to solve? Lack of RIAA equalization built into the Denon?
posted by Candleman at 3:06 PM on November 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

I can't be sure, but it looks like a starved tube/plate design (when the plate receives far less voltage than it was designed for) which tend to not sound great and units using it tend to have tubes for marketing rather than great sound.

Yup. B+ is 48v. The claim is that by using a CC source for the valve plates they don't "waste" voltage (e.g. a normal ECC88 circuit would run at ~200V B+, and a lot of that is dropped - allegedly "wasted" - across the plate resistor), and so it's not really a compromise at all. Which is probably true to some degree, at least at some level, but I can't help but think they're missing something obvious...

Personally I would've thought a better approach would be to design around a valve made for a low B+, but none of them have the 'audiophile' cachet of the ECC88/6922/6Н23П/etc. But what would I know - I just restore radios… ;)
posted by Pinback at 4:56 PM on November 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

Many receivers I've seen have a mode that bypasses all the digital stuff. Even my relatively cheap Sony one has it. Your Denon might have something like that (it seems to be called "Pure Direct" on Denon's receivers).
posted by neckro23 at 8:33 AM on November 13, 2017 [1 favorite]