McIntosh - Mixing Solid State with Tubes
mfogel@hotmail.com -- Mon, 05/10/2010 - 15:55
I own a pair of MC501 monoblocks driving a pair of Quad 2905 electrostats. My preamp is the McIntosh C45, a solid state unit. Does it make any sense to replace the C45 with the C2300 tube preamp? What are the advantages/disadvantages sonically? I keep reading reviews about McIntosh equipment that their solid state products sound like tubes, and their tube products sound like soild state, so am I essentially making an equal exchange? Appreciate your perspective if you have heard such a system.
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Get an in home trial!
Yes, and a home trial is the only way IF you can find a dealer who'll allow you to borrow the gear for a few days.
This old puzzle of mixing solid state with thermionic has worried the purists for decades. I don't think there's a single answer unless you're technically astute and understand all there is to know about input and output impedances, sensitivities and relative efficiencies. Recently I've been searching for a valve pre-amp to run into my Nuforce V3 'Reference' monoblock power amps. I have on loan a wonderful sounding Melody valve pre-amp but it has no inter-channel balance control. I'm happy to give up tone controls but not a balance control. Sadly it appears the more you pay for a preamp (valve/tube or solid state) the less you get in flexibility these days. Audiophool puritanism of the silliest kind from my perspective. If anyone out there reading this knows of a decent valve/tube preamp that will happily marry my Nuforce power amps please let me know. I will [ul]not[/ul] ( for reasons I'll avoid going into here) have Chinese electronics in my home.
Sunday Niagara and Dismord are both correct; you must listen to both to decide. You can be a world-class expert in high-end electronic design, yet not know which sounded better until you listened.
So Robert , you have no recommendations for a tube preamp to feed my Nuforce monoblocks? I've got my eyes on one from Leben http://www.soundlabsgroup.com.au/c/Leben/Leben.html but that input impedance puzzle has me nervous. I'd like to see an article published in Absolute Sound, or any other audioporn magazine, giving a simplified guide for ignoramuses like me.
This forum appears to have no facility for drawing attention to problems in posting etc. As just about all my attempts to post here are classified by the forum's software as ' spam' and rejected, I'm almost about to give up bothering. How to address this problem when no list of rules and posting protocols exists? HELP ! ! !
This one made it. They need to switch to vbulletin - end of problem!
Having moderated several forums running on V-bulletin I can assure you, even though the software may be better than whatever's running this place, it's not without problems and is sadly 'hackable'.