Audio by Van Alstine Transcendence Eight Preamplifier

Good sound for the budget-minded

I like this product’s name, and not just because of its promise of reaching beyond the common range of perception. It’s the version number—the Eight—that really piqued my interest, suggesting a mature product evolved through multiple design iterations. Selling direct, as AVA does, helps to keep prices down, but to extract good sound on a budget it is essential for the designer to put his ears into the design loop, critically evaluating component and circuit options, as there is only so much money you can throw at a given project. And this is something Frank Van Alstine has done for over 35 years, judging by the success of his numerous modifications of vintage gear. Extracting maximum bang for the buck is apparently a way of life at AVA. Frank tells me that his goal is to “build as high a quality and durable a piece as possible, while trying to keep prices in the range affordable by mortals.” Somehow he still manages to include gold-plated switch-contacts and jacks, precision controls, and power-supply regulation.

Functionally, the Transcendence Eight (T8) is a mixture of old-fashioned and standard features and is intended to serve as a full-function preamplifier, rather than as a bare-bones linestage. In addition to the obligatory volume pot and inputselector switch, there’s a balance control, mono-mode selector (useful for playback of single-channel sources and noisy FM stations), two tape loops, and a headphone jack. Three AC convenience outlets are located on the rear panel. The headphone driver is built around a fast integrated chip configured as a unity-gain buffer, offering low output impedance and high current drive. While I made no attempt to evaluate the headphone driver in depth, a quick listen via my Grado RS-1 cans indicated more than sufficient drive, but a sonic flavor more akin to solidstate than tubes. An optional phonostage is available, as is a motor-driven remote volume control. And that’s how my review sample was outfitted, bringing the price tag to $1697.

Van Alstine was forthcoming in providing me with a schematic of the T8. He warned me that there wasn’t that much amazing to look at and that the magic is “pretty much just good execution and careful calculation of circuit time constants to insure outstanding stability and bandwidth.” The truth is that there’s nothing revolutionary left to do in tube audio. It was already a mature technology in the 1960s, and much of what passes for new today is nothing more than a rehashing of vintage technology. (In fact, did anyone notice that the vacuum tube celebrated its 100th anniversary last year?)

The line-level input stage is built around a “plain vanilla” grounded cathode circuit. A single Russian 6N1P dualtriode is used per channel. This mediumtransconductance, low-distortion tube is, with the exception of higher heater-current consumption, a direct replacement for 6DJ8/6922 types. The triode sections are cascaded to give plenty of voltage gain— more, in fact than I could ever imagine being necessary for CD line-level inputs. There is no cathode-follower stage, which means that the line output impedance is fairly high—a bad thing when driving low-input-impedance power amps. The RIAA phonostage topology is similar and is based on a single 12AX7 dual-triode per channel. The power supply is solid-state and fully regulated. No global feedback is used. One of AVA’s “secrets” is the use of separate highvoltage regulators for each triode section; for the two 6N1P tubes in the linestage and two 12AX7 in the phonostage that’s a total of eight regulators in all! And these are zener-controlled, high-voltage power MOSFETs. A replacement tube set of selected and matched phono and line tubes is offered at reasonable cost ($29).

It is rare for a sub-$2k preamplifier (the T8 base price is $1099) to compete in one or more performance aspects with the best money can buy. But with digital source material, the line section amazed me in several important aspects First and foremost, the music’s tension was reproduced fully intact. That is to say that the T8 was never a dull, boring little fellow. Polite, sterile sound is what I find most off-putting about most solidstate linestages (though there are happy exceptions), and the T8 offered a potent antidote. The music’s grandeur and drama were fully drawn out. Its ability to engage the highest gear, to rev up explosively from soft to loud, was impressive. Familiar vocals were given free reign, from a soft whisper to full shout. The T8 didn’t seem to know about compression. The impression of speed was enhanced by excellent transient attack, and controlled decay enabled the silence between notes to be clearly perceived.

Image outlines were tightly focused within a deep soundstage and fleshed out with palpable presence. This level of performance, long an area of tube supremacy, was of course dependent on the associated amplifier. To its credit, the T8 was good enough to keep up with the imaging prowess of the single-ended deHavilland GM70 tube amp.