valve power or ss power?

As stated on a previous thread, im now using a valve pre, which is great! vocals are miles better than with my previous pre amp..only downer is the bloomy bass and a tad of brightness..Now, do I go for a ss power amp to "get back" some of the bass lost? and secondly is this possible? or once the pre amp has "lost" some of the bass and made it bloomy..are you stuck with this going into the power? What would be gained from a valve power? Larkrise mentioned to me that he felt a valve pre and ss power worked really well for him.what do others reckon ?.

 

It may depend on speakers?

I myself have a preference for a valve pre driving a solid state power, but this is based on the speaker requirements, as valve amps seem unable to get the bottom end right.
Though I did change from valve pre to SS pre in an attempt to get rid of a little bit of valve hiss.

I would like to have a valve powér for the bedroom, something like the Macintosh 275 power, apparently this has good bass, though I believe it starts to roll off at 40hz?

I am not sur ewhich pre abd power you have, but Tube rolling, IE changing valves may help, I am sure someone else will elaborate on this?

 

the 'problem' with valves (if you like) is getting high power is tricky and expensive.

You wont see many valve amps with the power and damping factor of a moderately priced class 'd' amp, so a lot depends on your speakers (?)

 

banpe which power amp are you using with your valve pre ( and which pre ), Keith.

 

if you want bags of power and slam from valves, try out some 845 monoblocks.
all the poise and detail and air from valves and then some. will rock ye tits off!

 

sorry to say, but BIG power valve amps tend to use 6550 / EL34 / KT88. Audio Research, Macintosh that kind of thing.

Take for example the Rogue Audio Zeus, 225 w p/ch from 12 x KT88.

http://www.definitiveaudio.co.uk/stuff.htm

http://www.rogueaudio.com/Products_Zeus.htm

 

Now you're talking!!!

Does it come with it's own nuclear reactor?

 

Its not always about watts though, the huge Papworth 200w monos and big Jadis and Lumley amps struggle to drive and control the lower frequencies of speakers such as the Kef R-107.

Is this due to resitive loads, impedance or something?

I was wondering if that is why the MacIntosh rolls off early?

 

my pre is a welborne battery operated (valves ecc86 x2) power = 2 x avi monoblocks 150 wpc speakers kef 104/2 and a couple of pairs of spendors. so does the bloomy bass disappear and therefore become firm with a good ss power amp? i dont get how this can be....if the pre alters the sound to bloomy, can a power then make it tight afterwards with that signal coming in?

 

Well if your power amp is not capable of controlling your bass drivers you may get flabby bass, not a question of the signal but perhaps current or damping, I recently asked a similar question on ZG ' see 'an innocuous question about power'.

 

If you have a valve based preamp that produces soggy bass, get rid of it. It's crap. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever why a well designed valve pre should give anything other than quality transparent sound across the full audible spectrum.

Power amps are a different kettle of fish. Because valves are high voltage/low current devices, they need to be matched to your loudspeaker through output transformers. The performance of the tranformer will usually tail off at the frequency extremes, and if your speaker demands large amounts of current at low frequencies, the transformer will struggle and usually saturate. This is the reason you will often hear stereotypical "soggy" bass from some valve power amps - distortion increases massively as the OPT struggles. The answer is to either get less current hungry loudspeakers or a better and more expensive valve amp.

 

I used to use Audio Research valve and valve hybrid pre amps,with solid state power amps from Classe and Krell, and always found them to produce good bass.

When I changed to a Krell pre I felt I lost out in loudness and bass thwack, but it was due I believe to the ARC pre's having more gain/output than the Krell. I do have more use of the krell volume than I had with the ARC's though.

I can turn the volume up to max on the Krell and enjoy clean output, though no doubt the speakers would end up damaged if this was continuous, with the ARC's I couldn't get past 12 it seemed.

 

I've just swapped from an EL34 integrated to a hybrid integrated (valve pre mosfet power) and it has transformed my bass performance from 'sort of OK but light and a bit vague' to solid thumping defined greatness . Only downside is that I've lost some of the sweetness off the higher frequencies, but I'm hoping that a bit of valve rolling might help to alleviate that a bit.