What type of amps do you use? Tube? Solid State? Both? Hybrid?

What type of amp do you use?


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(Don't think I've posted on this thread previously ...)

I've never had a tube power amp though I've had a couple of tube preamps. Presently for the latter I'm using a Sonic Frontiers Line 1 with 'SE+' upgrades by Parts ConneXion and, at this moment, Golden Lion tubes in the gain stage -- very nice but not especially "tubey".

I've had a fair number of power amps over 50+ years which have all been solid state; that has included several class D amps starting over 20 years ago. Nowadays it's a Purifi 1E400A-based stereo amp from VTV with VTV i/o buffers with Sparkos SS3602 op amps. It's my best amp so far, beating out my last class A/B which was a Pass Labs X150.5.
What Speakers and Preamp are you using with the Class D amp ..?
 
HH Scott tube amps for me, first heard a demo of them against the mighty McIntosh 275 ( I forgot what the Mac pre was) but playing each one through to Klipsch Cornwall speakers I was flabbergasted to what I was hearing! Blew me away!
 

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in my experience, it doesn’t matter if the specific output device is tube or solid state, what matters most is the circuit topology.
 
What matters most to me is how it sounds with my cables, speakers and room. Further down the line of requirements, call it the second page, are price, reputation (of dealer and manufacturer), source of supply (private party, direct or dealer), build quality, appearance etc.
 
HH Scott tube amps for me, first heard a demo of them against the mighty McIntosh 275 ( I forgot what the Mac pre was) but playing each one through to Klipsch Cornwall speakers I was flabbergasted to what I was hearing! Blew me away!
Scott knew what they were doing. Their head engineer when your stuff was built was Daniel von Recklinghausen, who is famous for his insight "If it measures good and sounds bad, — it is bad. If it sounds good and measures bad, — you've measured the wrong thing." You can imagine he was careful to also listen to the designs..

The tricky bit these days is getting any older gear like that properly refurbished.
 
Jadis JA800 - 40 +tubes
Bought solely based on sound
Great to be back on this site. I’ve made significant improvements and need to share them with someone.
 

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