EAR Yoshino 834L Deluxe Preamp Review

[Purité Audio]

Feet of clay?

Must check homework before submitting!
Fret of clay would just sound awful.
Keith

 

[Music707]

There is a complaint about everything I review...

Presumably because every item has some fanboy who is not willing to leave his subjective opinion undefended. Please just go on with your valuable work!

 

[Miiksuli]

It is not what "I" want. So I rated it accordingly. It also has a cheap enclosure especially for its cost.

Should you make a tube category? And different ratings.

 

[Purité Audio]

Notice that the 834L still had approx 5 dB better SINAD than the Primaluna preamp tested recently here.

EAR Yoshino 834 integrated amp was measured by a Polish audio magazine to have approx 70 dB SINAD at 1 kHz / 5 W, which is pretty decent for a tube integrated.

I'd say mr. Paravicini's reputation as an audio equipment designer was deserved. His decision to use mainly tube amplification was not because he did not know any better.

It seems to me ‘designers’ make what they can and usually what they have been making for the last forty years, valve amps don’t require huge investment, can be made in the kitchen table, measurement isn’t necessary because they are all ‘voiced’ by the designer, you just need to convince enough punters that poor measurements are actually something desirable.
Keith

 

[AudioSceptic]

I am pretty sure this is line only. You are expected to feed the output of your 834P into the 834L.

So the sockets marked Ph are actually line level?

 

[AudioSceptic]

I don't know if it really can be taken for granted that high 2nd harmonics are "what tubes are supposed to do". Tube amps were historically used because there was nothing else around. Their purpose was amplification. Supposedly as clean and powerful as possible. Any feature of higher harmonics as a positive thing was invented after the fact and not by the brightest people. Take Peter Walker, for example, Quad made excellent tube amps for the time, but when solid state amps took over, he readily (not Quad itself, alas) abandoned tube amps, calling them surpassed. That's how it is.

The same applied to Harold Leak with the Point One.

 

[Haskil]

But is this an current product? The connections are so 80s...

Tape outputs are cool though. Tape out can be useful to connect VU meters, that I am sure people buying this would appreciate. What does "Tape Mon." do? Is it an input independent of whatever tape out is receiving?

Thanks for the review, I do find it interesting.

Seeing the 12 AU7/ECC 82 tubes I immediately said to myself : "Oh! this is an electronic from the 1950s"...

 

[audio_tony]

Stereophile: What are the problems with transistors?

De Paravicini: Well, feedback is one. Some of it is always necessary to get distortion down to a reasonable level, but transistors take less well to it. Transistors are deficient in speed, overload capability, ruggedness and so on.

Stereophile: You feel that tubes are faster than transistors?

De Paravicini: Well, they are developing transistors that are the equal of a tube. But these are still very costly.

Stereophile: Could you comment on T.I.M. problems in tubes vs. transistors?

De Paravicini: In Japan I was doing a lot of research on the problems of slewing distortion in amplifiers. I was able to detect the fact that the amplifiers, when fed with music which contained a lot of transients, were being overloaded by them. That's transient intermodulation distortion or T.I.M.

Stereophile: Why does this happen?

De Paravicini: Because there is a slight time delay through an amplifier. The feedback that should prevent the overload doesn't get back to the front of the amplifier until after the transient has already overloaded it.

Stereophile: So it's a tube's superior overload characteristics that make it less susceptible to T.I.M.?

De Paravicini: That and its higher speed. The second reason I felt tubes would be easier to work with was that transistors had to be run in class-B or class-AB in order to keep them from overheating. Transistors did not like heat, and consumers didn't want large heatsinks. This. meant lots of feedback, to try and cover up the crossover distortion at the point where operation switched from one output transistor to the other. This was not a problem with tubes, because for home audio they had traditionally been run class-A.

My feeling was that Tim's opinions of transistors were firmly entrenched in the 70's, when 'fast' transistors didn't exist (in particular PNP types).

I had the occasional interaction with him in a couple of FB groups he was a member of, and his opinion on THD measurement in OPAMPS was somewhat odd.

He was however a talented designer.

 

[AudioSceptic]

And yet there was an interview in either Stereophile or TAS, where he said he could get the sound he wanted from solid state or tubes. He discussed why he chose tubes. It was more of a niche marketing kind of thinking. That he could get more people's attention, have a more differentiated product, even though he could design equally good gear by his criteria. A version of the light sabre vs blaster argument.

I believe he was a consultant engineer for Lux/Luxman at some point, designing both valve and SS.

 

[AndreaT]

Well... a bit of a mess and pricey. Noise isn't too bad though, mostly high 2nd harmonic distortion. Thanks @amirm for testing this, some pics;

View attachment 311210View attachment 311211View attachment 311212View attachment 311213View attachment 311214View attachment 311215


JSmith

Absolutely no reason whatsoever to cost as much, not even if it were made in Montecarlo. The cost of its parts is probably $ 350 tops.

 

[Haskil]

Absolutely no reason whatsoever to cost as much, not even if it were made in Montecarlo. The cost of its parts is probably $ 350 tops.

Labor is not expensive in Monte-Carlo: the principality is so rich that Monegasque subjects do not pay taxes and industrial companies pay very little... But even in France, right next door , making such an amp would not cost much to assemble... a person who knows how to solder assembles it in 2 hours. And for a manufacturer, there are not 350 euros of parts... tubes included... The most expensive thing there are the buttons and the chrome front in the worst British taste: the French from Jadis are also ugly and vulgar.

 

[AudioSceptic]

Within some quarters of the U.K. market Tim is held in very high regard, ‘guru’ status in fact, now that their designs are actually examined many appear to have feet of clay, reputation built solely on marketing.
Keith

I'm so pleased to read this review for that very reason. I thought for so long that Tim *must* be a genuine guru because everyone said so, plus he worked for Lux/Luxman at some point.

 

[DSJR]

Absolutely no reason whatsoever to cost as much, not even if it were made in Montecarlo. The cost of its parts is probably $ 350 tops.

Now do a ten times markup from parts to retail including taxes and dealer margins Ten times base cost to full retail is commonplace in specialised audio circles...

I repeat, Tim knew EXACTLY what he was doing and designed/made/priced for that market...

 

[Mulder]

And yet there was an interview in either Stereophile or TAS, where he said he could get the sound he wanted from solid state or tubes. He discussed why he chose tubes. It was more of a niche marketing kind of thinking. That he could get more people's attention, have a more differentiated product, even though he could design equally good gear by his criteria. A version of the light sabre vs blaster argument.

You are probably thinking of an interview in the Audio Magazine 1995. This is what he said:

You use vacuum tubes in many of your designs. Some people have said that tubes have euphonic evenorder harmonic distortion. Do you rely on this tube nonlinearity to achieve the sound of your mods, or do you always run the tubes in their linear region?

I do not rely on tube-nonlinearity. I don't Want a sound in my machines. What comes Out must sound the same as what went in. The "warmth" in a lot of tube-electronics is due to their dismal top end, the bad transformers they use, and the loading. Down of their high-impedance outputs. Because of the output transformer and the Feedback used, many tube-circuits have a partial bass-instability that gives a bloated bass. Any warmth in the tube sound is a defect, but listeners don't want to know that.

I don't have to use tubes in my designs; I Only do it for marketing reasons. I've got an exact equivalent in solid-state. I can make either type do the same job, and I have no preference. People can't pick which is which. And electrons have no memory of where they've been! The end result is what counts.

Most transistor-circuit architecture was different from tube-circuit-architecture, and that's what people were hearing, more than the device itself. The main advantage of tubes is that average tube has more gain than an average transistor. Second, tubes don't have the enormous storage times of transistors, so they are very fast. Tubes go to100MHz without trying

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-Audio/90s/Audio-1995-01.pdf

 

[Mulder]

My feeling was that Tim's opinions of transistors were firmly entrenched in the 70's, when 'fast' transistors didn't exist (in particular PNP types).

I had the occasional interaction with him in a couple of FB groups he was a member of, and his opinion on THD measurement in OPAMPS was somewhat odd.

He was however a talented designer.

Yes, maybe, but this interview is from 2007 and not from the 70´s. When I read interviews with him I think he has a lot of strange and odd believes. His idea about vinyl vs digital for example.

 

[AudioSceptic]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Ear Yoshino 834L Deluxe Tube (Valve) stereo preamp designed by Tim De Paravicini. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $3095 (£2,699.00).
View attachment 311173
I am not a fan of chrome front panel but realize this is a personal thing. The case is stamped sheet metal which feels cheap compared to that. Controls are large and easy to manipulate.

Back panel sports gold plated RCAs but they seem kind of tarnished/dull:
View attachment 311175

Note much else to say than let's measure it.

Ear Yoshino 834L Deluxe Tube (Valve) Preamp Measurements
As usual, we set the input to 2 volts and adjust the volume for "unity gain" (same output voltage):
View attachment 311176

We are heavily distortion limited. 2nd harmonic is dominant by far. Noise level is actually good:
View attachment 311177

I was impressed by the wide bandwidth but found the very low frequency rise strange:
View attachment 311178

Channel separation is quite poor for a stereo product:
View attachment 311180

Distortion doesn't depend on frequency although it is quite high:
View attachment 311181

We see that reason for high distortion is very early saturation:
View attachment 311183

Volume control accuracy is good:
View attachment 311184

Conclusions
I guess if you are a tube guy and want lots of second harmonic distortion, you have it here. I am disappointed with the packaging and performance in the absolute.

I can't recommend the Ear Yoshino 834L Deluxe Tube (Valve) Preamp. Use a transparent preamp for heaven's sake and save lots of money to boot.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

Pedant alert: it's EAR not Ear. I'm sure you know it's an abbreviation, not a word.

 

[Bob from Florida]

He has soldered grounding wire to those shafts that turn??? Wonder how long they will last.

Very limited rotation on those shafts coupled to the selector switches, the wire will probably last longer than the owner. The power supply location seems too close to the actual electronics, but while 60, 120, and 180 hertz are seen they are at a pretty low level.
It would be informative to know if one could pick the better measuring preamp compared to this unit in a blind listening test.

 

[Mulder]

It would be informative to know if one could pick the better measuring preamp compared to this unit in a blind listening test.

I once had a more expensive and perhaps more advanced EAR-preamp (EAR 868) in my system (it was a loan) and I was not impressed. My guess is that it could be separated in a blind test from more transparent/lower distortion preamps. The channel separation seems to be poor in 834L, and I think that could also be noticed in a blind test.

 

[tonybarrett]

This review doesn't really make much sense. The product is accomplishing it's goals, and the measurements don't really speak for themselves here. The hum is low and the 2nd harmonic is high. If the IMD was high it would be a problem, but that's not here.

Honestly, why even bother reviewing this kind of thing anymore? It seems like the goal is to make a low-effort review of a style that this corner of the internet doesn't prefer. It would be better if it were just left alone.

A review of the review!

 

[roog]

Thank you to @amirm and the good member who submitted the amp for testing. I like these reviews, I think it is helpful to know how such products perform especially as this one was presumably designed by a much lauded designer as TdP, it shows how far we have come and illustrates why there is no place for these valve circuits in 'hi-fidelity'.

I have owned valve based gear, a pre-amp and a DAC and still own one item, Stax headphone energizer, and I bought them because I wanted to know what they sounded like, already knowing that they were very unlikely to perform as well as the solid-state stuff I have. It was just an itch I needed to scratch out of curiosity. My feelings are that, at best, well designed valve gear may not sound any different to solid-state, mine made little difference to my ears, but have the potential to add a significant amount of noise and distortion. In my case I have no doubt that my valve gear did just that, but that I couldn't hear it! I would like to LOL at this but aging hearing isn't very funny.

Why use valves if solid state does the same thing just as well and usually much better but without the; extra heat, energy, size, weight, mechanical vulnerability, greater risk of microphonics and potential requirement for maintenance?