Low impedence valve amps/bi amping in general

[Charles_b]

Good morning guys. Complete newbie here so I'll try not to sound too stupid!

1)I was after recommendations for a valve pre amp with output impedence <200 ohm and less than £500/$625 (new or used).
I am concidering a preamp for a quad 606 (input impedence 20k).

2) is any preamp cabable of bi amping? I'm am concidering getting another SS amp further down the line but can't find (or understand!) online sources. E.g-would my current quad 66 pre amp work biamping 2 power amps?

3) What are the arguments for actually mixing a valve preamp with a solid state power amp?
Initially, I was looking at buying a valve power amplifier and bi amping with the quad 606 (SS to drive the lows and Valve to drive the highs) but decent valve power amps are quite expensive. I saw a valve preamp as a "cheaper" alternative to get into valves as I believe they can be often found cheaper (especially chinese pre amps)-correct me if I'm wrong?

Apologies for the long winded questions (and possibly stupid!). Any help would be greatly appreciated! Charles

 

[gene_stl]

1) The first thing you have to ask yourself is why would you want to use tubes for anything when integrated circuit chip based equipment is better in every dimension and criterion. If you are using a quad power amp , get a quad preamp to go with it then you won't have any matching problems.

2) Usually the frequency division process takes place in a separate "electronic crossover". Home theater systems that have low frequency management can usually biamp to a sub woofer and often have crossover functionality in them just to integrate with subs.


3)There is no very good argument for using a valve preamp at all. They have higher distortion and noise and tubes need to be replaced and the people that used to know how to make tubes back in the day are all long dead and gone.

A better set up would be quad preamp - electronic crossover- two or three or four quad power amps. And that is not an opinion it is an easily measurable fact.

 

[tomelex]

Good morning guys. Complete newbie here so I'll try not to sound too stupid!

1)I was after recommendations for a valve pre amp with output impedence <200 ohm and less than £500/$625 (new or used).
I am concidering a preamp for a quad 606 (input impedence 20k).

2) is any preamp cabable of bi amping? I'm am concidering getting another SS amp further down the line but can't find (or understand!) online sources. E.g-would my current quad 66 pre amp work biamping 2 power amps?

3) What are the arguments for actually mixing a valve preamp with a solid state power amp?
Initially, I was looking at buying a valve power amplifier and bi amping with the quad 606 (SS to drive the lows and Valve to drive the highs) but decent valve power amps are quite expensive. I saw a valve preamp as a "cheaper" alternative to get into valves as I believe they can be often found cheaper (especially chinese pre amps)-correct me if I'm wrong?

Apologies for the long winded questions (and possibly stupid!). Any help would be greatly appreciated! Charles

Charles, a valve pre-amp, depending on the quality, will give you more, more noise, more second harmonic basically. If you consider a bit more second harmonic and more headroom to drive the amps as important, then the noise from a decent pre-amp may not even be audible unless you press your ear right up to the mid or tweeter speaker. It will not give you "tube sound", to do that you need a tube power amp with an output transformer. There are no wrong answers here when it comes to personal preference, but every device that "colors" the sound, always colors the sound for everything going through it. You just need to make sure you don't go down the road to audio hell by constantly popping in different pre amps over the years because you tire of the "tone" of the one you have. But for some, that is a fun part of the hobby. Bi-amping is far superior to normal systems in every way. So that's a great place to be starting at. You get a lot of control of the overall balance of your system and trying to match to the room and your preferences etc. Highly recommended.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I would second what Tomelex said. Many think you can put tubes in the preamp with solid state amp and get that tube sound. Nope.

Tube power amps have more of a sound, and tube preamps aren't going to provide it. Quality tube pre's don't sound any different than SS preamps.

You might play around with plug-ins to emulate tube sound. I don't find them 100% convincing, but they get you in the general direction.

https://wavearts.com/products/plugins/tube-saturator-vintage/ This one gets lots of good comments. It was suggested by julf elsewhere on this forum.

 

[Speedskater]

Audiophiles often chose tube components for their pleasant euphonic colorizations. Technically it's not hi-fi but it's their money, time and music.

It might be hard to do a passive bi-amp with many tube pre-amps.

 

[Charles_b]

Thank you all for your input and advice-its really helped me a lot. I'm a complete noob when it comes to such things although when I was a kid growing up, my dad was a massive audiophile. He owned a quad 405 amp along with Rogers speakers and a Rega turntable amongst many other hi end tech. He loved classical music. I remember listening to a wall of sound as if we were in a concert hall. Perhaps I took it for granted (as, up until then, that was the only music I had heard) or was too young to appreciate it at the time. I think that a SS preamp and biamping is the way forward. Cheers, Charles

 

[solderdude]

I agree with all that is written above but to answer your question number 2:

2) yes, you will need an RCA splitter for that.
The 66 or any fairly low output R pre-amp should have no problem driving 2 power amps.
However, depending on the design of the power amps it could be that both would need to be powered on.

 

[gene_stl]

Quad 405 is a great amp. I still operate one in my quad amped outfit. It is used in the 100 to 1000 Hz band. It is like 40 years old and works perfectly.