Tortuga TPB.V1 Tube Preamp Buffer Review

[bluefuzz]

ell that to nearly every band & recording studio on the planet lol

OK, they were obsolete for high fidelity reproduction of recorded music. As an effect they are of course great fun. I love my DIY tweed champ clone. I have several other tube guitar amps but, to be honest, I doubt I could tell the difference from a good digital emulation ... ;-)

 

[Phorize]

Lets test a tube guitar amp? Hard to imagine it can get much more worse.

What about a shure 520 green bullet mic? The more distortion, the more mojo in your amplified harmonica.

 

[dfuller]

Personally, I'm dismayed that tube manufacturing has even descended to the point where they intentionally introduce distortion. In the days when vacuum tubes were current technology, the design goal of every manufacturer was to reproduce the cleanest signal possible with the least distortion. There was none of this 'tubes as tone control' shit as we have now. When I replaced the 12AX7A tubes in my preamp, I had to order 10 of them even though I only needed two so that I could find a reasonably matched pair out of the batch. That is insane. The problem is not tubes - its the current state of mind of tube manufacturers.

Just isn't the money in it any more. As much as I hate the Upscale Audio guy for various reasons, he made a point in his video about the KT150 that I agreed with: "They don't throw anything out. If it turns on, it goes out the door." They can't afford to cull much of their production because they'd lose their shirts.

Anyway... Of all the manufacturers, JJ at the moment is the most consistent IME, but only if you buy through a seller that tests every tube that comes through their door - e.g. Eurotubes.

 

[Phorize]

Huh? WTF does the 1980s have to do with tube sound, and 'old peeps'?

You mean you weren’t listening to Madonna and Gary Numan on an ST 70? You missed out

 

[tomtoo]

What about a shure 520 green bullet mic? The more distortion, the more mojo in your amplified harmonica.

Its all about mojo....or cowbells.

 

[Phorize]

Personally, I'm dismayed that tube manufacturing has even descended to the point where they intentionally introduce distortion. In the days when vacuum tubes were current technology, the design goal of every manufacturer was to reproduce the cleanest signal possible with the least distortion. There was none of this 'tubes as tone control' shit as we have now. When I replaced the 12AX7A tubes in my preamp, I had to order 10 of them even though I only needed two so that I could find a reasonably matched pair out of the batch. That is insane. The problem is not tubes - its the current state of mind of tube manufacturers.

As for the preamp in this review, all I can say is that it seems to be a poster-child for the current 'tone control' tube mentality. Its stupid.

Yep, we had 0.1% at 15 watts in 1947

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

You mean you weren’t listening to Madonna and Gary Numan on an ST 70? You missed out

I have a ST 70, among other amps, but I did classical, jazz, blues. I don't even know who Gary Numan is.

 

[Maxicut]

OK, they were obsolete for high fidelity reproduction of recorded music. As an effect they are of course great fun. I love my DIY tweed champ clone. I have several other tube guitar amps but, to be honest, I doubt I could tell the difference from a good digital emulation ... ;-)

Once you get into expensive tube gear, the difference between tubes & emulators is obvious. If people knew what was done to a recording at the recording/mixing/mastering stage, they wouldn't bother trying to achieve perfection.... because recording studios don't. With digital playback, the ONLY figure you should worry about (to make your ears happy) is clock jitter (I'm not going to go into the argument of why here).

 

[Robin L]

DAT tape was the worst... the rolloff from hell lol

Not in my experience. The bad was the transport, and the willingness of these transports to eat the tiny tapes. If the transport needed repair, all you could do was replace the transport. That cost as much as the DAT recorder all by itself. The next bad thing was the built-in ADCs. But I got good sonic results using an outboard ADC, mid-nineties. Modern hand-held recorders with storage on a tiny chip makes so much more sense.

Back to the subject at hand: I had only a short time recording with a Reel to Reel machine, not a good one. There was a step-up in sound quality with the Technics DAT recorder I was using. But the top end was nastier sounding than I could live with, so I was using tube gear to attempt to smooth the high frequencies. The MX-10 ultimately proved useless, anything happening on the electrical line would land on the signal. A number of recordings made with the MX-10 at locales with dimmer switches were ruined. Moved on to a Mackie at a certain point. I had tube microphones, early Schoeps small diaphragm condensers. Quite noisy, subject to overload, very fragile. They didn't last long, moved on to Neumanns with op-amps. I did use the outboard two-channel starved-tube microphone pre-amp, It was a useful "tone control". But ultimately I stopped recording in the late nineties. I know there's "audiophile " recordings using tube microphone preamps still being made these days, it's mentioned a number of times each month over at Analog Planet, Stereophile and Hi-Fi Choice.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

Anyway... Of all the manufacturers, JJ at the moment is the most consistent IME, but only if you buy through a seller that tests every tube that comes through their door - e.g. Eurotubes.

The tubes I had were JJ, but from Amazon. I seriously doubt that they were 'tested'. In this case it was easy enough to test 10, select 2, and return the rest. The measured distortions were all over the map.

 

[Phorize]

Just noticed it’s balanced, thank goodness for that, we wouldn’t want a single ended io screwing up the signal

 

[dfuller]

The tubes I had were JJ, but from Amazon. I seriously doubt that they were 'tested'. In this case it was easy enough to test 10, select 2, and return the rest.

Yeah, if you've got a tester you trust that makes perfect sense. If you don't (like me), I'll let the people with Amplitrexes and RoeTest curve tracers do it!

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

Yeah, if you've got a tester you trust that makes perfect sense. If you don't (like me), I'll let the people with Amplitrexes and RoeTest curve tracers do it!

Actually I did this with REW, doing a sweep electronically gives a nice plot of the distortion products verses frequency.

 

[martin900]

So it does what it says - adding the tube distortion? Heck, no idea why the 3rd is dominant.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

So it does what it says - adding the tube distortion? Heck, no idea why the 3rd is dominant.

Its a balanced circuit - these cancel 2nd order harmonic distortion (and all even order) which originates in the circuit.

 

[tomtoo]

Get two of them. Cheaper and even more mojo.
https://m.thomann.de/de/ibanez_ts9_tube_screamer.htm

 

[Ken1951]

What happens to the little pile of electrons after they've been sanded off? Collect in the corner, smoke cigarettes and sing doo-wop?

 

[Billy Budapest]

Any engineered good quality tube Hi-Fi amp from the late 1950's on is audibly transparent and has no "sound".

So your position is that it doesn’t sound “warm” but rather actually makes the room warmer due to heat emissions from the tubes!

 

[gvl]

This level of performance deserves a listening impressions report!

 

[Sonny1]

Come on Amir, please listen to this one and share your impressions! Also, looking at the poor performance makes me wonder if Paul from PS Audio designed this lovely buffer. ASR exposes another flawed design. I’d love to hear comments from the manufacturer. It would be interesting to get his perspective.