Would running audio through a cheap tube preamp (like the Behringer Ultragain) result in pleasing tube saturation?

[jsrtheta]

So you are talking about the Mic100 Ultragain. I'd never seen that one. I had in mind the ADA8200 ultragain. Probably one of those starved plate designs like ART makes.

View attachment 274704

No, I'm talking about this:

I have tried a couple of those tube buffers. The best was a no-name item off eBay that was similar to most, i.e., 6J1-based. But most of the cheap ones can really screw up the sound. So I finally said the hell with it and picked up a Little Dot Mk. ii, which does work as a proper preamp. Is it colored? Of course. Do I love it? Yep.

 

[notsodeadlizard]

In a common case my answer is no.
It obviously depends on what will saturate first.
If you'll place 300V powered valve preamp with 50V non-saturated output in front of at 30V saturating power amp, you'll have useless system in sense of your wishes.
DSP imitation of saturation is even more useless cause it has nothing in common with analog saturation which is perfectly independent from all this digital domain stuff. Analog amp will saturate by a signal with imitated saturation as well as by any analog signal over the saturation level.

 

[mhardy6647]

But most of the cheap ones can really screw up the sound.

Well, umm... yah!

 

[JiiPee]

If we assume that the tube sound is a product of added 2nd order harmonic distortion, and that there is a market for amplifiers with such sound, maybe someone should manufacture a modern SS amplifier with a "tube button", which would add the said distortion, and also emulate the enchanting tube glow with some orange LEDs that could be seen through slots on the front plate of the amplifier. Surely such a feature would be worth extra 1K$ for some audiophiles ?

 

[Blumlein 88]

If we assume that the tube sound is a product of added 2nd order harmonic distortion, and that there is a market for amplifiers with such sound, maybe someone should manufacture a modern SS amplifier with a "tube button", which would add the said distortion, and also emulate the enchanting tube glow with some orange LEDs that could be seen through slots on the front plate of the amplifier. Surely such a feature would be worth extra 1K$ for some audiophiles ?

Carver made amps with emulated tube sound. Nope, purists have to know the tube is in there.

 

[DWPress]

I have a few of these and another one I built, all but one of them are "starved plate" designs but all use 12A** variants, the most versatile allows 2 levels of gain to dial in preferred distortion (like some electric guitar pickups). All of them do change the sound coming through them. Last time I played with one of them I tried it with just my tweeters or just my midrange amp in my active XO set up. Depending on the material playing they added or detracted from the sound, mostly the latter + messing with those gains easily destroyed XO slopes. I have no use for any of them anymore as now my system is all balanced in/out.

The one on the right is scratch built with all point to point wiring (to push the euphonics even further ) both sitting on top of my old miniDSP 4x10 enclosure.

 

[OldHvyMec]

I would suggest if you want to experience valve, you first need to understand that not all valve gear is the same.
IF they are truly transparent SS vs Valves you won't be able to tell the difference if they are voiced with the same materials.
I'm talking about a preamp. OTOH if the preamp has a certain flavor like the older Macs, Fisher, Marantz, Heath, Pass (not labs)
HK and even some Sansui the sound compared to newer opamp based valve gear is not transparent at ALL.
As I mentioned before, older Mac gear that has hexfreds/sokeys added and close attention paid to resistors and caps is one
serious preamp.

After a good build the THD drops from .1 to .01. That difference is weather you HEAR the hiss/distortion/BS vs NOT hearing it. The
REAL sound is the 2nd/3rd harmonics that are toyed with at the preamp, NOT the power amp. It's simple the power amps amplify
the signal they get. Ampzilla was a good example of being able to reproduce what it received with ZERO feedback.
They were as transparent as the signal they received. They could also blister my ears when hooked to most SS preamps. It was a
Love relationship if you like a valve preamp. It was a hate relationship when it came to most SS preamps driving SST Ampzillas.

I will say this if you want to experience a GOOD valve power amps for reasonable money look at QS or Cary. If you want/like the
Mac sound, you have to use Mac. VTL makes Mac look like bargain basement gear. Talk about expensive. The owner is the problem
there "Bea". The owner from HELL. "Send it in" was alway the response.
The answer was always "replaced the valves." 16-48 EI KT90s are 1,600.00 to 8K now. That's more than my first TWO houses on the same
lot in 1975. I paid 5,500.00 for the pair.

The fact is you will NEVER hear what valve gear sounds like until you use it or listen to it. Add all the CRAP you want, it will never
sound like a valve amp sounds. SS gear with distortion amplifiers or tube buffers are fun, BUT not the real thing. Sorry!

Maybe you have a 90 year old uncle with some valve gear to listen to. He's not.
MC240 can have a very special sound too. Top 5 for me... I'm actually listening to one right now with a tricked out MX110z and RB Infinity RS4bs.
Vinyl of course.

Regards.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Well that is where it gets subjective. I've thought the MC240 was an okay though wonderfully built amp. I thought Dyna 70s had better transformers. C-Js better still and VTL's best of all. I am referring to the early things when David Manley was still running things, and warranty was lifetime. Stereo 75/75 or mono 100's. I did like the MX110 used one for some time.

 

[mhardy6647]

The MC225 (pp 7591) was the only Mac power amplifier I've really liked.
I have an MC2100 and it is a dreadful sounding piece of hardware.

 

[raindance]

Tube saturation is NOT useful or even desirable in hifi, only for guitar amplifiers. Most tube preamplifiers add nothing more than wooly bass and rolled off treble and a whole lot of odd harmonic distortion.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Tube saturation is NOT useful or even desirable in hifi, only for guitar amplifiers. Most tube preamplifiers add nothing more than wooly bass and rolled off treble and a whole lot of odd harmonic distortion.

Actually I don't think good decent tube preamps add much of anything. Maybe some bad cheap ones meant to obviously color have wooly bass and rolled treble. Something like a C-J PV5 which is a very simple tube preamp circuit was good from about 2 hz to 100 khz. The phono section was within a quarter db 10hz-50khz. Old Dynaco PAS 3 preamps were good and flat to below 20 hz and above 20 khz. The early McIntosh preamps claimed +/- .5 db from 20 cps to 20,000 cps, and those guys were pretty serious their gear meet specs or usually exceeded them.

Sometimes you just cannot fight myths with facts or even experience.

 

[jsrtheta]

Tube saturation is NOT useful or even desirable in hifi, only for guitar amplifiers. Most tube preamplifiers add nothing more than wooly bass and rolled off treble and a whole lot of odd harmonic distortion.

I've heard many clean-sounding tube pres that didn't add any color I could hear.

 

[mhardy6647]

Actually I don't think good decent tube preamps add much of anything. Maybe some bad cheap ones meant to obviously color have wooly bass and rolled treble. Something like a C-J PV5 which is a very simple tube preamp circuit was good from about 2 hz to 100 khz. The phono section was within a quarter db 10hz-50khz. Old Dynaco PAS 3 preamps were good and flat to below 20 hz and above 20 khz. The early McIntosh preamps claimed +/- .5 db from 20 cps to 20,000 cps, and those guys were pretty serious their gear meet specs or usually exceeded them.

Sometimes you just cannot fight myths with facts or even experience.

EICO HF-85 specifications. Not all that impressive but please do note the frequency response.

My own HF-85 is a shelf queen -- works fine except for some P/S hum and I've been too lazy (for over two decades now) to rehab it.

 

[Blumlein 88]

EICO HF-85 specifications. Not all that impressive but please do note the frequency response.

View attachment 274778

My own HF-85 is a shelf queen -- works fine except for some P/S hum and I've been too lazy (for over two decades now) to rehab it.

I have the same stack of Eico components I need to refurb too.

 

[raindance]

I've heard many clean-sounding tube pres that didn't add any color I could hear.

I agree, but the vast majority of people who want tubes are looking for coloration.

 

[mhardy6647]

I have the same stack of Eico components I need to refurb too.

That HFT-90 tuner is - literally - the one I grew up with.
The AF-4's been in my family for its whole life -- my father gave it to his sister, who passed it back to me, ca. 2011.

 

[egellings]

I have a few of these and another one I built, all but one of them are "starved plate" designs but all use 12A** variants, the most versatile allows 2 levels of gain to dial in preferred distortion (like some electric guitar pickups). All of them do change the sound coming through them. Last time I played with one of them I tried it with just my tweeters or just my midrange amp in my active XO set up. Depending on the material playing they added or detracted from the sound, mostly the latter + messing with those gains easily destroyed XO slopes. I have no use for any of them anymore as now my system is all balanced in/out.

The one on the right is scratch built with all point to point wiring (to push the euphonics even further ) both sitting on top of my old miniDSP 4x10 enclosure.


View attachment 274742

Like that little 6X4 makin' it all happen.

 

[dougi]

I think the conclusion is that tube/hybrid pres can be designed to be either clean or dirty. I have two, one in each camp I would say.

Littledot pre, which I posted some measurements in another thread here. Elevated harmonics.

iFi iTube, again measurements in the thread here. Quite clean and handy as a buffer.

 

[Soandso]

Got to confess I own a little tube buffer that runs at "starved plate" levels (12volt power supply is a separate apparatus). When new I even upgraded it with 2 Raytheon 5670 tubes from 1955. Frankly I'm dubious that slender rectifier tube is even relevant to the circuitry.

Well, over the years, it's been trialed with a variety of balanced amplifiers and stereo receivers driving an assortment of large and small speakers. Basically found a diverse outcome regarding compatibility (none as a phono pre-amp). While in the arrays that were listenable a subtle sound alteration occurred that I liked - just not decisively enough to keep it connected.

Eventually I adapted the unit's output to directly drive headphones and used it as a kind of headphone buffer of the audio signal from my old iPhone 6 music jack. Again there were diverse compatibility outcomes with my collection of everything from 600 ohm to 16 ohm headphones. These days it sits largely ignored for months connected to comfortable 32 ohm HiFiMan canz' it does in fact sound nice with - just not decisively enough to get me away from my at home preference of 600 ohm headphones.

 

[Deleted member 58722]

My question is, if the artist wanted their music to sound 'tubey' they would surely have recorded it that way... so why are you wanting to add distortion to
the audio?