Tube Preamp Reviews

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Solid State Preamp ReviewsTube Preamp Reviews
AVM Ovation PA 8.2 modular preamplifier
Michael Fremer  |  Nov 29, 2018  |  0 comments
The digital ground seems to shift weekly. While firmware and software updates over the Internet somewhat slow the constant upheaval, when you do buy something, you just know that as soon as you plunk down your cash, something new will come along.

So, especially with preamplifiers, why not produce a design based on modules that the user can swap in and out, to custom-configure the preamp to that user's current needs while leaving room for later expansion? Why pay for six inputs' worth of stuff when at present you need only two? Upgrades? New features? No problem—swap out a module. Or, if a circuit in one module malfunctions, you can send only that module back for repairs, not the whole thing.

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Tube Preamp Reviews
Audible Illusions Modulus preamplifier
Steven W. Watkinson  |  Jun 28, 2018  |  First Published: Oct 01, 1984  |  23 comments
Once upon a time, all audio equipment used vacuum tubes. In recent years, however, tubes have become the exclusive province of super high-end audio. It is more expensive to accomplish any particular task with tubes than with transistors, and few manufacturers (with the exception of Conrad-Johnson) seemed willing until now to refine their techniques and pare back their budgets to make tube components more affordable.
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Tube Preamp Reviews
Conrad-Johnson PV-4 preamplifier
Steven W. Watkinson  |  Jun 05, 2018  |  First Published: Oct 01, 1984  |  1 comments
In appearance Conrad-Johnson's PV4 is distinctly plain: a basic black and silver box with a few simple knobs and buttons. The controls are logically laid out, clearly labeled, and work properly. The two channels track well through the volume control, maintaining balance; pushbuttons and control knobs have a smooth, solid feel (except for the noises audible through the system when switching inputs). Don't forget the turn-on and turn-off thumps mentioned above; the PV4 is the only one of the preamps I review in this issue—the others are the Audible Illusions Modulus ($450) and the Counterpoint SA-7 ($595)—that lacks a mute switch.
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Solid State Preamp ReviewsTube Preamp Reviews
A Preamplifier Faceoff: Ayre & PS Audio
Jim Austin  |  May 29, 2018  |  16 comments
In the March 2018 issue, Art Dudley admired the sound quality of Ayre Acoustics' KX-5 Twenty preamplifier, but didn't love some of its operational aspects. I've staged this Follow-Up as a putative face-off between the Ayre and my current reference preamplifier, the PS Audio BHK Signature, which I reviewed in the June 2017 issue.
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Tube Preamp Reviews
Counterpoint SA-7 preamplifier
Steven W. Watkinson  |  Apr 10, 2018  |  First Published: Oct 01, 1984  |  5 comments
In appearance the Counterpoint SA-7 tube preamplifier is quite attractive, possessing the thin, low-profile look currently in vogue. There is a mute switch which (if you remember to use it) protects your amplifier from the preamp's turn-on and turn-off thumps. Unfortunately, the volume control on my unit didn't track accurately, and it was necessary to adjust balance with each change in volume. One unusual feature: the balance control allows very fine gradations in balance adjustment (a large movement of the control results in a small change in balance).
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Headphone ReviewsTube Preamp Reviews
Rogue Audio RH-5 preamplifier-headphone amplifier
Herb Reichert  |  Oct 26, 2017  |  5 comments
Every day in my bunker, I use one of a few high-quality headphone amplifiers to double as a line-level preamplifier-controller and operate as the quality-assurance reference for my ongoing audio experiments. I must choose this component carefully, because it determines the upper limit of my system's ability to reveal any subtle differences among components under review.
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Art Dudley ListeningTube Preamp Reviews
Listening #177: Shindo Monbrison preamplifier
Art Dudley  |  Aug 24, 2017  |  10 comments
In January of 2014, some of us wondered if the sudden death of designer Ken Shindo would spell the end of the company he founded in 1977: It was hard to imagine Shindo Laboratory being led by anyone but its founder, a former Matsushita engineer who made it his life's work to study not only the designs of audio's golden age, but to learn the sound of every vacuum tube, every passive part, every circuit variation that he might reasonably press into service.
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Tube Preamp Reviews
TARA Labs Space & Time Passage preamplifier
Dick Olsher  |  Jul 05, 2017  |  First Published: Oct 01, 1992  |  0 comments
Better known for their speaker cables and interconnects, The Absolute Reference Audio Labs (TARA Labs) has quietly branched out into electronics and loudspeakers. Their Passage is a line-level–only preamp. I actually favor such a modular approach to preamp design. Standing as we are at the dawn of the digital audio age, the breakup of the traditional preamp into separate phono and line-level stages represents a more flexible, cost-effective design approach.
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Tube Preamp Reviews
PrimaLuna ProLogue Premium line preamplifier
Herb Reichert  |  May 25, 2017  |  17 comments
Everyone knows that world-class analog and digital sources are the bedrock of all fine audiophile systems. Everyone also knows that a happy relationship of amplifier, speakers, and room makes audiophiles smirk Aren't I lucky? Fewer among us are aware that the upper limit of sound quality an audio system can deliver will be established by whichever audio contraption we use to select our sources and adjust their volume.
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Tube Preamp Reviews
PS Audio BHK Signature preamplifier
Jim Austin  |  May 23, 2017  |  5 comments
"Let be."

Those two words, from Shakespeare's Hamlet, express an entire philosophy of life in one of the shortest sentences possible. The quotation may not be familiar, but the concept certainly is—contemporary equivalents, each with its own inflections of meaning, include: Shit happens. Let the game come to you. Keep calm and carry on. (I hate that one.) Paul McCartney wrote something similar, and only slightly less concise, in a late Beatles song.

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Tube Preamp Reviews
Audio Research Reference 6 line preamplifier
Michael Fremer  |  Nov 23, 2016  |  12 comments
The last time I reviewed an Audio Research component—it was the VTM200 monoblock amplifier in January 2001—my hair was mostly dark brown. The wait since has been not of my choosing, but that's now flux under the circuit board. Since then, much has happened to both me and to the Audio Research Corporation, a long-lived company for which the descriptor "legendary" is well deserved.
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Tube Preamp Reviews
Rogue Audio RP-1 preamplifier
Herb Reichert  |  Jul 28, 2016  |  1 comments
Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Mary Oliver famously remarked, "attention without feeling . . . is only a report."

After nearly two years of prattling for Stereophile, I am finally grasping the full veracity of that statement. When I read reviews that jabber on about highs, mediums, and lows, and that rely exclusively on nonmusical vocabulary, I come away with feelings of acute cognitive dissonance. Not to mention: if a review has a lot of initialisms—ADD, S/PDIF, DXD, HDMI, etc.—my ADHD kicks in and I stop reading by the third paragraph.

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Tube Preamp Reviews
VTL TL6.5 Series II Signature line preamplifier
Fred Kaplan  |  Jul 28, 2016  |  2 comments
When I first met Luke Manley, proprietor of VTL, he and his father, David, with whom he ran the company at the time, had recently emigrated from the UK to California. I asked Luke how he liked the West Coast. "Great," he replied. "Much better parts availability." This was about 30 years ago, when I was just immersing myself in high-end audio at a high-toned level. Our exchange gave me a taste of the obsessions ahead, though Luke Manley's single-mindedness through the decades since has been more dogged than many—and, at the same time, less dogmatic.
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Tube Preamp Reviews
Linear Tube Audio microZOTL2.0 line stage/headphone amplifier
Herb Reichert  |  May 26, 2016  |  0 comments
This is a true story about a surprising 1W integrated amplifier—a push-pull, class-A, output-transformerless tube amp—that drove my DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O/93 speakers to 90dB average levels with grace, spiderweb detail, liquidity, and—unbelievably—a small degree of bass slam.
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Audacious AudioTube Preamp Reviews
Balanced Audio Technology Rex II line preamplifier
Fred Kaplan  |  Dec 30, 2015  |  2 comments
A quarter-century ago, when we were just getting into wine, my wife and I took a trip to Napa Valley. At one premium vineyard, we took a taste from the $20 bottle, then, for the hell of it, a taste from the $50 bottle. The first taste was nice; the second was alarming—an explosion of flavors, a gateway to sensory delights that we hadn't known could be had from a barrel of crushed grapes. We wobbled away, concerned that high-end wine might be a dangerous hobby.
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