Thank you everyone for so many excellent responses. I've been banging around this hobby for about 40 years, and seen a lot of changes over the years. What hasn't changed is peoples' passion for this hobby. The Cary AE-3 DJH is poised to replace my dialed-in Sonic Frontiers Anthem Pre-1 preamp (hand tested and hand picked tubes, Herbies, dampening materials, unit recently checked by Parts Express). To answer your question Jalapenos, yes I have good wire in the system: Pro Silway interconnects, Acoustic Zen Satori speaker wire, various power cords from Shunyata to VooDoo to Synergistic. The rest of the system includes an EAD T-1000 CD transport, Bel Canto upsampling DAC, VTL-ST 80 tube amp, Paradigm Studio 100 speakers, and an older Oracle turntable with Fidelity Research arm. The CD sound is very clear and holographic, especially with voices. The challenge with the Anthem preamp has been/is finding quality QUIET 6922 tubes that can start and stay quiet (without sounding like mud). Which is why I am trying the 6sn7 route. I want to stay away from the "dark side" of tubes. When using a tube preamp and a tube amp the synergistic effect can be too dark for me. Clarity is key to my satisfaction. I may consider trying all silver cabling (one at a time) to see if I like the result(the Pro Silways are copper and silver together). Any other experiences you want to share about dialing in the Cary preamp would be appreciated. I still may send back my Anthem preamp to Parts Express for upgrading. Anyone ever use that service on their Anthem preamp?
6SN7 & 6CA4 Tube Recommendations for Cary AE-3 DJH
Would like to hear from all you tube rollers out their regarding different brand tubes used in Cary's AE-3 DJH preamp. Let me know what you tried, liked, & didn't like. I just got this preamp used and it came with Westinghouse 6SN7GTB & Valvo EZ80. I have a TV-7 tube tester I'll check them on this weekend before I fire up the preamp.