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Can tubes ever be as quiet Solid State

Recently I have had a major frame shift in my view regarding new production tubes which are getting to be pretty darned good over old tubes which still have marvelous sonic attributes but are often plagued by unwanted noises.This has resulted in my preferring certain current production over old stock more and more.
My question isn't are older tubes even NOS better than new production rather the question is are any tube systems able to match the noise floor of the quieter solid state amps? I was thinking in particular of gain stages in a phono stage. Opinions please
mechans

Showing 1 response by dcstep

dcstep
1,518 posts
 

06-11-08: Macrojack
"Rowland Capri SS preamp into Audio Mirror tubed power amps into Zu speakers turned up to 95 on the preamp scale causes a barely audible hiss with my ear about 2 inches away from the tweeter."

I've got the Rowland Continuum 500 SS integrated amp, where both the pre-amp (same circuit as the Carpir)and amplifier section (same as the Rowland 501s) both operate in DC. (Power Factor Correction converts any AC to 385V DC). I'm impressed that your tube amp gets so very close in terms of quietness. That's excellent. I hear about the same on my all-SS integrated.

BTW, I generally listen at a setting between 50 (when it's very quiet and I'm reading with music in the background) to 80-ish (when I'm trying to blow myself out of the listening seat with Mahler's 6th). At any of these levels I can't hear anything out of my tweeter.

Dave
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