My experience has been that low noise is possible with tubes as well as transistors. You can do it by going fully differential. Contrary to Herman's comment balanced operation in fact offers you lower noise and immunity to artifacts in the interconnect cables (the real myth is 'balanced only benefits you if you want to run long cables'- the truth is it was devised to eliminate cable artifacts, which led to its being handy for long distances as well).
The thing that I keep running into is that noise is not the last word in reproduction. It can mask detail, so you want to keep it down, but I find that the quieter systems often lack detail for other reasons. There are a lot of things that can mess up a phono signal, so keep in mind that no single thing is a panacea that will work in all cases. Its the same as it ever was: YMMV...
The thing that I keep running into is that noise is not the last word in reproduction. It can mask detail, so you want to keep it down, but I find that the quieter systems often lack detail for other reasons. There are a lot of things that can mess up a phono signal, so keep in mind that no single thing is a panacea that will work in all cases. Its the same as it ever was: YMMV...