I find during experimentation with different sounds and gear that I also am not happy for long in my main rig if things stray away from natural, neutral and dynamic.
The ARC tube pre-amp I use has been a nice fit for me in this regard.
Tubes are great for tweaking the sound in various ways but I still wonder if they are really needed when ones goal is natural and neutral?
Now that I feel I have sufficiently sampled good tube sound in my system and listening to others, including ones with tube amps, if/when the day comes when I need a new pre-amp, I think I am likely to seek a good SS one that can fit the bill. Tubes can be a real pain IMHO in terms of maintaining the sound you want once you get it as tubes age and the sound gradually mutates over time, noise issues arise, etc. Tube gear can be a nice source of income for tube and tube gear vendors however as the owners endeavor to maintain that perfect sound over time at any cost.
I have no trouble understanding why the golden age of tubes passed the way it did. They can deliver great results but more often it seems they just make things more difficult to get right. Either love 'em or leave them IMHO.
Some recordings are lackluster and need to be recognized as such. tweaking your system in hopes of making mountains out of bad recording molehills is a certain path to continual dissatisfaction and wasted expense.
BTW, modern loudness wars and remastered recordings may be technically deficient in certain ways (like overall dynamic range), but I seldom find them to be lackluster or boring to listen to. That honor usually goes to a lot of the original CD masters of older stuff. Most new recordings created in the last 20 years or so tend to be mostly acceptable to me. They generally don't sound like the better recordings from the golden age of vinyl, which are a unique breed, but get by on their own merits largely as a whole.
Some of the characteristics of a good recording that help make them not boring on a natural/nuetral system are dynamics, impact, attack, detail, lack of grain, focus, tonal balance, etc.
The ARC tube pre-amp I use has been a nice fit for me in this regard.
Tubes are great for tweaking the sound in various ways but I still wonder if they are really needed when ones goal is natural and neutral?
Now that I feel I have sufficiently sampled good tube sound in my system and listening to others, including ones with tube amps, if/when the day comes when I need a new pre-amp, I think I am likely to seek a good SS one that can fit the bill. Tubes can be a real pain IMHO in terms of maintaining the sound you want once you get it as tubes age and the sound gradually mutates over time, noise issues arise, etc. Tube gear can be a nice source of income for tube and tube gear vendors however as the owners endeavor to maintain that perfect sound over time at any cost.
I have no trouble understanding why the golden age of tubes passed the way it did. They can deliver great results but more often it seems they just make things more difficult to get right. Either love 'em or leave them IMHO.
Some recordings are lackluster and need to be recognized as such. tweaking your system in hopes of making mountains out of bad recording molehills is a certain path to continual dissatisfaction and wasted expense.
BTW, modern loudness wars and remastered recordings may be technically deficient in certain ways (like overall dynamic range), but I seldom find them to be lackluster or boring to listen to. That honor usually goes to a lot of the original CD masters of older stuff. Most new recordings created in the last 20 years or so tend to be mostly acceptable to me. They generally don't sound like the better recordings from the golden age of vinyl, which are a unique breed, but get by on their own merits largely as a whole.
Some of the characteristics of a good recording that help make them not boring on a natural/nuetral system are dynamics, impact, attack, detail, lack of grain, focus, tonal balance, etc.