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What preamp creates the largest soundstage?

I have always loved a large soundstage.  I have a small listening room (10x10) and have mini-monitors, driven by a tube amp.  I have played a lot with speaker placement, room acoustics, listening position to create a large soundstage.  I have rolled tubes on the amp and made dramatic improvements. (I have purposely left details on the brands of tubes, amp and speakers out, because I don’t want side comments to distract from my question)

i have a digital source into a solid state naim preamp.  I home demo’ed a well reviewed preamp, and was surprised at how much the soundstage shrunk, both side to side and top downward.  It was deeper, and did have much of the tube magic, but I could not live without the big soundstage.  

so my question is, does anyone have experience with a preamp that produces a big soundstage?  I am looking for recommendations on what to demo next. While I lean toward tubes, I am open to solid state.  I am okay either new or used, and could spend in the 5k range, but would be happy to spend less.  Also comments on specific brands (i.e. xyz is known to have great soundstage in all their preamps) as opposed to models, are welcome.

and I will be the first to admit that perhaps the very large soundstage is not “accurate”to real music, but boy is it seductive and I love it and can’t live without it.

meiatflask
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,577 posts
 
Ralph, would monoblock versions of a stereo amp have any improvement of the soundstage?
They often do because there is less crosstalk.
jtgofish
490 posts
 
If DHT preamps are not the best at creating 3D soundstage why would manufacturers use them? Perhaps they are just stupid? DHTs are a lot more difficult to use than dedicated preamp valves.It also seems odd that for those that have worked out how to make them they become their premium model .The Coincident mentioned above by Brownsfan is a DHT preamp [101D].
asa
662 posts
 
Ditto on Atma-Sphere, VAC...add in Joule Electra.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,577 posts
 
If DHT preamps are not the best at creating 3D soundstage why would manufacturers use them? Perhaps they are just stupid?
They're not stupid. A good designer can work to achieve the goals that a preamp has to provide in a number of different ways. Its not hard to build a DHT-based preamp, and one of the advantages is that the tube doesn't have a lot of gain, which works nicely with digital sources. All you have to do though is to be sure you get the *bandwidth*; keeping the distortion down isn't that hard with almost any triode, DHT or not.


The designer might like the linearity curve, he also might realize that to set his preamp design apart from others he has to do something different and using DHTs is a good example of that. When we introduced our preamp (the MP-1) it was the world's first balanced line preamp for home audio; we did that as there are so many advantages of operating balanced (as long as the balanced standard is supported), but also for the simple fact that in 1989 when we did this, placing yet another single-ended preamp on the vast heap of such preamps available at the time was done at one's own peril. Another way to put this is 'marketing' :)


Now as to DHTs in general, most of them are used in SETs. SETs have many disadvantages, but one advantage they do have is that as power is decreased the distortion becomes unmeasurable. If you have a speaker with great enough efficiency to take advantage of this, you can show off that 'inner detail' for which so many of them are known. With most push-pull (not all) amps as power is decreased there is a certain point (generally about 5-7% of full power) where distortion reaches its minimum and then goes back up! So SETs can have a very musical presentation especially if you have a high efficiency loudspeaker.


Its one way to get there, but by no means the only way. We make OTLs that **also** have the same quality of distortion decreasing to unmeasurable as power as decreased. They are also triode and no feedback, and have that relaxed organic quality SETs are know for, but with power, speed, detail and bandwidth that SETs are not. And that's just one example... the bottom line is no matter what, engineering has to be the over-arching principle, that and the understanding of how the ear perceives sound.
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