Are Their any Tube Preamp with Home Theater Bypass?


Does anyone have experience with a decent tube based preamp with a home theater bypass feature?

kota1

I would choose to have two systems and listen to my audio system in the walk in closet.

I bet the soundstage and imaging would be amazing. 

I agree with most of your posts, but that would be a much bigger compromise than a well put together combined system. 

About tubes , I just wanted to point out that it is not a free ride.

For movies and music . And  if someone  begin to worry , each time he spend an evening watching movies .

well ……

@ghdprentice , I have a nice room for my two channel setup on my desktop. That makes a lot of sense, thanks.

Yes, it is true that the tubes in a preamp will be “consumed” even when using HT bypass. Just keep in mind signal tubes in a tube preamp last longer than power tubes in a tube amp. 12AX7’s, for example, can last upwards of 10,000 hours. I’m about 75% 2-channel music, 25% multi-channel HT, so not a huge concern for me. If you’re the reverse, it might be more of a concern, but not nearly as much with a tube preamp as if you were looking at a tube amp with a bunch of KT88’s that you were going to be running 8 hours a day between music and HT. It was for that very reason that I went with a tube preamp and solid state power amp.

If the tube preamp has a true bypass, then it does not need to be powered on, and passes the HT signal through it.

As you already mentioned, 10000 hours is a quite while and should not pose a concern, even if the preamp doesn’t have a bypass… it is 1-10 cents/hour for a preamp’s tube cost.