I have an old teac r2r. Sounds flat, dry un-engaging. Little tube buffer I bought makes it far more enjoyable for me to
hear while I work. This one is clearly built far better..there are uses for such a thing. I’m going to check it out.
Yes musical fidelity and modwright both make them.there are some chifi on ebay and Amazon. The tube buffer adds soft clip to make the sound of tubes. This is a great way to experiment and try sound out. SEveral companies make tube preamps,cd players and amplifiers with tube stage in solid state. At this price it will sell out. |
My only interest in buffers was to improve impedance matching, and add tonal density and dynamics when driving amplifiers directly from a DAC with volume control, or following a passive volume control. The best I found was solid state, and I wouldn’t think of adding one to mimic “the sound of tubes”. A couple of DAC makers designed their own to go between their DACs with volume control and the power amps - like TotalDAC (link). |