tubes and analog

Hmm, well I have found that using a Tube phono stage is superior to the built in, or outboard solid state phono's I have used… Tubes with a cartridge just seems like a match that makes a lot of sense.. However if your using a Moving Magnet cartridge that would be possibly where I would start to upgrade and get it all back to tube plus some.. Maybe going to a MC cart will change your views on this, they seem to be much more detailed as well as weighty with more solid foundation in my experience. Again I only used MM with solid state Phono stage, but when I went to MC and Tubes With fully adjustable Loading which is very important all things changed for the Far better. So if you want to spend money maybe switch to a super sensitive MC setup. Its just a suggestion in a direction to take without screwing with you new found match between the Zu and the Tubes you have, and excelling your Phono performance, I don't see any reason to put money anywhere else for your system right now, Cd is far tougher to live with and if you found the match for that you have 80% of the battle won! I find sometimes we just look at the wrong things to upgrade, now you need to come to a higher level of analog to compete it sounds.

IMHO it matters less if its tube or SS and more about how the component sounds and fits with the rest of the system. I use tubes for all but my components to not have the "lush" sound, more detailed like SS. My amp is matched very well to my speakers. I built a tube phono pre with passive stepped atenuators for a linestage. My goal is transparency so I picked my components for this. Also I made sure that they play well together as far as impedance matching. Cost per component was not a deciding factor just sound and system matching. As an example I do not care for the sound of CJ linestages but don't mind their amps sound. I very much like what is not added by using a passive pre but care needs to be taken in this approach. My requirements are tone, dynamics then imaging and less so for freq. extremes.

Tubes are able to retrieve greater detail than transistors and they sound more relaxed. Once detail is lost it cannot be retrieved downstream. So consider a tube phono section.