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Digital Source with Tube Amplification

For perspective, I will be turning 36 next week so I didn't grow up listening to vinyl and have never really experienced tube amplification. I am getting a Yaqin EL34 tube integrated in the next couple of weeks and my dad thought it would be fun to use his vintage turntable as a source for a true analog listening experience. Logistics will likely make this difficult as we live states apart.

This discussion made me wonder what other peoples experiences have been using different combinations of gear. On the analog end you have a turntable and tube amplifier and on the digital end you have a CD player and a solid state amplifier.

I am curious if the people that prefer the analog systems enjoy the sound of a turntable with a solid state amplifier or a CD player with a tube amplifier more. Is one combination more analog sounding than the other in your experience?

Obviously, every experience and system is different so I am just looking for general observations based of your experiences.
mceljo
jtcf's avatar
jtcf
1,589 posts
 
Mapman pretty much summed it up.It's all in the synergy of your particular system.Personally I've ended up with all tubed components,cdp,pre,and amps.The more tubes,the more organic and enjoyable the music is for me.
mceljo OP
1,348 posts
 
Sometimes I wonder if people on this forum have too much information to filter it down to a straight answer. While everything that has been said is true, it really says little to nothing.

I have limited experience with audio equipment, but I can easily make a recommendation based on what experience I have had and It seems that it would be just as valid as anyone else because the room, setup, and listener preference pretty much renders any commonality null. An identical system in a different room might be synergistic in one and competing with Bose in the other.

Is it not possible to state an opinion without 75% of the post being caveats?
charles1dad's avatar
charles1dad
10,230 posts
 
Your asked a pretty general question and were given some responses, what specifically are you trying to ascertain?
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,846 posts
 
Digital has come a long way in last 15 years or so and good digital these days can be hard to distinguish from analog. The best of each tend to sound similar to me. If I had to choose, in theory, I would prefer the best possible analog source to the best current digital source available. That source would be a large format RTR tape, not phono. In most cases, with most recordings, what sounds best will vary case to case. But digital is probably still not able to match the best analog POSSIBLE with technology to date. BUt in most cases, practically, it is so close that it really does not matter in practice for most.

In general tube amps may sound similar to SS amps but some tube amp sound might be quite distinctive and hard to replicate with SS. Its a different flavor of sound, not necessarily "better" though in this case.

SS versus tube amplification is an even tighter race to call. The best I have heard of both tend to sound similar.
almarg's avatar
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almarg
9,670 posts
 
Is it not possible to state an opinion without 75% of the post being caveats?
No, IMO there are way too many variables involved to be able to make any generalizations that would be meaningful and useful, the variables including even the recordings as Mapman indicated. And whether the goal is to make the (sonically) best recordings sound their best, or to make run-of-the-mill recordings sound as good as possible.

FWIW, though, since you are asking for experiences, my system has evolved over the years such that I now use a solid state preamp for both analog and digital sources, and a tube power amp. I've never used an integrated amp.

Regards,
-- Al
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