A/V Reciever Pre-out to Integrated Tube Question

d) Sell the Jolida.

^Harsh, but I have to say I agree. The Jolida isn't going to do anything to help, and if anything will only color the sound.

I have a Marantaz receiver and feed the left and right channels from pre-out to Jolida 502A Works fine. Marantaz does center and surround. Also have turntable and one CD player just into Jolida for stereo without using HT reciver which has TV and BluRAy connected to it.

Not a case of better but worse.

To some, to others not.....its called preference.

Tubes add distortion, some prefer it, some dont.
Depending on your speakers and listening environment
you may or may not hear a difference.

Make your mind up for yourself, if you
feel theres no difference I'd sell the Jolida.

I currently have a seperate area for my 2 channel system. In our last house, we had to share an area with where we watched movies. When I had this set up, I had a Cayin TA-30 tube integrade and then a seperate tube preamp and 100 watt tube amps for the two channel setup and my seperates for the home theater setup. To me, there was a difference between my tube gear and the seperates I had for home theater. That is why I bought them and tried several setups before deciding on what I ended up with. When I shared the same space I used a splitter that allowed me to use different amps with the same speakers. It worked well for me. I ran my tube based cd player through the tube equipment. I do not know how I would use Pandora through a system like yours. Hopefully someone will point you in the right direction without criticizing your choices.

Jeff

Squeezebox into the Jolida. All in the living room (unless you gear closet allows for short speaker cable runs). Rerip all your CDs to lossless.

Replace the Chinese made stock tubes with American made tubes for the Jolida. Usually they're called "New Old Stock". You'll hear the difference. Tubes have an advantage over solid state in transient sounds. The electrons travel faster in a vacuum than through silicon transistors. Some people hear the difference, some don't.

That's priceless.

And hilarious!

It's ludicrous! preposterous! Who told you to put the balm on?

Which begs the question, who ever did good bias-controlled tests to verify claims like these?

I am aware of a DBT of a classic tubed amp versus a SS amp that ended up with a hung jury, suggesting that a lot of this "sounds better" posturing is just that, posturing.

The inverse is true. Tubed amps with OPTs have that giant boat-anchor standing between them and SS-like transient response.

Not true

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_conductivity

"
In metals, the Fermi level lies in the conduction band (see Band Theory, above) giving rise to free conduction electrons. However, in semiconductors the position of the Fermi level is within the band gap, approximately half-way between the conduction band minimum and valence band maximum for intrinsic (undoped) semiconductors. This means that at 0 kelvins, there are no free conduction electrons and the resistance is infinite. However, the resistance will continue to decrease as the charge carrier density in the conduction band increases. In extrinsic (doped) semiconductors, dopant atoms increase the majority charge carrier concentration by donating electrons to the conduction band or accepting holes in the valence band. For both types of donor or acceptor atoms, increasing the dopant density leads to a reduction in the resistance, hence highly doped semiconductors behave metallically. At very high temperatures, the contribution of thermally generated carriers will dominate over the contribution from dopant atoms and the resistance will decrease exponentially with temperature.
"

but even if the speed were the same, the charge carriers in SS have a far shorter distance to move.

Some people know how to do reliable tests, others just want to believe what they believe.

vs

Seems like to me if there is a "giant boat-anchor standing between them and SS-like transient response" but yet a "DBT of a classic tubed amp versus a SS amp that ended up with a hung jury" then your claim " is just that, posturing".

It's entirely possible to have a difference in transient response that's not audibly different in a controlled test.

Search Carver Challenge.

My point was if the transient response is so much better on solid state but yet no one could tell the difference in a DBT, then who gives a rip?

If you'd read and understood the results of the challenge, then you'd understand that was (part of) the point. Transfer function determines amp sonics and it doesn't really matter how you do it. The CC challenged showed that a talented designer could use a cheap SS amp and change the TF so that some supposedly highly skilled listeners could not determine the difference between it and a very expensive brand name amp blind.

The claim was made that tubes have some property that gives improved transient response. Let's for a moment assume that they have this property, then the OPT in tube power amps limits the bandwidth of the design so the dynamic response of the amp will be reduced by it's presence.

while that is true...

if it is not audible, what's the point in chasing it?

The funny thing with that is that eventually, Bob switched to making tube amplifiers.

That's an easier way into making money in the niche/boutique world of speciality amps. Plus after having built many of both types, tube amps are more enjoyable to construct and work on. Bob had nothing further to prove and I assume being an electronics nerd still likes to make things that he derives pleasure out of.

I've had similar experiences. Building SS power amps is a lot more stressful because you can blow up 100's of dollars worth of parts in a millisecond with one stupid mistake. Tubes are less likely to be damaged, and when they are in danger of being damaged they take a lot longer to actually be damaged. At least a few seconds. On balance, tubed amps especially really powerful ones or even some low powered SETs can kill you outright if you touch the wrong thing. Most SS amps are more likely to just give you a good strong tingle. Either way you need to know what you are doing and be very careful.