I own a Prima Luna Dialogue Premium HP integrated and love it. I too am an older guy...... when I find a good piece of equipment, I stick with it, I don’t rotate equip like some.
I highly recommend tubes in general.... they are more musical... just are. But my experience with tube equipment is a bit spotty. It is finicky and tubes will fail. Further, they slowly wear out making me a little neurotic after about one year. I did own a pair of big VTL monoblocks for about 12 years and while I loved them, they were a royal pain.... At first I didn’t mind biasing them... kinda cool I thought..... after a few years, I loathed the process, and I had to do it every few months... which seemed like all the time. Re-tubing was expensive.... the VTLs ate tubes.
The Prima Luna amps are hands off.... no maintenance or biasing (use the 4ohm taps).... and claim to be easy on tubes for longer life. So far, I think they are great. One of the better buys I ever made. They have a classic tube sound without being bloaty or flabby. I have accepted that tubes impart some sort of distortion ... I don’t care, I love the sound. I have driven my old set of Magnepan 20 with the VTL monsters (16 6550 tubes in total!!!) and loved the sound but when a friend stopped over with a Conrad Johnson transistor amp, well, the bass was so much better and controlled than the VTLs... but didn’t sound as good overall. Tubes have limitations.
Another thing I like about a PrimaLuna is the opportunity to use many different tube types. I am not a tube roller per se, but I had a stack of old 6550 and KT88s from my VTL ownership so it was fun to swap out the stock EL34s that came with the amp. I like the KT88s better and that is what I use, but the EL34s that come with the amp are fantastic.
Once you go to tubes, you will be hooked for life. There are a few caveats.... tube amps don’t push speakers with tough loads. I purchased a pair of Martin Logan Quest Zs for my VTLs and they sounded awful... I didn’t know it, but tube equipment has a tough time with tough loads and sound manifested itself is an odd, unmusical glassy sound. I sold the MLs and kept the VTLs. My VTLs and now PrimaLuna HP are working really well with a pair of FOCALs now.
My experience with tube amps is just the Prima Luna and the VTLs. With preamps, I owned and loved a Conrad Johnson PV11 (a classic) and just wow. Other tube equipment I owned included DACs like the Sonic Frontiers stuff. The Prima Luna is a wonderful integrated and I love it.
Good luck,
Bruce in Philly
