2. amps-preamps
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What preamp creates the largest soundstage?

I have always loved a large soundstage.  I have a small listening room (10x10) and have mini-monitors, driven by a tube amp.  I have played a lot with speaker placement, room acoustics, listening position to create a large soundstage.  I have rolled tubes on the amp and made dramatic improvements. (I have purposely left details on the brands of tubes, amp and speakers out, because I don’t want side comments to distract from my question)

i have a digital source into a solid state naim preamp.  I home demo’ed a well reviewed preamp, and was surprised at how much the soundstage shrunk, both side to side and top downward.  It was deeper, and did have much of the tube magic, but I could not live without the big soundstage.  

so my question is, does anyone have experience with a preamp that produces a big soundstage?  I am looking for recommendations on what to demo next. While I lean toward tubes, I am open to solid state.  I am okay either new or used, and could spend in the 5k range, but would be happy to spend less.  Also comments on specific brands (i.e. xyz is known to have great soundstage in all their preamps) as opposed to models, are welcome.

and I will be the first to admit that perhaps the very large soundstage is not “accurate”to real music, but boy is it seductive and I love it and can’t live without it.

meiatflask
aolmrd1241
759 posts
 

meiatflask  said... "I have not heard that the Primaluna preamps are anything special."

Audiojan ...I can not say enough good things about my PL Dialogue Premium preamp.It really does hit the high mark musically [tons of info online] and is a tube rollers delight. To be able to fine tune with vintage tubes is a huge bonus over ss. Oh...and you could fly a 747 through the soundstage in my system...

tomcarr
530 posts
 
"One man's 'big' is another man's 'nothing special'", but...I think my Schiit Freya does a nice, big, 3-D soundstage with some air around the notes when used in the tube mode. (It has 3 selectable modes- passive, JFET buffer, and tubes). Nice finish, nice sound, nice price and made in America. 
meiatflask OP
58 posts
 
Rollintubes- I have my speakers in a near field set up, and have spend countless hours tweaking my room.   Sounds like you are in full agreement with me that getting the speaker and listener position optimized is the most important step.  And we have the same amp, (I am currently running KT77s & mullard NOS 12au7s), with tube selection having also made a big difference for me.   But I don’t want this to get into a tangent on tube rolling, as there are many other discussions on that subject.

but I have a question for you: have you tried other preamps beside the Primaluna?
meiatflask OP
58 posts
 
Aolmrd1241-  are you using the Primaluna preamp with the HP or other Primaluna amp, or with something different?  And are there other preamps that you have tried in your system before you decided on the Primaluna?

i had not really considered the Primaluna preamp.  From this and my question to rollintube, I am wondering if I should reconsider it......
rollintubes
44 posts
 
I actually started with the pre-amp then went to the power amp. I was using a Conrad-Johnson PV6 going into a FET 120 wpc amp. They both had been recapped with the latest upgrades from the manufacturers. The sound was still small although quite listenable. I tried Parasound stuff and they were too 2D. So, still using the PV6 and FET power amp, I upgraded the phono pre-amp to gain a huge improvement (BAT VK-P6SE). The sound stage really opened up and timbre was drastically improved.

Then still using the PV6 line stage I put in a Rogue Stereo 100. It lasted a month and it should have been a week. It was terrible in both image and sound quality. But I blamed the PV6 line stage and replaced it with the Dialogue Premium pre-amp. Another huge improvement in image, but the Rogue still sounded terrible. Finally I replaced the Rogue with the HP and using the stock EL34s it ran circles around the Rogue.

Then came the room tweaks and speaker placement experiments until I finally settled on the near field configuration. I’ve never been happier and, as I said, I listen all day.

People like to flame Prima Luna because it’s assembled in China. That’s baloney. It’s an American and European company that closely supervises every step of manufacturing. And, they use only premium, imported parts. Probably better quality than your phone or your computer or your tablet or the stereo in your car or your TV,

Although I rolled the power tubes to KT150, I’ve yet to start on the small tubes, they are next. Then it’s on to roll the pre-amp and phono pre.
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