If you had to choose: tube amp or tube pre-amp?

The preamp built into the Emotiva gives the music a very thin, scratchy sound at higher volumes...Im not familiar with how to describe it in audiophile vernacular, but it sounds digital with no richness. So I was hoping throughing in a tube pre after the DAC will clear up that problem.

This thread and this thread may be of interest. Among other things, these threads refer to issues with the digital volume control in the Emotiva DAC. If you haven't already, it would be a good idea to try running the DAC through the Sony with the DAC's volume control turned all the way up, with the setting of the Sony's volume control reduced correspondingly.

Although the adverse effects of the digital volume control can be expected to worsen as its setting is lowered, the reason that you may be perceiving the problem to a greater degree as its setting is raised may simply be that our hearing mechanisms become more sensitive to high frequencies (relative to their sensitivity to mid frequencies) at higher volume levels.

Beyond that, I wouldn't try to mask the problem by changing the preamp or amp. The best recipe for success is usually to try to correct the root cause of a problem.

Regards,
-- Al

Al,good advice, correct the root of the problem then address the lesser issues afterward.

Solid state amps won`t always result is better bass quality. It absolutely depends on the speaker design and parameters.Some speakers are meant to be used with tube amplifiers and will sound better with them(the converse is also true). It all depends on the specific objectives.
Regards,

Thanks everyone for the helpful advice.

Al, to follow up with your suggestion regarding the DAC. For a while I actually had it hooked up in the fashion you suggested (emotive to Sony, with the emotiva volume at max, and use Sony to control level) but the improvement is very minute. I figured the small change was attributed to bypassing Emotivas preamp for Sony's slightly better one.

With that being said, you don't necessarily think that if the Emotiva was running to a tube preamp instead of Sony's SS it would help reduce the sharpness of the music?

A good tube preamp would certainly be an improvement, but your original question was an either /or tube pre-power amp.

I would go with a tube preamp as the pre is the heart of the system and has a huge tonal influence on the system. I love tube amps, but don't like dealing with too many tubes in my total system. I opted for a hybrid amp which gets me closer to an all tube amp without the hassle of power tubes.

So tube pre and hybrid amp! This is a great combo....

If my speakers could run off of 8 SET watts, then I would have a tube amp for sure. Only one power tube per side needed. However when needing 100 watts or more, a hybrid can be a nice option.