Best Balanced Tube Amp To Pair With Meridian G02?

Nightfall, what speakers are you using? That will help dictate good choices for a tube amp more than the preamp that you plan to mate it with.

I do agree, however, with your SS pre and tube amp combination desire. I can say from personal experience that it works great, and I think that a tube in the amp spot imparts more "tube magic" than in the preamp spot.

Michae

Michae,

My speakers are the Silverline 17.5. This is a nearfield system in a small room.

Just FWIW... It is an easy task to add a true balanced connection to nearly any amplifier. Now before y'all go off on me, keep in mind that I am associated with balanced amps and preamps, and that I have good reason for saying what I did.

I am **not** talking about a simple XLR connector, that is only hooked up to the RCA input, nor am I talking about an input transformer. The mod is simple and inexpensive, so if you want, your range of tube power amps suddenly got a lot larger if you are willing to have the mod installed. It will not affect the sound of the amp otherwise.

Atmasphere/Ralph, that is a very interesting comment. I have not heard that before but would be anxious to hear more. Of course, I would love to own one of your amps, but even used, they are outside of my budget :-( You indicate that such a mod is relatively inexpensive - can you elaborate more on what "inexpensive" is? Or is this cost very dependent on the amp? Thanks and I will check back in with this thread for more info.

With just about any amplifier it would be under $250.00.

With tube amplifiers, normally the grid of the input tube is driven by the input signal. Since we want to do balanced (because it sounds better), we will have an inverted signal to work with as well. That is applied to the cathode of the same tube through a coupling capacitor (which might also be the cathode bypass cap of the amp; lacking that, then one is added as the coupling cap).

For transistor amps, the extra input is mixed with the feedback signal, which is usually applied to the differential input of the amplifier.

Both techniques work quite well, and essentially in the same way. It requires the connector, and the connections into the circuitry, perhaps a coupling cap or resistor. Otherwise you can see that this is an inexpensive mod; in either case **the amplifier is accepting the balanced input in the differential domain** even if the amp is otherwise single-ended.

And FWIW, I disagree with Rrog, its **much** easier to find a neutral-sounding tube preamp than solid state! However I find that listener bias does apply; I regard a preamp with a deep and wide soundstage to be more neutral than one that lacks such a thing, similarly I regard a preamp without brightness as more neutral than one that is bright.