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Trevor Wilson wrote:


snip


And just why are they faulty?

**Because both colour the music. The SP11 is the lesser of the two
products.
There are other, far more sanely priced products, which do not colour
the
sound. If the OP specifically requires a tube preamp (for whatever
bizarre
reason), then he should audition a Conrad Johnson Premier 16. For a
tube
preamp, it is remarkably neutral.

And how, or in what way, do they "colour" the music? Do they have bass
or treble rolloff, high distortion, or compress the dynamics of the
signal?

**They distort and add microphonics to the signal.


What does the c-j Premier 16 do that other preamps, commercial or
homemade, do not (or what does it not do that they do), and, why?

**The CJ goes to heroic lengths to manintain linearity and isolation for the
tubes. The PCBs are mounted with compliant rubber bits. ARC does not do
this. As a result, the ARC designs suffer with microphonic problems. The
image, for instance, becomes bloated.


FWIW while I believe that listeners who listen exclusively to CDs
should have no preamp-they should purchase or modify a CD player to
directly drive their power amps in fine fashion(or buy an integrated,
which stereo amps should be anyway)-my own Marantz 7 clone audibly
outperforms the majority of preamps selling for any amount of money.
Only its phono section is less than magnificent. I listen to CDs,
vinyl, and other sources and while I have auditioned very expensive
preamps I notice little or no difference between them and what I have.
Of course this is a sighted eval and so hardly scientific, but it is my
subjective judgment that many if not most c-j, ARC, and other high
dollar tube products as well as many solid state products costing the
price of a new car are not superior to what you can cobble up at home.

**Spoken, no doubt, by one who has yet to hear a CJ Prem 16. The Prem 16 is
as good as the best SS preamps I have ever heard. It is VERY quiet and very
low distortion.


Incidentally it's worth noting that certain manufacturers of tube
power amplifiers specifically enjoin users from using solid state
preamps because small DC offsets could be propagated through their
amplifier for long enough to debias the finals.

**Only VERY poorly implemented SS preamps suffer such problems.
Additionally, the vast majority of tube power amps employ an input coupling
cap, which makes your statement simply absurd.


--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au