Add warmth / smoothness to my system recommendations

[Charles001]

What are the most effective ways to add warmth or smoothness to the system? You could rank them as well and please provide examples of actual components you are using. Thank you.

1) Hybrid SS with tube buffer

2) Hybrid tube preamp stage with SS output stage

3) Tube preamp + SS amp

4) Tube amp

5) Class A SS amp with zero/low feedback

6) High bias Class A/AB with zero/low feedback

 

[Kofi Baffour]

warmth was inherent in my speaker so I just added neutral components that didn't add any shifts in tone to my system. and took care of room/speaker coupling and now my system sounds warm with warm mixes and neutral with neutral mixes

 

[kamen56]

What are the most effective ways to add warmth or smoothness to the system? You could rank them as well and please provide examples of actual components you are using. Thank you.

1) Hybrid SS with tube buffer

2) Hybrid tube preamp stage with SS output stage

3) Tube preamp + SS amp

4) Tube amp

5) Class A SS amp with zero/low feedback

6) High bias Class A/AB with zero/low feedback

Really good tube power amp with EL84,EL34,KT66,211,845 tubes works wonderful for warmth-but only with really good output transformers.
The cheapest I know of - vintage Leaks,Dynacos,Quads and Radfords.

 

[Brucemck2]

Purity Audio used to make unity gain tube buffers that worked great for adding a touch of “tube warmth” to an high end system. They built a 300B based unit for me.

Purity Audio

purityaudiodesign.com

But, I’d go to more “fundamental” solutions first: speaker/chair placement, room treatments, warmer speakers, Bacch processing, etc.

 

[DasguteOhr]

Purity Audio used to make unity gain tube buffers that worked great for adding a touch of “tube warmth” to an high end system. They built a 300B based unit for me.

Purity Audio

purityaudiodesign.com

But, I’d go to more “fundamental” solutions first: speaker/chair placement, room treatments, warmer speakers, Bacch processing, etc.

20 years back musical fidelity make x 10d tube buffer,that thing sounds really good when use with cd players. But the trick is wired that stereo buffer in mono one buffer for one chanel. I had arcam cd player 70 with two x 10d buffers that thing sounds better as much expensive transport/ dac solution really.

 

[jadedavid]

Like others have suggested, SPEAKERS.
I have found that if the speaker possesses an inherent brightness it is virtually impossible to completely eliminate it.
You can do a lot of changes and work on the system but you will be fighting an uphill battle.

 

[jfrech]

Could be your room and speaker set up. Some room treatments can go a long way...

 

[jugi63]

Change power cable(s)? Many times power cabls do affect how 'hardness' in the sound is preceived. A suitable power cable can make a big difference.

Any DIY in your blood? An absolute huge advantgage of DIY is that you can tweek so many aspects of the sound system chain...
e.g. changing one's preamp output caps (selecting something that works for you) makes quite a big of a difference. But also things like interconnect cable, speaker cable thickness and speaker internal cable thickness affects the sound and ballance. E.g. I gathered that my speakers were a bit to hot at the high tweeter frequencies - so I changed my speakers internal tweeter cable to a bit thicker version, giving a bit more emphasis to the tweeter lower range. This was perfect for me.

 

[dan31]

Ideas.

Adjust speaker position, bass balance and toe in or out for tweeter. Cross tweeter axis well in front of listening position. Speaker rake perhaps. Change interconnect from source to Cardas Golden Cross/Reference or other similar IC.

 

[ecwl]

I agree with lots of comments above. Without knowing OP’s system, room and frequency response, it’s really hard to give advice. Even if we are to directly answer the original question, what is the budget?

My additional thoughts are that sometimes systems don’t sound warm because there is too much electrical noise in the streamer or DAC. But understanding the speaker and room resonance and frequency response would be very helpful as a first step before going tube or class A.

 

[kende]

Tube CD payer , tube amplifier and duelund tinned copper cable. I have a Sony cdp333esd modified Nos ,with tube output , I have changed all the wire inside of the coax speaker to duelund tinned copper 16awg and 12awg for speaker cable + the crossover caps from mundorf to Jupiter copper/ duelund silver foil bypass cap. The biggest impact were the cables.