Still funny to hear people say NOS tubes are better than current production.
In my experience the NOS stock tubes I’ve tried sound about the same as the standard ones that PS Audio supply. They may have a slightly different balance but nothing drastically better. I’m talking around the $70-100 level nothing particularly exotic though. It’s also hard to get much variety around here in the UK - am still looking for good suppliers as most of the real “classics” people recommend tend to be sold out.
They are only classics, and expensive, because there are so few of them left.
I’m running current production Telefunken 12au7 at the moment, pretty spectacular!
@IanB52 is talking about audible noise and hiss in the room, not with a stethoscope on the driver.
How on earth can you excuse/except audible noise coming from a US$ 6k to 7k pre amp in any circumstance? What are you trying to sell here?
Silence in the music you listen to must result in silence in your room, how can you ever classify noise and hiss audiophile or even high end.
I fully agree with @drarifakhtar. Something is kaputt and if not both the BHK Pre Amp and BHK 250 need looked at. But to be honest I would consult PS Audio first and ensure it’s no wiring, power line, radio interference or earthing issue. As I am afraid that the postal service will not ship these boxes for free.
Still funny to hear people say NOS tubes are better than current production.
Computers were probably better back then too!
This is not a good analogy. The fact is tube production was far more sophisticated in the 50s through 70s than it is today. Tubes were a dominant electronic component used in virtually all demanding electronics and military components. Factories in the UK, West Germany, Holland and the US created extremely high quality valves at scale and a level of manufacture quality that the Russian and Chinese factories simply can’t do today.
Not only are those factories gone, but the techniques used had negative environmental impact and are not even legal anymore. You simply could not have a tube production facility like Heerlen in the Netherlands or Blackburn, UK anymore. What exists in Russia and China is not on par.
Now, modern production tubes are better than they used to be, they have low noise floor, high gain, and most modern audio gear is designed around them, but their resolution, imaging and tonal qualities are lower.
Until he replaced the bad preamp tubes. Try reading the whole thread. And do you own any of the gear in question or even any tube gear at all? What is your reason for jumping into the end of a thread about gear you don’t own?
. . . it didn’t sound anywhere near as good as having the DAC going into the BHK Pre and then into the BHK power amps.
Agreed that using the preamp sounds vastly better than DAC direct, but are you saying you hear zero hiss when connecting the DS to the 300s without the output pad? If I don’t use the pad, the noise floor is very high.
Sound quality is what I base my opinion on. It’s possible NOS tubes may last longer, but, I haven’t heard any that sound better than their modern counterparts. If new tube’s resolution, imaging and tonal qualities are inferior, they wouldn’t be in my system. I can afford expensive NOS tubes, and would use them, if they sounded better!
OK, let me ad some relevance for you. My tube based Ayon pre-amp is just as silent as my Halcro SS pre-amp with the system at idle. Not even the slightest hiss with my ear right next to the tweeter. The blindingly self-evident and inescapable fact here is, @IanB52 is reporting one channel is silent, the other is not: something is not quite right somewhere.
He had a bad preamp tube and changed it. According to you the Ayon had been sold a long time ago and with your speakers now you wouldn’t hear it anyway.
That’s right, my Ayon was sold…I owned it for 2+ years and it was dead quiet all that time. I never had any hissing in any channel to contend with. It just worked properly.
Yeah, things can break down, tubes included. I know one owner here locally, he had a tube go ultrasonic in his pre-amp and it blew the tweeter in his Magico S5 speaker.
I did reduce a lot of noise in my left channel by swapping a tube in the BHK preamp, and there is still some low level hiss from the preamp. At this point it is manageable.
I asked the vendor I bought the preamp and tubes from if any of their tubes would reduce the noise level and he said: Not really. Going from 7v to 12v tubes will reduce noise very slightly, but the BHK 250 has really sensitive input and the BHK Preamp is going to have some hiss so don’t obsess over it.
As long as you don’t hear it from your listening position and have to get close to the speaker to do so that is about is good as it is going to get. I have three different tube preamps here and they all have some degree of hiss with the BHK 250 inside of a foot based on their gain through the balanced outputs. Since you are happy with your gear lineup as it is the only thing to try other than different tubes are the attenuators and see if you hear a difference with them. I don’t with the Rothwell branded ones but their are cheaper ones made for the pro audio world from places like Guitar World and Musicians Friend. You could always try as that would take the gain down to 3 db just like the SE outputs.
Yes I owned tube amps. I did read the complete thread. As far as I understood the noise and hiss continued and only was reduced when the BHK Pre Amp was taken out of the chain, the DSDAC was connected directly and switched to -20dB output mode. Hardly a fix of the problem, just hiding the symptoms.
Then you didn’t really read it. He had a bad preamp tube. He was asking for help or a solution to a problem from people familiar with the gear. He didn’t ask for opinions or personal feelings about the state of PSA audio gear or to just box it up and send it back. That is what you and Brodric decided to provide with no personal experience with the gear in question. This is becoming an increasing trend.
I made no comment about PS Audio gear. I made a general comment that a pre-amp should not cause a tweeter to hiss, whether SS or tube pre-amp. And also, if one channel is quiet, the other channel should also be quiet.
Paul has said the BHK pre-amp has a small amount of hiss, and the DAC also has a slight amount of hiss, when you put the two together the BHK amplifier is amplifying the combined input noise. That explains hiss in one channel, it does not explain the other channel being quiet. I found it odd that the BHK system has an inherent level of noise that manifests itself as a quiet hiss in the speaker. Odd because, my limited experience with pre-amps generally, whether SS or tube, is they don’t hiss.
1.The DAC should be absolutely silent. Sounds like an issue.
2. 5 volt tubes are not on the list of appropriate tubes to use with BHK pre, as far as I know.
3. Return it, get some from a reliable source.
I haven’t found the BHK to be any noisier overall than any other tube preamp I have used with similar gain figures. It does appear however to want closely matched tubes equal to what you would use in a MC phono stage and will tell you when they are not. To get that especially in NOS tubes you have to depend on people like Andy Bowman and you will pay for their level of testing as time is money.
That’s exactly what I’m saying. The only time I hear hiss is when I turn the volume right up to uncomfortable levels and put my ear right next to the speakers. That is what was making me think that there is something wrong with your setup and why it might be worth the hassle to just get it checked out and make sure you aren’t missing out on the best possible sound.