2014 will be the 27th year of Supratek , this year I'm changing direction a little and only building a limited number of DHT (directly heated triode) preamps.
I've been building DHT preamps longer than any other audio business- I built the worlds first commercially available 300B preamp, also was the first to release a 101D preamp, and as far as I know the first to release a commercial 4P1L based preamp.
I also built over a thousand 6SN7 based indirectly heated triode preamps, the older Syrah, Chardonnay, Sauvignon, Chenin and Cortese preamps are still going strong and most remain with the original owners, a sure sign of customer satisfaction, and reliabilty.
My true love has always been the DHT preamps, there is something about a DHT preamp that is magical, there is no other component that can take you further into the music than a good DHT preamp.
Even today , with digital taking more and more of analog's place in our systems, a DHT preamp always imparts a sense of "rightness" and musical bliss to any system.
There are good technical reasons for this, tubes are linear devices that require no feedback for distortion free playback, and my chosen DHT tubes have the lowest distortion spectrum of audio tubes.
I've become very involved in digital playback the last 3-4 years, it is the future of audio, and DSP (digital sound processing) will enable your stereo system to get closer to the sound of real music in your home.
I have an enormous amount of respect for today's digital designers, they are taking us closer to the sound of the recording than we have ever been.
I never thought I would say this, but I expect to be listening to vinyl digitally soon- I'm presently working on a tube phono/analog to digital convertor.
Why?
In order to take advantage of DSP's amazing capabilities to perfect the speaker/room interface. Done properly (and it's not easy) this can bring vastly superior performance to the very best system.
So does the ancient tube (or valve) still have a place in this new world?
Most definitely. There is still a place for the highly evolved and ultra performance tube preamp. A modern DHT preamp has something that is very hard to describe, it brings an extra sense of realism, enhances the ambience, throws a wider, deeper soundstage and gives pin point imaging .
It's all about impedance conversion and phase performance, and its easy to confirm.
Just take the DHT tube preamp out of a digital system, and you will be connecting it back up again as fast as you can!
And for those still happy with the analog world and not using digital?
The famous Supratek phono preamps now come with DHT line stages.
I'm only making very limited amounts of preamps now, and DHT linestages are what I do best.
This year I will be building a range of DHT preamps using various selected NOS tubes -
please visit my web site www.supratek.biz for details.
