Is it possible to add tube tone to my rig on the cheap?

[giantslayer]

I'm thinking about adding some sort of tube unit to my setup to get some of that tube warmth and such. I don't want this to turn into one of those "tube vs. solid state" debates. I am fairly well versed in the tube vs. ss debate, am aware that a tube amp will likely sacrifice a little bit of clarity for warmth, have heard the difference that tubes can make as a guitar player, and am pretty convinced that tubes would improve my listening experience and reduce ear fatigue.

At this point, I'm testing the waters to see if I really have any options here. With guitar gear, tube tone can be had (or added to a rig) without spending thousands of dollars. I don't know if it's that feasible with home audio. Maybe tube circuits that are designed to not color the tone are significantly more expensive.

I don't have a set price point at this point, as I am testing the idea out, but I am thinking in the low hundreds, the lower the better. I am quite willing to buy used gear (that's what I did to get my current setup).

My current rig is:
-Computer as a source
-Onkyo tx-905 stereo receiver (got it for $50 shipped on eBay - a steal)
-Bic Venturi DV62si speakers (2-way bookshelf speakers)

I don't suppose there's a way to keep the Onkyo in the chain, is there? I don't particularly care for the radio or tone controls on it (I found out that I could bypass the tone controls and have left it that way since and used the EQ from iTunes). I'm wondering if there's some tube unit that could be inserted between the source and the receiver. It's not that I am all that attached to the receiver, just that I was thinking that, if such a thing existed, it would probably be cheaper than buying a preamp and a power amp.

My guess is that I would need both a preamp and a poweramp (or an integrated unit). I don't need both preamp and poweramp to be tube and I don't need a huge array of glowing tubes to make me feel good. My guitar experience has shown that even one or two tubes can make a substantial improvement in tone and, while I'm sure you could do better than that with an army of tubes, at the kind of price I'm thinking about, a few tubes are good enough.

So I suppose I have three basic questions:
1) Am I right with my assumptions that I will need to ditch the receiver and get a dedicated preamp and power amp?
2) Is getting a halfway decent tube preamp and a poweramp (poweramp would probably be SS) feasible in the low hundreds price range with a willingness to buy used gear?
3) Any recommendations on what units I should be looking at and where to buy? (P.S. I am morally opposed to buying Behringer gear, so please recommend other stuff.)

Thanks in advance.

 

[Ironman1]

Musical Fidelity

Musical Fidelity X-10v3 tubed impedance buffer is intended to do what you want. Can be had for about $275 used on Audiogon.com

 

[jcPanny]

Tube integrated

You can get the Onix SP3 Tube integrated amp for about $500 used on audiogon. If you are planning on spending this kind of money, you might be better off with speaker upgrade because the speakers and the room make the most impact on what you hear.

 

[highfihoney]

As mentioned above musical fidelity makes several versions that will install in your system,ive ran the musicial fidelity units & their pretty good.

Cary audio used to make 2 units that were awesome,they are called the cary cad 5500/black box & there are 2 different versions,one version is a standard 19" audio box with no controls on the face & the other version is a 19" audio box with gain,balance & source control,i found the version with the controls to be a more flexible unit as it can be ran as a stand alone preamp if needed.

The cary units are a bit more expensive over the musicial fidelity(around $500 used) units but i liked them better.

 

[mtrycrafts]

Before you go to any of the suggested products, buy some 1 ohm resistors, a number of watt rating, and place them in series with your speakers you are testing this out on. One such resistor per speaker. Maybe even a 2 ohm as well. Not expensive, a few $. Then, you can try the other products and compare Carver did this with some of his amp experiments.

 

[giantslayer]

Thanks for the posts so far. The musical fidelity x-10v3 looks pretty promising right now.

mtrycrafts, I'm not really sure what you mean or what the purpose of putting those resistors in the circuit is supposed to do.

 

[mtrycrafts]

mtrycrafts, I'm not really sure what you mean or what the purpose of putting those resistors in the circuit is supposed to do.

That would simulate a tube amp and you'd get a feel for what it sounds like. Tube amps have a much higher impedance output than SS hence they respond differently and follow the speakers frequency response a lot more instead of not being affected as an SS would be so you get that tube sound And, it is an inexpensive experiment.

You would add one of those resistors to either the black or red output of the amp, then the speaker wire to the other end of the resistor and speaker so the resistor is in series. It worked for Carver.