Over the past few months I’ve been experimenting with vintage Japanese receivers and integrated amplifiers. To my great pleasure and astonishment, many of these units sound wonderful! This has raised the question of whether spending BIG $$$ on current or recent “high end” amplifiers, preamplifiers and / or integrated amplifiers may not only not unnecessary, but perhaps even inadvisable. The sound of a good vintage lower powered Japanese unit can be so natural, so transparent, so convincing and so much better than some much more expensive contemporary amps, that I’m left to wonder if many audiophiles haven’t even heard what a great amplifier sounds like, or have but have simply forgotten.
I’ve now tried 4 different units and with one possible exception, they’ve been universally better than the expensive tube gear I was previously using. I’m starting to think we can choose just about ANY of these well made units, nearly at random, and end up with sound that will be so surprisingly good for so little money that we’ll wonder why everyone isn’t doing the same thing! Not that you are, but if you WERE to ask me, I’d say skip the big mono-block tube amps or high powered solid state monsters and get a 70’s era Japanese unit that puts out between 25 and 50 watts per channel, sell your expensive electronics and end up with money in the bank and sound so good that you’ll feel like you’ve just won the audio lottery!
What should you then do with your newly recovered riches? Get the best phono preamplifier money can buy. Which one is that you ask? Well, to start with it’s the one that beats your current unit. For me that means beating the phono stage of Conrad Johnson’s now discontinued ET3 all tube preamplifier. Through careful listening and evaluation I determined that the preamplifier of my vintage integrated was clearly superior to the ET3 line preamp, but my CJ’s phono stage still has a lot to offer. So I’m outputting the line level phono signal through CJ’s External Processing Loop to the Auxiliary input in my Sony.
With my goal to get out of tubes entirely, I’ve set out to find a solid state phono preamplifier to replace my ET3. A friend of mine loaned me a PSAudio NuWave Phono Converter that he wasn’t using, and that unit provided a good starting point, ultimately failing well short of the ET3 phono stage in the way of its spaciousness, openness, naturalness and tonal accuracy. So with the PSAudio clearly not the way forward, I reached out to my local audio store for suggestions and was steered toward the Boulder 508.
A quick online search was all it took to find glowing reviews of Bolder’s 508 SS phono preamplifier with one reviewer saying that it “punched way above its weight” in this category. At a price of $5000 the 508 is not in the stratosphere that most other Boulder products are, but it’s certainly nowhere near the bottom with respect to other phono preamplifiers in the current market. Given Boulder’s reputation for cost no object excellence and the 508’s price point, I had a lot of reason for optimism when getting ready to demo the unit, and I had already started crunching the numbers in my head to see how I could justify buying one.
When I got the 508 home, connected and warming up in my system, I pulled out a few records that I’d been playing a lot lately and that I knew would reveal the strengths and weaknesses of any new unit I introduced to my system. As it turned out, I only needed the first record to see what the 508 was all about.
Starting with the Eagles debut it was immediately clear to me that the lushness and openness I’d grown accustomed to hearing were sorely missing. Oddly, given that the 508 is a SS unit, the bass sounded flabby in the way a tube preamp sounds when the tubes are past their prime. I then noticed a shouty-ness to the vocals and an overall lack of atmosphere and spaciousness to the sound. With the 508, this record, which normally has me entranced from the very first chord, instead found me waiting for each next song, hoping it would sound better than the last.
Moments that normally generated excitement and anticipation, such as the intro to “Witchy Woman,” fell flat. And the raucous “Chug All Night,” not one of my favorites on the album but one made tolerable and even a little fun when the vocal parts are given their space, the 508 rendered as crowded, convoluted and hard to enjoy.
Strings plucked with power and promise that failed to resolve and sound musical. Vocal harmonies that had the breath pushed out of them and the air around them emptied. An electric guitar with its transient edges blurred into shriek and shrillness. These are the sounds I heard playing my stellar copy of The Eagles’ masterpiece through the Boulder 508, not the sweet, open, natural yumminess and I’d grown accustomed to.
Where was the soft, warm sound of a summer breeze on “Take It Easy”? Where was the dark lushness and intoxicating richness of “Take The Devil”? Where was that familiar feeling of never wanting this record to end! With the Boulder 508, it was nowhere to be found. I went and swapped the PSAudio for the 508, and even though it wasn’t quite as detailed, the sound was more natural, especially with the all important vocal tracks. I also preferred the way the PSAudio handled the drums and bass, which sounded more solid and present.
But the NuWave is no match for my CJ, and with that unit I’ve managed to bring a great deal more naturalness, tonal accuracy and transparency to my system over the past few months by making some fairy simple changes to wires and cords. Of these, none has been more impactful than the rediscovered magic of a 25 year old pair of MIT interconnects that I recently wrote about here, and I wanted to experience the clarity, neutrality, sweet highs and tight, deep bass of those MIT’s with the 508 in my system.
Meanwhile the Boulder 508 is a fully balanced unit, and I needed to use XLR adaptors on both ends of my MIT’s to connect the 508 to my system. Therefore I’m forced to acknowledge that it’s possible the 508, connected with the right pair of balanced cables, very well may show itself to be the unit other reviewers showed so much enthusiasm for. I remain dubious that the sound of the 508 could improve enough with balanced cables to overcome its obvious weaknesses, but anything is possible.
Listening to my system with the Boulder 508 at the helm, I’m reminded of the heavy vinyl reissues I’ve played in recent years. Power and weighty heft paired with clear sharp highs and very little of the space, openness, transparency, naturalness and midrange magic that brings the artists and their work to life. It’s these qualities that make analog special and it’s these qualities that are near impossible to find in modern records, even the ones remastered from “the original analog tape.”
Something about today’s technology is at the heart of this problem. Perhaps it’s the equipment mastering engineers are using to play back the master tapes when they cut the lacquers? Perhaps it’s the records audio designers and builders are using to test their gear? I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that an audio designer testing a new phono preamp using a Blue Note Tone Poet Series reissue as a benchmark is never going to hear what that unit is or isn’t fully capable of doing. Not that this is what’s happening ’cause how would I know, but just sayin’!
The good news is that I can now move forward with my ET3, save my money, and keep looking for a solid state phono preamplifier that beats my CJ. And with ET3’s regularly available in the used market for under $2500, and the going rate for vintage Japanese integrated amplifiers and receivers typically not exceeding $500, I expect it’s also good news that anyone who is considering buying a Boulder 508 can get not just a better phono preamplifier, but a better phono preamp AND a terrific sounding preamp and amp with plenty of money left over to buy some great sounding records to play through them.
I really had high hopes for the Boulder 508, but my experience reinforced for me that designing and building a great sounding phono preamplifier must be one of the toughest things to do in audio. Conrad Johnson is clearly doing something right, but if the 508 is any indication, Boulder needs to up their game. In the meantime, I look forward to checking out more units and ultimately finding one that will move my system forward.