Advice on pre-amps needed

frankpiet

Your Aero has 5v!! output at 100ohms output impenance with it’s own analogue volume control with the remote, this is by far enough to drive any power amp direct (most only need around 1.5v for full output!!), and you’ll have far better transparency and dynamics and less colouration than any preamp could hope to have.

Go direct and save fortune and get a better sound by not having an expensive preamp in the signal path.

If you need to have multiple input switching the get one of these
http://www.goldpt.com/sw4.html

And get a separate phono stage with it’s own level control, like these or better, depending on your love of vinyl. And put it through the Goldpoint switchbox as well.
https://www.aussiehifi.com.au/products/cambridge-audio-duo-mc-mm-phono-preamplifier?variant=69676821...

https://www.hifisystemcomponents.com/phono-preamps/accession-mm-phono-preamp.html

https://www.adl-av.com/products/usbdac/gt40a/

Cheers George

 I would not suggest limiting yourself only to preamps with the onboard phono stage.  Your options open up a lot more if you go with separates. 

I thought the Audio Aero had a volume control. No? 

soundsrealaudio561 posts09-17-2018 7:56amI thought the Audio Aero had a volume control. No?

It does and a very good one, read my post above yours.

Cheers George

Since your amplifier has a balanced input, to best take advantage of it I recommend a preamp with a balanced output, preferably one that supports the balanced standard as does your amplifier.
If the preamp supports the standard, you will find that auditioning interconnect cables becomes unimportant as they will all work quite well.

The phono cartridge is a balanced source, so you can run a balanced connection between the arm and preamp; that is an important place to run a balanced connection, as the balanced cable will be more neutral than a single-ended cable.

You can find tube preamps that do all of this, but I’ve found that if the preamp does not support the standard (also known as AES48) then you will not get all the benefits balanced line has to offer, in particular immunity of the sound to your choice of interconnect cable.

Here is the balanced standard in a nutshell:
1) The balanced connector is usually the XLR, which has 3 pins for its connections. pin 1 is ground, pin 2 is non-inverting and pin 3 is inverting2) ground is ignored; used for shielding only3) the output impedance of whatever is driving the connection is low so it can drive a load of 2000 ohms or lower.
4) the signal travels in a twisted pair within a shield.
5) Both sides of the signal connection have an equal impedance to ground and may be floating
6) no center taps are employed for transformer connections.

Here are a few balanced line myths
1) it is only useful for longer connections not seen in the home. 2) single-ended sounds better
3) you need a center tap for a cartridge or tape head for it to operate balanced
4) you have to rewire the tone arm to run balanced
5) balanced equipment has twice as many parts
What this means is that most tube preamps have an output transformer to support the standard. As far as I’ve been able to tell, we make the only tube preamps that fly in the face of this but we have a patent on that process.

The tricky bits are parts 2 and 5 in the part about the standard above. Most balanced preamps I’ve seen hedge on these parts, and thus lose the cable immunity that makes balanced operation so awesome. For that reason, you will hear many comments that contradict what I’ve written here; IOW people don’t always have the same experience, simply because the equipment they used didn’t support the standard.