Preamp for Burmester power amp

 kalali1,378 posts08-10-2018 3:09amWhy would anyone design an amplifier with only an 1,880ohm input impedance? It makes very little sense unless they want to force the buyer to (also) purchase their supposedly matching preamp. Just curious.

This is a classic con job, it happened with a hiend English company who designed their full range speaker to be way overdamped. Which worked perfectly with their sister companies well underdamped amplifiers.

Its more likely that they built the balanced inputs to support the balanced standard, which expects fairly low input impedances. Any source with an XLR output should be able to drive this no worries, but sadly, this practice is rare in high end audio.

@georgehifi who is this hi end English company that overdampened their speakers?

They were Linn Isobarics a very over damped design, back in the 70-80’s. When the Linn/Naim retailer Riverina HiFi demo’ed a KSA Krell on them they had very little bass weight!!!!!, yet with the first early Naim 250’s they had had all the bass weight in the world with the Isobarics.
The Naim was said to have a damping factor of only 8. Over damped speaker under damped amp makes for synergy.
Needless to say that Linn/Naim reatier sold many of those combinations, especially when he demo’d Krell!! couldn’t do bass into them!!

Cheers George