Matching preamp to amp

Wonder if that is how the Audible Illusions L-1 and the Aragon 4004 MKII seem to mate so well? It surely cant be impedance because the Aragon is 22kohms where as the Audible Illusions is 1.2kohms which is in the lower limits of what is recommended. But the Audible Illusions has enormous gain.

Hi Kool. Yeah, It may be that the AI has a lot of gain. But its 1.2Kohm output impedance mated to the Aragon with 22Kohm input impedance actually works out to 18 times, so it's well within the 10 times guideline. I've heard people say the range is 10-100 times.

Kool39,
in cases with tube preamps you have enormous gain and output voltage to bring to the imput of amp. In this case you realy don't want the input impedance of the amplifier being too high since you will have much less volume controll capabilities from your preamp.
In case with passive preamp the philosophy stays near-same if you have high output voltage source. In my case I have passive/active pre with simple bipolar output stage that I switch sometimes when I play vinyl and turn off when I play CDs. I have approximately 0.5V out of my phono preamp with 0.5mV output cartridge and my VTL amplifiers have 0.55V input sencitivity(after recent mods). ON some records I feel lack of bass and have to switch the gain back-on and on some records it's plenty enough especially on 45rpms.

This is exactly what I have been trying to figure out, impedance matching. I am probably going to go with a pre and an amp from the same manufacturer, Blue Circle. The BC22 amp has an input sensitivity of 22kOhms, whereas the BC21.1 preamp is said to have an output impedance of 180 ohms, which translates into a 122:1 amp:preamp ratio.

Does this make sense to you? I'm not very technically knowledgeable, so please forgive my ignorance.

Thanks.

Max

While the guidelines above are generaly true, some manufacturers such as Rowland have different philosphies about impedance and "power matching".