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World's best Pre-amp for $10K and above?

Looking for the HOLY GRAIL in Audio? Here it is. I'm in my early sixties and retiring to my final system, which I was going to purchase during the past twelve months and decided to put on the brakes, and investigate whats out there as the most advanced engineered high end audio products for the money in the market place. As far as I'm concerned, the two top engineers in the world for the best Amp and Preamp at low prices are Bent Holter with Hegel Audio in Norway and Roger Sanders with Sanders Sound in Colorado. Why? The Hegel P-30 Pre-amp is a game changer, and will easily compete with Pre-amps at $30K and above. The FM Acoustics 268 Preamp that retails for $107K, uses a technology thats called "feedforward" instead of feedback.
Amps and Pre-amps since the early 80's have all used either global feedback, zero feedback or local feedback to filter out noise and lower distortion by sending and filtering the feedback current to filter capacitors or or an extra filter transformer. A small amount of voltage feedback occurs at the output stage in amps and preamps which goes back into the parts and boards causing noise and distortion which smears the quality of the music.The best Preamps in the world all have S/N noise ratios at 125 db's or above. The Hegel P-30 Preamp uses the same feedforward technology as FM Acoustics but is a more current design that Bent Holter calls "Sound Engine" patented technology that eliminates feedback which is why the P-30 Preamp has a S/N ratio of 132 db's, which has never been accomplished in high end audio with a Preamp costing $10K or below. The same applies to Roger Sanders Magtech amplifier which uses a patented linear voltage regulator that controls and regulates voltage with no excess voltage going back into the amp causing heat and distortion problems. The amp puts out 900 watts into 4ohms. Krell makes a pair of mono blocs that also use a similar voltage regulator. The amps are $100K a pair. HERES THE PERFECT SOLID STATE SYSTEM. A Hegel P-30 Preamp. A Sanders Magtech amp, A pair of Aerial Acoustics 7T speakers. The worlds finest SACD player, the Playback Designs MPS-5, designed by Andreas Koch, who invented SACD technology when he worked for Sony. He built the worlds first outboard DAC in 1982 and is legend in digital engineering. The MPS-5 is the most analog sounding player on the market which costs $17K. The Hegel P-30 is only $7500.00 and the Magtech amp is only $5K. The Aerials are $10K. Buy the solid core cables from Morrow Audio. They are low capacitance cables which matches up perfectly with these components. This combination sounds like the very best tube and solid state gear on the market. The whole system will cost about $42K but will sound as good as any system costing $200K. All of these products are game changers. If you want better looking cabinets and faceplates, then blow your money, but you will not get better performance for what this system has to offer. It is the HOLY GRAIL you are searching for and there is no better combination for the total cost of the system.
audiozen
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,849 posts
 
However, all of this products are voiced subjectively to have a different sonic character from one brand to the other.

I think we can be quite certain that this is incorrect. I doubt that any of these preamps are 'voiced'. I don't know how things like that get started, but 'voicing' is not something that a competent designer of amps and preamps would engage in. Rather, they would just go for the best performance they can wring out of the circuit.

At best what we have here is another competent transistor design. Best? Not by a long shot. Good? Sure. Excellent. Maybe... but not best. No way.
dover
2,249 posts
 
At first I thought someone had been let out of the asylum,
then I thought this post was hilarious,
now it's become tiresome...now where are those pills
audiozen OP
831 posts
 
"But "voicing" is not something that a competent designer of amps and preamps would engage in." What a load of crap. Do you think for one minute that if an amp and Preamp in a audio components company sound room sounds warm, bright, fast or slow its by accident it sounds that way? Where is your brain. Its exactly how they want it to sound. Take ten different top quality solid state Preamps and run them through the same amp and speakers and the sonic character will sound different from each Preamp. Too forward, laid back, too warm, too bright, very wide of narrow sound stage. All high end companies have sound rooms to tweak and test their components over and over until its "voiced" to the exact sonic character they want to achieve. I first learned about voicing amps and Preamps from Chris Johnson, founder and designer of Sonic Frontiers. I had a long conversation with Chris back in the mid-nineties and he mentioned that he had in his company sound room the top tube Preamps from other companies and he would tweak and voice his Preamps, and he used the term "voice", to have a similar sonic character to his top competitors. You were saying?...
charles1dad's avatar
charles1dad
10,250 posts
 
Audiozen,
You have figured it all out,congratulations.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,849 posts
 
You were saying?...

You will note that I used the term 'competent', as in: no competent designer will voice a preamp or amp. The reason you hear those differences is often nothing to do with voicing, but rather distortion. Our ears hear distortion as tonality, which is why two preamps can measure absolutely flat on the bench, but one will sound bright (due to trace amounts of odd ordered harmonic distortion) and one will not (lacks the odd ordered harmonic distortion).

If the designer engages in 'voicing' they immediately introduce additional distortions or colorations that will limit the usability of the preamp! Instead they go for flat frequency response. ';Voicing' is poor engineering practice in amps and preamps (BTW with speakers this is a different matter).

So the key word here is 'competent'; any designer telling you they voice their preamp is also telling you they have no idea what they are doing. Sorry, just stating a simple fact. If a designer has to engage in such practice it is because there is an inherent flaw in their design- instead of a bandaid approach, they simply need to find the flaw and correct it.
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