2. amps-preamps
  3. 125047-818

I used to think passive preamps were superior to active preamps given right the setup, but

my recent evaluation of a modded old SS preamp has me a little befuddled.  I've evaluated $10K+ active preamps in the past and was never impressed especially given their cost.  In general, I've found passives to do better job. I know there's ongoing debate on this.  But here's a very illuminating video on the subject by Bascom King, one of the legends of high end audio.

https://youtu.be/HHl8F9amyY4
dracule1
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 

dracule1 System matching with passive pre is critical indeed. It can make or break the sound


You are right dracule, but lets get the "critical matching" in perspective

We (most of passive users) are after nirvana, that’s why we persist with passives and get the impedance matching right "makes the sound". Which by the way in 99% of systems is a great impedance match.

Except for some tube output sources which have ridiculous high output impedance (more than >1kohm). Or some ClassD amp that are very low input impedance (less than <10kohms). These users usually find something wrong with the sound of passives, and say active preamps are better, oblivious to the fact that they had an impedance mismatch with the passive they used.


Cheers George

paul79
173 posts
 
I used to like passive preamps, DAC's direct to amps..... That was until I got a good tube preamp. Now there is no going back.
paul79
173 posts
 
Oh dracule1, what is this vintage preamp you are speaking of?
anwar
119 posts
 
I replaced an ARC Ref 5SE with fully balanced copper slagleformers, then eventually upgraded to fully balanced silver slagleformers. I have tube sources (Ref 2SE phono and Ayon CD-07 player) plus OPPO 95. Gain is never a problem. For HT, I use additional 3 copper slagleformers (single-ended center and rear channels from OPPO 95) in slave mode in another box, hence no need for HT processor and HT bypass. For HT L+R main channels, OPPO XLR outs are used.

With autoformer passive, no background noise, high resolution, and controlled bass. And in multi-channel HT, I am getting high fidelity sound.  I may consider going active but will still use autoformers as volume control.
dracule1 OP
1,085 posts
 
Paul79, I really didn’t think anyone would be interested because it’s no longer made and is considered mid fi to most. It’s the Acurus RL11 that was modified. Acurus was considered the little cousin to Aragon. The stock preamp is nothing to write home about, but once it’s modified to be direct coupled and run in Class A with better output mosFETs and power supply upgrade, etc, it beat every passive I have in almost all categories of music reproduction important to me.
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