Lowering the noise floor

By getting off the grid I avoid all the ills associated with the grid, and all the ills associated with cables, fuses, and the other stuff I already mentioned. Trust me, it’s audible, even on my modest system. I mean, I still can tweak it, right. I use only treated batteries and everything has been quasi cryod at a minimum and everything is mechanically isolated.

"We’ve got lots of gain in our electronics. More gain than some of us need or want. At least 10 db more.

Think of it this way: If you are running your volume control down around 9 o’clock, you are actually throwing away signal level so that a subsequent gain stage can make it back up.

Routinely DIYers opt to make themselves a “passive preamp” - just an input selector and a volume control.

What could be better? Hardly any noise or distortion added by these simple passive parts. No feedback, no worrying about what type of capacitors – just musical perfection.

And yet there are guys out there who don’t care for the result. “It sucks the life out of the music”, is a commonly heard refrain (really - I’m being serious here!). Maybe they are reacting psychologically to the need to turn the volume control up compared to an active preamp."

Cheers George

90% of systems these days have enough gain from the source and in the poweramp so a passive pre can be used, this get’s rid of a large source of noise, the "active preamp".