2. amps-preamps
  3. 136421-89400

Pre amps cost vs. value ... what I discovered last month.

Greetings all.

I’m a mastering engineer. www.magicgardenmastering.com . We use Acoustic Zen balanced cabling, highly modified Cary 211 FE tube amps, Bricasti M1 SE DAs and Joachim Gerhard’s Allegra speakers. TORUS balanced power comes 220 from the street. The room is excellent, and you would love to hear it.

For 15 years the pre amp/router was a Crane Song Avocet. I paid around $1800 for it.

Recently decided to try a couple of audiophile products in the pre amp stage and was shocked and saddened how bad they were. Yes, the studio designed Avocet has a relay click for each 1db step, and yes it has a rack mounted 2U body with a corded remote, but it’s clear folks are really getting taken to the cleaners on pre amps. The older and highly regarded Boulder 1010 (used price $5500), was just terrible, truly terrible. The new and fully broken in BAT vk-43SE (demo price $7500) was much better, but still had a cloudy tone as compared to the class A Avocet. Not sure if that’s the cap or the transformer, but it made everything less clear and more generic, more distant from the music.

That’s all. Happy listening.
128x128brianlucey
brianlucey's avatar
brianlucey OP
163 posts
 
PS, it seems like we have moved into the "anything goes" portion of the thread, so if anyone wants to banter re: anything related to mastering, I'm game
captbeaver's avatar
captbeaver
167 posts
 
I recently bought a very inexpensive tube preamp... 154$ new... to use until my Mcintosh pre showed up and honestly just for some cheap fun and experimenting with tube rolling etc. I have been a working musician for more years than I want to admit and have always used very high quality hand built tube amps to gig with so hence the cheapo pre for fun... I replaced all tube with nos ax7’s and a nos rectifier tube also... total tube cost 35$. I had the ax7’s.

  The Mac shows up and she is amazing.  Plug in the tube pre... VERY VERY close! Very. With a black curtain test I would be unsure which was which 100% of the time. Now... the big difference is in the image and staging. Not much but it is there. Again I couldn’t do it 100% of the time. I have since run my CD player into the tube pre and it was great. Really warmed things up. I dont use it much but it was a great lesson... and yes the Chinese can make some really nice gear.

  
brianlucey's avatar
brianlucey OP
163 posts
 
@soundsrealaudio Bricasti is close to releasing a 2 IN and 1 OUT pre amp.  Balanced.
brianlucey's avatar
brianlucey OP
163 posts
 
@charles1dad  um, about your comment that others "have not succumbed to this recording technique"
Firstly, I didn’t say large DR sounds dull, or bad, I said it sounds dated and like an older era of music. Not current.

Secondly, I said that mastering is a service job. We are not here to put the genie back in the bottle. "Make it louder" has been around since vinyl, there was simply a physical limit to what was possible. In 2018 I find most records I print are approved where I would like them to be, and the client has the say. Again, if you want a list of my records where there is lower DR and it sounds great I can provide. DR measurement, like all measurement is a bit of a mythical standard of goodness. Each record is uniquely worked, we have to look at the whole.
Yes, some clients push me past sanity and I can say something if it would matter, and sometimes I do. 99% on deaf ears. Fear and ambition are the driving force in these cases. Can’t stop humans from that.
rsf507
2,350 posts
 
Brian excuse me if this sounds like a newbie question but when you say Bricasti is close to releasing a pre with 2 IN & 1 OUT does that mean it will only accept 2 sources?
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