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
142 posts
 
@shadorne I was never a fan of the original Benchmark DA, have not heard yours.  The Avocet DA is very good, yet I don't use it so can't tell you the sound of the latest generation.  All DA are very good these days it's a matter of flavor.  The Solaris is not to my taste, too dry, too cold.
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shadorne
7,467 posts
 
@brianlucey 

Benchmark is as you describe. I use tubes also to warm things up. Thanks for the info on Solaris. I agree that there a lot of great DACs out there nowadays. It often comes down to system synergy or taste.
simao's avatar
simao
1,758 posts
 
Brian,

in regards to remastering, can't some remastering The sound of a recording that had been previously mastered in a terrible way? Take, for example, the remastered version of Rush's vapor trails recording.   All of a sudden there were layers of sound uncovered from that recording that were on here a ball in the original muddy release. 

 And what made Bob Ludwig so good at what he did? 

brianlucey's avatar
brianlucey OP
142 posts
 
Remastering can be great, sure. It’s a mixed bag. Generally the place to being with any remastering is to figure out WHO initiated it, and WHO oversaw the process creatively and WHY was it done at all? Intentions and persons matter. Some of Bob's work is excellent.  He is the granddaddy of mastering along with Bernie Grundman in LA.  

All work is approved by the artist, or label, or someone ... so factor that in always. When a record sounds great, everyone did their job well.
brhatten
34 posts
 
Brian,

You had mentioned previously that the recording artist and the producer have a strong influence on the mastering step, correct? If so, do you find that this influence at thimes compromised the end product in terms of dynamics, soundstaging, etc...? Going along that train of thought, do you have certain examples of your work where you feel that this influence didn’t deter you from creating the most natural, life like reproduction of the music that was heard during the recording process?

Perhaps these are silly questions because you may say that every one of your works is the best possible music that could have been created (which may be your answer). I’m not sure if you have some projects that you felt that the music and sound came across with in a way that audiophiles seems to think of as the most transparent and lifelike.

Cheers. Thanks for taking your time to contribute here.
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