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
153 posts
 
Very true @soundsrealaudio

I'm having my speaker crossovers upgraded (same design, better parts) for the cost of the speakers themselves.
A lot of parts in many crossovers.
jim94025
57 posts
 
Brian,  while a bit off subject, could you give a general description of what modifications you made to your 211‘s? I’ve just received a pair and would be quite curious to know where you went with them. Looking at your discussions and your body of work I would say our tastes in music reproduction are quite close. 
Thanks, Jim
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,783 posts
 
The mastering of an LP was done with the intention that it would sound its best in analog on a turntable. The mastering of a CD was done with the intention that it would sound its best at 44/16 through a CD transport.
IME CDs are mastered to sound its best in a car where background noise is usually present.

When we work on an LP mastering project, we try to get a file that was not mastered for CD release, so as to avoid the compression that is often present. Sometimes that file is available, sometimes it does not exist. It all depends on the producer...
archguy's avatar
archguy
45 posts
 
There's a fun thread on another forum roughly entitled "How much do I have to spend on a pre-amp to get one which sounds better than no pre-amp at all?" 


georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 
"How much do I have to spend on a pre-amp to get one which sounds better than no pre-amp at all?"  

If all is impedance correct between source and amp/s.
They sky's the limit, as no active preamp can equal the transparency/dynamics/lack of distortion, that direct source to amp/s feed can give.
Adding a preamp in this case only diminishes and colours these parameters. 

Cheers George
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