Advice on pre-amps needed

soundsrealaudio561 posts09-17-2018 7:56amI thought the Audio Aero had a volume control. No?

It does and a very good one, read my post above yours.

Cheers George

Since your amplifier has a balanced input, to best take advantage of it I recommend a preamp with a balanced output, preferably one that supports the balanced standard as does your amplifier.
If the preamp supports the standard, you will find that auditioning interconnect cables becomes unimportant as they will all work quite well.

The phono cartridge is a balanced source, so you can run a balanced connection between the arm and preamp; that is an important place to run a balanced connection, as the balanced cable will be more neutral than a single-ended cable.

You can find tube preamps that do all of this, but I’ve found that if the preamp does not support the standard (also known as AES48) then you will not get all the benefits balanced line has to offer, in particular immunity of the sound to your choice of interconnect cable.

Here is the balanced standard in a nutshell:
1) The balanced connector is usually the XLR, which has 3 pins for its connections. pin 1 is ground, pin 2 is non-inverting and pin 3 is inverting2) ground is ignored; used for shielding only3) the output impedance of whatever is driving the connection is low so it can drive a load of 2000 ohms or lower.
4) the signal travels in a twisted pair within a shield.
5) Both sides of the signal connection have an equal impedance to ground and may be floating
6) no center taps are employed for transformer connections.

Here are a few balanced line myths
1) it is only useful for longer connections not seen in the home. 2) single-ended sounds better
3) you need a center tap for a cartridge or tape head for it to operate balanced
4) you have to rewire the tone arm to run balanced
5) balanced equipment has twice as many parts
What this means is that most tube preamps have an output transformer to support the standard. As far as I’ve been able to tell, we make the only tube preamps that fly in the face of this but we have a patent on that process.

The tricky bits are parts 2 and 5 in the part about the standard above. Most balanced preamps I’ve seen hedge on these parts, and thus lose the cable immunity that makes balanced operation so awesome. For that reason, you will hear many comments that contradict what I’ve written here; IOW people don’t always have the same experience, simply because the equipment they used didn’t support the standard.

I would recommend to look at a SST Ambrosia.  The only pre on your list that I've hear is the Ayre K-1x..... so,  I can't comment too deeply on how it would compare with all that you have listed,  but I can tell you that for me,  the SST has a slight tube flavor and it is solid state, yet is allows a very clear picture of what each amplifier and cables sound like more than any other pre that I have used.... It has an excellent phono and headphone section both,  single ended and balanced and remote. Plus.... tone controls. 

May not suit you, but looking is free. 

frankpiet

Or Frank, if you want to go full balance all the way with what I suggested above, your Audio Aero has balanced outputs as well controlled by it's volume control, and the Goldpoint comes in balanced also. Myself I'd stick with the rca version.   
http://www.goldpt.com/sw2x.html

Cheers George

2005 was mostly sober....ha