If you are considering a balanced preamp, its helpful (to reduce noise and colorations) if it supports the balanced standard. I've found over the years that most consumer preamps that are balanced don't actually support the standard. The thing is, if the preamp is competent and otherwise supports the standard, there's no going back to single-ended. You might want to consider widening your options!
Affordable Decent Preamp & thoughts on Emotiva XSP-1 vs PS Audio Stellar Gain Stage
Shopping for / Researching a good, solid, Pre-Amp for my system.
Currently using the Pre-Amp stage of a "classic" NAC 7220PE Receiver
AMP = Emotiva XPA-2 Gen 3 (has both Balanced & Unbal Inputs)
Speakers = ELAC Uni-Fi UB5 on stands / Goldenear Amplified Sub
Sources = Bluesound Node 2i / CD / Occasional Phono
System is in my Living Room (NOT Dedicated "listening room"), so speaker placement etc is less than optimal and subject to approval of Wife - so, want something decent but "bleeding edge" would be of little benefit...
Current "Front-Runners" for Pre-Amp (up to around $1500 budget)
EMOTIVA XSP-1:
Likes:
Likes:
Currently using the Pre-Amp stage of a "classic" NAC 7220PE Receiver
AMP = Emotiva XPA-2 Gen 3 (has both Balanced & Unbal Inputs)
Speakers = ELAC Uni-Fi UB5 on stands / Goldenear Amplified Sub
Sources = Bluesound Node 2i / CD / Occasional Phono
System is in my Living Room (NOT Dedicated "listening room"), so speaker placement etc is less than optimal and subject to approval of Wife - so, want something decent but "bleeding edge" would be of little benefit...
Current "Front-Runners" for Pre-Amp (up to around $1500 budget)
EMOTIVA XSP-1:
Likes:
- Fully Balanced (consumer design for low-noise)
- HAS Phono Stage
- Plenty of Inputs and Outputs
- Sub Management
- Remote
- Kinda’ BIG
- Aesthetics - a bit too much Blue LED
- US-Owned company, but made in China
Likes:
- Sleek, Simple design (slimmer / less "gaudy" than EMO)
- PS Audio reputation for Sound Quality tuned by extensive LISTENING
- I can get it at a substantial discount from MSRP
- Appears to have a quality DACT built-in (but, I’m an admitted DACT Noob...)
- Remote
- No built-in Phono (but currently not using it a lot - know I can get affordable external phono stage)
- Wish it had one or two more balanced Inputs for future flexibility
- Seems like "Less for More $$"
- No dedicated / managed output to run my sub (but my sub has Speaker-Level I/O and built-in controls)
- ...
- 12 posts total
In your situation I’d consider this Anthem AVM50 prepro. It’s got a decent preamp section, but maybe even more important given your limited speaker placement options and sub you might find Anthem’s room correction and sub integration capabilities to be very advantageous -- perhaps even more so than going for a more pure 2-channel pre. Best of luck. https://www.ebay.com/itm/192921906325?ul_ref=http%253A%252F%252Frover.ebay.com%252Frover%252F1%252F7... If you’d like to try tubes you could do far worse than this Backert Rhumba for a little over your price target... http://www.echohifi.com/details/13757/Backert-Labs_Rhumba-1.1 or this Sachs SP14... http://www.dsachsconsulting.com/custom%20line%20stage.html |
- 12 posts total