less is more in the idea of electronics in the audio chain.
If one had a very satisfying sound quality with active speakers, before a preamp was added in..and then had ’perceptively’ worse sound quality after a preamp was added in, then..get rid of the preamp, and go back to being without a preamp.
I’ve had my hands inside of and torn down and modified some good 50 preamplifiers of all brands and quality levels, besides rebuilds of preamps for others. mostly done with single cause analysis in the chain of modification(s) done in each unit.
The conclusion is that if the load of the source as compared to the input of the amplifying device..if this pair is well matched..then.. the addition of an active preamp will likely be degrading. Ok, will inescapably be degrading.
Even a single piece of wire is degrading to sound quality. So a box of active and passive components, that the internal and overall distorting and signal changing/damaging interactions count into the hundreds...
..where this 100+ interactions device, is called a preamp..that if this device is added in, then the simple logic is that --- it degrades.
It’s supposed one single advantage is that it is supposed to better match impedance between source and input/load, and if that part is taken care of already..then the preamp is a clear cut degradation to the given optimized system.
in 35 years of playing with audio gear re my hands inside of it and making rebuilding, doing it all as single cause analysis down to single resistor changes and the like...this... informs me that preamps are almost always a degradation to the sound quality of an audio system. that their advantages are limited.
Where logically, by all possible methods of analysis..that a complex device like a preamplifier is 100% a source of signal degradation, and one must try and decide if that degradation is outweighed by the single benefit of better signal impedance matching (cables must be added into this calculation) to the input circuit of the amplifying device.
I know it would be best for me to encourage you to buy more cables as we make and sell cables, but in audio ’less is more’, and that --- is inescapable. It is due to how signal itself interacts with conductive materials, dielectrics, transistors, and so on.
Re the subject of fundamental single cause analysis..when one goes completely to ground in the most fundamental way possible, at the primary divide.. in the realm of electricity being the carrier for/of signal at the molecular interactive...We designed and built and sell the liquid metal cables and they are utterly unique in the realm of signal conductors of all kinds (in the world), being fully liquid at room temperature, and requiring the application of complex math surrounding Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) and higher level math electrokinetics to analyze.... and this math and science is unsolved at this time.
Basically put, people get a chance to hear what wire sounds like for the first time in their lives (collectively and individually), like a fish that experiences the difference of ’other’ (outside of water) for the first time ever.
This is difficult or impossible to do in audio, due to the generally hundreds of interactions in an entire system, that are all conflated - inside chains or series of black boxes. So we presented to all... for the first time in audio, period, the essential single fundamental -- as a difference. It is actually a really big deal, for those who think it through.
There is a lot of detail and points I’m leaving out of my argument (preamps and the idea of fundamental single cause analysis in the complex chain of audio), re things people will hold up to question, but think of them as being there, but unspoken.... as I’m not going to write a thesis or book chapter on it..
