How to judge a preamp's sound

hilde45
How to judge a preamp’s sound

The ultimate preamp shouldn’t have a sound, it should sound like nothing eg. a piece of wire, like going direct from source to poweramp.

Now if you have a source that needs a bandaid fix, by coloring with some sort of distortion, then there are many preamps that can do this, but finding the right one is a big ask.

Wouldn’t it be better and far cheaper to change the source to one you like, and then go direct with it to the poweramp for the ultimate in transparency and dynamics and lowest possible distortion/coloration?.

Cheers George

Thanks for the informed replies. They make sense. (And @russ69 I didn't get the sense they were throwing in amps at random.)

I have read so many posts where people discuss the major differences between amps that I figured it would be hard to estimate the character of the preamp across those differences. I imagined someone trying to describe the flavor of a bland meat in, say, a curry, a tomato sauce, a hollandaise, etc. But this analogy appears to be a bad one. Glad to know better.

It's easier to characterize the sound of 1 component if you can try it with many other components.  You will eventually hear a consistent trend.

My question is, Can someone accurately generalize about "the" sound of preamp across a variety of different amps? Wouldn’t the amps be enough of a variable to at least complicate the "character" of a preamp?

Yeah, I’d agree with that. While it’s certainly interesting to hear how a pre might pair with a given amp, if you’re interested in the relative sound of a preamp the logical, direct, and more common reviewer methodology would be to compare it to other preamps. Duh.

Hmm. So now we have the claim that:

(a) to hear what a preamp sounds like, try it with many amps and see what qualities persist through the changes.

vs.

(b) to hear what a preamp sounds like, keep the amp the same and then change between preamps to listen for the changes between preamps.

I suppose these are not necessarily at odds, though. They could be complementary?

Another option might also include

(c) Keep the preamp and amp the same, and change the tubes in the preamp only. See what qualities persist through tube changes.

I'd guess that (c) offers the least information, but it would offer some, no?