Why amps, pre-amps, integrated amps???

If you have a company known for great amps, another known for great pre amps, yet others building better tuners than others and on down the line then seperates allow you to go in whatever direction you wish. The reciever or integrated locks you in but folks with seperates can get the sound, features or even cosmetics in any combination they wish.

If your speakers need much power, you need a bigger amp(s) than an integrated can accomodate. It is difficult to find an integrated which equals the performance of separates. They necessarily involve compromises due to size constraints. The arguments in their favor are that they potentially allow one to eliminate a whole bunch of expensive cables, and usually take up less space. However, some "integrateds" have a separate power supply, which negates the size advantage.

You see an awful lot of "reason for sale - downsizing" ads on the Gon these days, as the boomers age and move into smaller places. That usually means getting an integrated to replace separates.

"It is difficult to find an integrated which equals the performance of separates."

I would tend to disagree with this as a whole-sale blanket statement.

Integrateds are often overlooked as the 'value' component.

For a given price point, integrated amps can be the better value and performer. For a given price point, separates involve additional costs for separate chassis, power supplies, interconnects, and even power cords.

Take the same amount of money and you could easily step into a 'better' integrated over separates.

So, it depends.....

Why not.

Interviews with audio electronics designers often turn to the importance of power supplies. I've seen this in interviews with James Bongiorno concerning the Ampzilla in the '70s, Paul Gower of PS Audio, and several others.

Transformers vibrate and when you add several to the same chassis you are raising the noise floor or you are compromising performance by requiring amp, pre, phono, and tuner to share the same power supply. If you mount and isolate separate power supplies for each component you have a large unwieldy single component where all power supplies are still sharing a single AC source through a single cord.

I started with a receiver. I graduated to separate tuner, preamp (with phono) and amp. I tried to go back to a receiver (Outlaw RR2150) to my extreme disappointment, went to an integrated with outboard tuner and compact phono, and now have separate tuner, phono, line stage, and power amp, all in full-sized 17"w chassis. The power supplies in the phono and line stages are bigger than what you'd get in a wall wart or PS section mounted in a standard-sized integrated.

It's not for panache or status. I'm interested in one thing: the music coming out of the speakers and how much it emotionally involves me. In that arena, so far in my experience separates win. I'm confident that there are integrateds that could beat my humble stack of separates (e.g., Pass, Krell, AR), but at a price I couldn't afford.