preamp vs amp: relative effect on sound?

Anybody else?

How about Q2?

Depending on your speakers, the amp could be as much as 80%.

For q2, it’s more about the the voltage required for full output on your amp. For example, if your amp requires .5 v for full rated power, you would probably want to pair it with a low gain preamp.

Also, the input impedance of the preamp should be at least 100 times higher than the output impedance of your preamp as a general rule of thumb.

Q1.. I was always of the belief that pre amps had the biggest impact regarding sound that changed after i bought the AGD amps. But in most cases i would say it's 60/40 with pre's having the biggest impact.

Q2.. Higher gain pre's can deliver more dynamics and detail.

@twoleftears

it is highly situation specific, as you can imagine

prentice is correct, preamp will have more influence if the amp has a pretty easy time gripping and driving the speakers, otherwise, amp to speaker interface and interaction can be dominant

for many years i have always felt the heart of my system is my conrad johnson linestage (prem 16ls2 or et5 or art over the years), but i used fairly easy to drive bbc heritage speakers like spendor harbeth proac quad -- and i use plenty of amp to drive them whether tube or ss -- thus the cj brought the magic to the party...

My "fun" system which I use for music and HT purposes consisted of Wharfedale Opus-3, Krell KRC-3 and Adcom 5802. My preamp is nearly twice the price of my power amp, but I think it is the best way to bring out the sound quality of my system. I swap out the Adcom for a Mark levinson 23.5 and only observe about 5-10% improvement. So, I could almost certainly say that the preamp makes more impact on my overall sound quality comparing to the power amp. How much more impact? I really don’t know.