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Preamps can color sound considerably. Surprising?

Had the pleasure of listening to 4 hi end preamplifiers this weekend. And each preamp sounded very nice. But they were different. Each preamplifier has different circuitry and within the frequency spectrum there was more vibrancy in some areas versus other areas. Amplifiers are the same way.

It takes a while to appreciate sound differences between preamplifiers. And then you got the issue of Breakin which further changes the color.

clearly designers are playing around with all the internal circuitry in a manner that hopefully will be appealing. Clearly, these units do not get out of the way when it comes to moving a signal through the box.

I think solid state is more susceptible to coloring versus tubes. Tubes color sound as well.

It's all about marketing different ways to color Music. This isn't necessarily bad but it's never really talked about this way.

 

 

 

jumia
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condosound
132 posts
 

scm: Thanks re Tortuga LDR, I'll try to listen to it sometime. But it needs external power, and so it is not truly passive. I have a 12 VDC battery-powered Dodd Audio preamp which is not passive, but it's absolutely silent. Can you switch the Tortuga to battery power?

ozzy62:I'd bet that most Hattor users are also using the optional external 12 VDC...probably in order to power the signal through the attenuator, but I'll try to listen sometime.

wolf-I've heard Schitt Freya--excellent, but not passive. With 6922 or 6NS7 or other great tubes, why wouldn't it be wonderful?. 6922 type tubes are glorious with the Dodd, and I love 6SN7 as well.

immatthewj
2,391 posts
 

Maybe heart=center of the system

Liver= contributing but not the center

I still don't think this works as an appropriate analogy,  as the passive preamp is still performing the same function as the active. 

mulveling's avatar
mulveling
1,998 posts
 

In general, I hate use of these long-stretch analogies with audio. They mainly serve to further derail a discussion that was already careening off track. Don't have relevant experience to the topic at hand? No problem! Anyone can make up a wild analogy!

Anyways, I'm surprised that team passive preamps hasn't compared the active preamp to an appendix 😅

pesky_wabbit's avatar
pesky_wabbit
1,183 posts
 

Personally, I‘m rather in awe of the “Gallbladder machines“ one sees for sale from certain Chinese audio merchants….

antigrunge2
1,460 posts
 

It‘s funny how people argue about this subject. Attenuation and amplification are fundamentally different and the simple fact of the matter is that dacs only require the former. So what may be useful in amplifying a phono signal with rare exemptions become distorition when a dac is used.

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