Budget preamp with quality volume control
Dear Audiogoners,
I used to be a firm believer that the signal path should be as short as possible and, as such, I have been using the two-channel system without a dedicated preamp. For a long period of time, I have relied on the digital attenuator in DAC for volume control, knowing the digital attenuator would compress the dynamic range of the sound. Therefore, I switch the volume control on DAC to the fixed mode, bypass the digital attenuation and use the unity gain knob in the back of the power amp for volume control. Depending on the music recording level, however, sometimes I need to turn the unity gain control way down to get proper sound level. This is particularly painful when I use the full-balance connection because of the double voltage gain.
In short, I am looking for a budgetary preamp with quality volume control that either has relay switch stepped control or precise potentiometer for left-right channel match to curb the issue. I try to summarize important (to me) performance catgories as best I can for various good sounding preamp I know (with or without headphone amp/dac) as shown below. It is found the Schiit Magnius happens to have the highest performance ratio. However, I am pretty sure that I likely miss other good performers due to my limited knowledge and would like to solicit for your inputs. Your kind assistance is appreciated.
@audphile1 I have looked that option earlier. Since I have hard time to pay $1000 for 1st Watt B1 buffer preamp, the only option I have looked is the Zerozone Pass X1-B Buffer Preamp from Aliexpress for around $230 incl. shipping. But unfortunately, ZZ pass x1-B only works with Pass amp. If you know other source pls let me know. @zlone My amps should be fine with Freya. Two are 33k and one 20k. Thx |
As mentioned earlier, after trying out Schiit SYS, I no longer consider passive preamp. I suspect the degraded SQ, i.e., soften lows and restrainted less airy highs, is resulted from the mismatched impedance. In addition, the headroom becomes fairly limited because of signal loss. Most of passive preamps have pretty high output impedance and unavoidably create mismatch issues with my amp (20k ohms - 33k ohms). I could not locate the specs for Pacette passive linestage even on their website but suspect its output imp. is no exception. But thank you for the thoughts. |
@lanx0003 One thing to consider is the gain stage of your power amp. My pass labs power amp has a gain of 28db and therefore only really requires a buffer preamp. It would be worth looking at the gain of your power amp and use the appropriate preamp. It seems your dac has a gain stage on the output and between that the gain of your amp, you have too much gain. One solution is to replace the potentiometer (s) on your power amp with one with higher resistance. To me, it doesn't make any sense to add yet another gain stage and volume control in front of your amp that has a potentiometer in the signal path. Another solution would remove the potentiometer from the amp and get a SPL Volume 2 which is basically buffered analog Alps RK-27 potentiometer. |
secretguy1,397 posts Like any of you could hear the difference in volume controls
Showing how much you know…….again.
The volume control used in a preamp is more important than the topology.
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