The future of preamps

12-19-13: Georgelofi
Nuforce dac 9 has RCA Output impedance: 0.01 Ohm.

I see that in the specs at their website, and in the manual. Surely it is a typo, though?

Regards,
-- Al

@ atmasphere, Hi, man-o-man did I enjoy your post about passive and active preamps, I actually learned something there, LOL!, not to sound arragant, that is rare for me, I love it!, also, thankyou for taking your time to explain how your preamp protects from DC, I am interested in your products to audition one of your preamps at this point, I do need to tell you thou, I have ridden myself a long time ago of useing preamps period, I have used solid state and recently tubed source direct to amp with success since 1996!, I seen you mentioned cable control, and a roll off of the top and bottom bands of the sound, presatation etc.., I addressed this kind of problem in my opinion, by useing some of the best cables money can buy to use with source direct to amp, the presatation is extremly focused and the presatation is very large and well conceived, the most transparent, with realism of an actual musical event that I can possibly afford to buy, In regards to your product, I am hopeing preamps have changed over the years for the better, I have listened to preamps this year, I do hear more information, it's all there!, I have never heard better transparency and dynamics, with realism than a source direct to amp, and God knows I have heard alot of cost no object preamps in my time!, I am also intrigued by your preamp for the simple fact it may not allow Dc into my amp, and your preamp is direct coupled like my amp is, I believe your design and circuit will give more transparency than alot of preamps out there, I do not know when I am going to listen to your product, I do know that I am going to, I have been enjoying this thread, you make it very interesting to be able to learn of circuits etc..., we need Almarg back on this thread too, cheers and merry x-mas to all of you!

@ Atmasphere, Hi, If your preamp M-1 is direct coupled, what do you use to safe guard from DC exsposure if I attempted to use your product with the krell 700cx?

I've only use tube preamps (Sonic Frontier, AI, CJ, VAC ...) with all my Krells amps (KSA100s, FPB300 and FPB600) in the past and never had a problem.

Don't like Krell pre and can't remember last time own a SS pre.

Knghifi,
Did you use your Light speed preamp with the Krells? Seems like it would be a suitable match .
Charles

You put a White Paper out on this Atmasphere and you'll be shot down in flames. Mathematically how is the Nuforce not going to control the interconnects to the Belles?? You flat earthers are just too much!!!

Actually an article on this subject sounds like a good idea as the math seems to be poorly understood, apparently by even members of the industry; thanks for the suggestion.

The rule of thumb here is:

if you can hear differences between interconnect cables then the source is not controlling the cable.

This has been understood for the last 60 years. The history of balanced line operation goes back to the phone company, and its success was immediately taken up by the recording and broadcast industry and resulted in what was called 'hifi'.

Some folks here might recall a series of letters that Stereophile published back in the 90s in their letters to the editor column; these letters were written by several different audio engineers. In the letters, these engineers stated their astonishment at how audiophiles gave credence to the idea that cables make a difference in the sound.

Now anyone in high end audio understands that cables *do* make a difference, the question is, why would an audio engineer think that they didn't?? The answer is, engineers are used to working with professional audio gear, which supports the balanced line standard.

High end audio equipment for the most part does not. So its my surmise that these engineers did not think about that when they sent these letters in (basically describing the high end audio cable industry as charlatans). It was apples and oranges.

However the laws of physics have a way of hanging around and are still very much with us today. I have already described the math of why a passive control can't control a cable and why if you are going to have success with one, why you will have to put some time into auditioning cables to go with it, and often spending a lot of money on those cables, with only limited success being the result.

I will go into that in more depth in the article.