The future of preamps

01-02-14: Charles1dad
Al,
You are the man! At this point I don't know what more "need be said".
Charles,

Nothing more needs to be said, this is all simply a waste of cyberspace. Wc65mustang has this nailed down pretty well.

This guy is either a troll who likes to talk trash about tube preamps or an absolute idiot. Take your pick. I think we should take votes. This is the most absurd thing I ever heard; Have the manufacture give in writing that his preamp will not sh-t on his tube amp. Maybe I should have my Dentist give me in writing that the new crown he put in my mouth will never fall off, never break, or never have to be redone in my life time. Absolute nonsense. Ralph I would not sell this nut a preamp if he stood on his head and offered you double the retail price. If you do I warned you he will call you every day saying something isn't quite right and he thinks DC is poising his pets.

So far no one has pointed out the obvious so maybe it does not need saying, but a review of this thread and several others leads one to believe that George is "defending his turf" by talking trash about competitive active pre-amps. And I say this reluctantly, as an owner of one of his passive Lightspeed Attenuators. The LSA is in the opinion of many on this board (myself included), the biggest bargain in high end audio. However, it's not a replacement for a pre-amp if you have more than one source and it does lose out in SQ, to my ears, to actives at 10-20x the price. I do not have the technical know how to assess his claims vs Ralph's but if Almarg says that the marketing literature in the Krell manual is off the mark, then it is off the mark. He's an EE w no dog in this fight and a demonstrated track record of providing excellent interpretation of complex (to me anyways) technical and mathematical issues.

George, your generosity in making your product available at a bargain price and your intellectual property available to the DIY community is well known and exemplary. Unfortunately, you do not do your product or your reputation a service by trashing competitors. While many of us here know that you are "in the business", that should have been disclosed to the OP at the very least, to allow him to evaluate potential motivations.

Swampwalker:
I have to set the record straight for you, not once have I trashed the sound of dc coupled output tube preamp. In fact as active tube preamps go it would sound the most transparent way of doing it, no coupling caps in the signal path on it's output.
Unlike 99% of most tube preamps that have coupling caps or transformers on their outputs to stop any dc from getting to the poweramps.

It's fact that if Audiolabyrinth uses it with a dc coupled poweramp like his Krell, should any fault cause dc on this preamps output, it will take out the Krell and most probably the speakers as well. As the Krell's engineer's have also had the same concerns.

As if a dc coupled tube preamp going faulty the dc offset on it's output is far more deadly than a solid state preamp going dc on it's output.

Audiolabyrinth just wants assurance that this will not happen to his prize Krell and speakers.

Cheers George

So far no one has pointed out the obvious so maybe it does not need saying, but a review of this thread and several others leads one to believe that George is "defending his turf" by talking trash about competitive active pre-amps.

Maybe it's not obvious that George is "defending his turf" so no one has pointed it out. Just 2 designers disagree on principles in building a preamp and is getting personal.