Any thoughts on removing a preamp from your system

Hi John,
Very nice post concerning your individual encounters with various system
configurations. My experiences parallel yours but I disagree on one point
you made.You aren't hearing more transparency with direct or passive
alternatives, just leaner and diluted sound that lacking vital music
information. The full body and tone you realize was missing is abundantly
present with live music. Listen to a live cello, saxaphone, piano, trumpet
etc. The colors, harmonics, richness and vibrancy of tone is crucial to
music. Any audio component that strips way those natural characteristics
is doing a disservice to the complete musical true. A tenor sax heard live is
so rich and full you could can its tone "fat"(I just heard one 3
days ago in a club, he was unmiked, pure and natural). IMO this so called
transparency you mentioned is fake. You'll never hear this from live
acoustic instruments. They possess big tone, fullness and dramatic
dynamic energy. In the past 3 months I've attended 14 live jazz
performances and these essential qualities are clearly evident and make for
a devine and emotional experience every time. John your active preamp
does a superior job of "retaining" those realistic cues although it still won't
match the live sound. It will get you closer than if you eliminate it from your
system.
Charles,

There is a good argument for passive when the control itself is built into the amplifier, as in an integrated amp.

But when the control is in an external box, the problem is that you are totally subject to the whims of the interconnect cables.

One very common buggaboo is that a passive control will sound fine at full volume, but as you decrease the volume control the bass and overall impact will diminish. You will get better results with shorted cables. So a lot depends on setup.

Because of the lower output impedance of many active preamps, they tend to reduce the artifact of the interconnect cables. In fact this is one of the functions that an active preamp should do- ideally, eliminate the cable artifact entirely.

If the active preamp is good in this department and is also lacking coloration, the result is that it will sound better than a passive setup.

Now if you happen to use balanced lines, the whole idea behind the balanced system is to eliminate cable artifact. It is quite successful at this; without it the Golden Age of Stereo (1954 to 1963) would not have occurred. Not all high end balanced preamps and passive controls support the balanced standard (in fact, no passive control does and only a handful of actives do) so you do still read about people hearing differences between balanced cables. That isn't actually supposed to happen, if it does its a sign that the preamp you are playing does not support the standard.

When I first connected my CD player direct to amps, I though I discovered transparancy and detail. I didn't. I liked it until I realized I was lacking everything that made music musical. I think the preamp is the heart and the back bone.

An audio-friend of mine has always found it better not to use a separate hardware preamp in his setups, especially since his latest DAC/preamp (the Danish developed/manufactored Blue Cheese Audio Roquefort http://www.studiosound.dk/cddac/roquefort/) sports a dedicated preamp section with digital volume attenuation. The separate preamps he's tested against it have all failed to deliver equally overall, until a very expensive preamp entered the setup in the form of a Belles LA-01 (driving his Belles SA-100 poweramp). While the inclusion of this hardware preamp to his ears doesn't necessarily translate into a win-win sonic scenario in all respects compared to the stand-alone BCA DAC, he's smitten especially by the added sense of "drive, dynamics and transient abilities - as if the existing components are harnessed into a fuller, better controlled potential in many respects," as he'd more or less put it. This is an intesting observation to me, also insofar it would take such an expensive preamp to finally turn it into (again, in some respects) an even more satisfying sonic experience.

This example - among others, actually - tells me that separate hardware preamps are a potential blessing in some vital respects, but are at same time an added component in the audio chain where many variables combine to make it a challenge for it not to impose too much of a character of its own (read: the challenge of transparency, if you will). I guess for some the above mentioned traits coming in the wake of a hardware preamp overshadow an added layer of coloring/character, where it might be more pronounced, whereas others (like me, for instance) would find it a nuisance - depending of course not only on taste, but also and not least the setup where these evaluations are made.

The motivation behind above mentioned friend trying out a hardware preamp in his setup was essentially due to the planned investment of a turntable, one might add. To me, with a digital source only and a very successful mating of DAC and poweramp direct-coupling, the inclusion of a hardware preamp would have to be so utterly convincing (not least in light of its expected severe cost for it to make a real difference) to have me forget the other areas where the same or less amount of money could make a difference. I've heard many preamp-based setups, and most of them to my ears truly lack the coherency, truth of tone, and snap and power found through my own setup - using no separate hardware preamp. A hardware preamp is not necessarily a sonic blessing in and by itself, and a preamp-less setup is not necessarily marred by what is so generally found in above postings. Just saying..