Best preamp is no preamp: always true?

active preamp. The only direct CD connection I have heard and liked was a $6K Wadia. For that you can buy a great CD and pre while maintaining flexibility.

A passive preamp will often sound better than an active but that is only because most active pre's are poor.When you discover a really good active pre-like the Suprateks,it becomes obvious that the preamp is actually more important than the power amp.You can never achieve good sound from a system using a good power amp and an average pre but you can get great sound from a good pre and an average power amp.

JT

I tried a Placette RVC, with .5 meter Audioquest Jaguar cables to my Mcintosh MC 2000 amp.
It lacked dynamics. The music lacked life. My Supratek Grange, is 1,000 times better.

I have also done the expermient with hooking my cd player directly up to the amp. A pre amp to me just seems to pull together a more musical presentation.

Sugarbrie, you have a Creek integrated and an Onkyo receiver. So where's the preamp????

I'd like to prepsent a few facts which may help you to understand this complex issue. Because the answer is "it depends".

1st, if we look back 40 yesrs ago, we did not have high output sources. So it was a must to have preamp not only to switch sources but to amplify the signal for the amps. So, the amps were not buit as sesitive as todays amps. Not only that most speakers were very efficient. When CDP first came out they also had much lower output(less than 1v) than todays CDP(2v).

2nd, the only things in audio chaine which does not amplify the signal is the phono pickup and DAC chip. As soon as the signal leaves the TRUE source each component amplifies the signal including the source equipment.

3rd, amplification process doesn't make the input signal bigger. It make a bigger COPY of the input and discard the original. So, as soon as the original leaves the TRUE source, its forever gone and only the COPY handed down.

4th, all amplification process react to the demand from Down Stream and pass that to the Up Stream. Which means, speaker demand reachs all the way up to the very first amplification. Which also means, if the Mid Stream amplification can meet the demand of DS less demand goes to US.

5th, eash pomponent has multiple amp/gain stages. Two to as many as five. Less can be better but demands much better performance from US.

6th, many of todays speakers are very inefficient. Impedence drops too low which put much high demand up the chain.

I'm a purist and I don't use pre nither active nor passive. I'm using Meridian digital pre infront of the DAC. My DAC is Denon DVD5000 which I had disable the entire DVD section route all poower to DAC section and re bias its output to class A resulting 4v of output from the 2v. And all my amps are very sensitive which requires only .5 to 1v of input. I'm a SET guy and most of them are naturally sesitive.

More often than not it will be your speakers calling the shot.

Best regards...