Pre amp for Pass Aleph 3


Current or former owners of the Pass Labs Aleph 3 amp, please give me some idea of what pre amp you like and sounds good as well as mates well with the 3. I just picked one up and know it needs a pre amp with a bit of gain. No passives with this amp as noted in the Stereophile Class A review.

Im currently thinking of AA Modulus 3A, Cary SPL-50 or EA-3 DJH Sig. pre as well as an Audio Note M-One. Id like to have a MM phono stage...but not necessary. Price range used is ~1K.

Thanks for the ideas and thoughts,
Ken
128x128kehut
There is no reason yo can't use a passive with it unless you have a very low-output source and/or your speakers are quite inefficient. What you should avoid, however, is a preamp with a high output impedance. This is not too common and is likely to occur only in a tube preamp, but is something to be mindful of. The reason is that the Pass has a comparatively low input impedance.
I specifically found Aleph amps delicious with passive preamps.Of course impedance matching is extremely important but results are outstanding IMHO
Cheers
In the past I used a DACT DIY based passive. Now Luminous audio shunted passivewith 4.99 ohm Caddock
Cheers
I feed my aleph 3 with a benchmark dac1. I use the volume control on the dac. minimalist route, I have an adcom 5 disk changer feeding the dac1 thru coaxial cable. The sound is pure pleasure to my ears. Speakers are totem model 1 sig. and velodyne servo sub. very simple and minimal setup for two channel.

Tony