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Help with finding ultra-transparent pre-amp

I got a new player, Wadia 581i SE, and once I hooked it up directly to amps I realized that my pre-amp is not transparent enough.
To make a long story short, I would like to find a very transparent pre-amp to be inserted between player and amps (no coloration, no shift in tonality, and no loss in dynamics, micro or macro), that would result in a sound indistinguishable from the sound of my player going directly to amps.
Essentially I want a wire with attenuation control. Balanced connectivity is preferred.
I tried a transformers based passive pre-amp (it was a custom, very well executed job), result was not good, not only that it killed dynamics and resulted in a dull and uninteresting sound, but transparency was in fact worse in comparison with my present pre-amp.
Is there such a transparent pre-amp, or it is just a pipe dream?
The cost is of course to be considered, I would not go for anything that is more than let’s say 3.5K, new or used.
I have been reading about Placette (resistor based), has anyone had any experience using it in a system that has very resolving front end?
The rest of my system:
Bryston BP26 pre-amp
Bryston 7B SST amps
PMC IB2 speakers
sashav
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,901 posts
 
The issue with the Wadia has been that while its a great player, the volume control gets you into trouble. In basic terms, its no good below about 85 on the display- you loose too much resolution. So to get the best results with it you have to have a good transparent line stage.

The way you set up the Wadia is to set the internal jumpers to the lowest output setting available, then run it in the preamp.

With some amplifier/speaker combinations, upon resetting the output level as above, you can get by without a preamp, but otherwise, the result **should** be that if the preamp is a good combination, it will actually sound better with the preamp than without.
suchtan
42 posts
 
Direct drive is better than through mediocre pre but a superior pre will beat direct drive every time. My dcs stacks sound excellent driving my power amps directly but improve much further with a Boulder 1010 pre. Look for the balanced tube pre such as atma mp3 or asthetix calypso or Modwright 36.5.
honest1
586 posts
 
I have expereinced the same thing with a GNSC modified 850. The most transparent I have heard was an Audiopax per-amp. Although I did not take it home to try in my system, I spent a few hours with it at a shop in NH. I could not hear any clear difference between the system with the pre in or with the Wadia direct. In my system, the best I have heard is the Pass X1, which accentuates the midrange a bit, which could be good opr bad depending on system matching. I have not been able to identify drop in resolution due to the digital volume control, although it is difficult to tell due to the change in percieved sound as volume changes. My experience has been that the drop in resolution due to adding a preamp is quite obvious, more so than anything the DVC does. I have not tried an AtmaSphere pre-amp, though.
jagdynamics
28 posts
 
I disagree with Tvad..............the Lamm LL2 Deluxe is one of the best preamp when using 1950's black sable mullard tubes and all the Vishay caps are replace with Vcaps TFTF/OIMP and Mundorf silver/gold caps. Those who have not heard a Lamm LL2 Deluxe with these modifictions are missing out on an extreme preamp at its best. Check out my system and you will see what it takes to make a great system much greater by ten fold.
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?vdone&1197684391&read&3&4&
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