What's your "diminishing returns" preamp choice?
Ditto to Timrhu. The best most transparent preamp is no preamp, unless!!! you need to your ear, a "colouration" that nearly all preamps bring to the sound. And then it's particular to your own system and your own ear, no one elses. If you believe that your source amp and speakers have the sound you want to maintain and keep, then a passive preamp or no preamp (if your source has a volume control)is the way to go. Cheers George |
Cost really doesn't have much to do with it- how good it sounds does. Many preamps have a price tag that is not in line with how they sound. I've seen $2000 preamps take $13,000 preamps and eat them for breakfast- better in every way. Yet people will often think the more expensive preamp is better just because of the price. You can make things too simple though; passives generally will eviscerate the bass impact as the math . You really do need a proper preamp if you want to hear everything correctly. The exception is if you can run the passive at full up. Even George agrees with this: http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?aamps&1427794264&openflup&12&4#12 |
Your putting words into my mouth Ralph. I said if you listen to a passive up full and the level is loud enough for you, you do not miss out on anything, as the transients are not smothered even when they're full up. Passives sound just the same down low as they do up high, so long as the source is not a weak high impedance tube output stage >1kohm Cheers George |
The biggest surprise was when I tried the Tortuga preamp. It has bettered both an Audio Research REF-3 and a Constellation preamp. It uses light dependent resistors for attenuation and has software controlled auto calibration to eliminate impedance drift over time. Most surprising is that it has the best bass performance that I've heard in a preamp. By the way, it also has user selectable input impedance which allows the user to optimize performance of the source device. The balanced version I have is $1800. |
