How important is the preamplifier?

[Guest124]

Hi folks, I own a very nice integrated amp & am planning on moving up to separates within the VA line. However the trade off is the amps i'm considering are not quite as warm/romantic as my SIA-025. They still have that nice VA Kl.A warm/organic sound, but with a tilt toward greater power and resolution. Obviously you have to consider the overall synergy and balance of your system. For example, my S5's are on the warm side..so are my Jorma Prime xlr's & pc's, whilst the Furutech GTX-D(g) wpo also adds just a touch of warmth being the gold version. So there should be enough warmth. Conversely if I owned a pair of Q3's, I would be inclined to go for a warmer sounding amp as the Q3's are more neutral.

I was once told if the power amp is the engine of your system, the preamp is the heart. If so, that would imply it can have a big influence on the overall sound. I'm basically interested to ask if any slight loss of warmth is more than made up for by a much better preamp? If you've made the move from an integrated amp to separates, or perhaps had a big upgrade on the preamp side, i'd be interested to know how much difference it made in your system?

Cheers,
Bodhi.

 

[chadnliz]

An amp only boosts the signal it recieves so can't get much more important then that. Everything has it place in the chain and synergy plays major roll. Tubes for warmth but bass can at times be mushy on some units, solid state adds great control but then that edgy brightness can be a concern.
One can trade off slight warmth but get huge gains in area of image and depth or slam. It all depends on that synergy. Some will do a hybrid of tubes on pre for the warmth and solid state amp for that control. Some do the reverse.....no hard rule.

 

[sleeper22]

Hi folks, I own a very nice integrated amp & am planning on moving up to separates within the VA line. However the trade off is the amps i'm eyeing off are not quite as warm/romantic as my SIA-025. They still have that nice VA Kl.A warm/organic sound, but with greater power and resolution. Obviously you have to consider the overall synergy and balance of your system. For example, my S5's are on the warm side..so are my Jorma Prime xlr's & pc's, whilst the Furutech GTX-D(g) wpo also adds just a touch of warmth being the gold version. So there should be enough warmth. Conversely if I owned a pair of Q3's, I would be inclined to go for a warmer sounding amp as the Q3's are more neutral.

With that box ticked, I was wondering how important the preamp is in your system? I was once told if the power amp is the engine of your system, the preamp is the heart. If so, that implies it has a big influence on the overall sound. I'm basically interested to ask if any slight loss of warmth is more than made up for by a much better preamp? If you've made the move from an integrated amp to separates, or perhaps had a big upgrade on the preamp side, i'd be interested to know how much difference it made in your system?

Cheers,
Bodhi.

The preamp is very important. I prefer a good tubed preamp if your using a solid state amp. Preamps are like women. So many different kinds and flavors lol. Also what is your budget?

 

[JoeESP9]

IME a competently made preamp makes more of a difference in sound than just about all competently made amplifiers. SET's excepted.

 

[Mister Pig]

A pre-amp is no more important than an amp, but it does have the possibility of degrading the sound as strongly as any other component. Now a lot of what you need in a pre-amp depends on what the first gain stage of the amp looks like, and what its input sensitivity is. This also has to be balanced against what the output voltage of the source components are. If the amplifier requires 2 volts or less to reach full output, and the source component is 2 volts output or higher, all the pre-amp is doing is attenuating the signal from source to amplifier. In theory a passive pre-amplfieir can do this job better than an active one, since it uses less parts and a shorter signal path to do the job. Now there is one other consideration. Impedance matching. The pre amp output impedance should have a 1 to 10 ratio to the amplifier input impedance measurement. if you can maintain this ratio or lower, then everything is fine with a passive pre-amp. Some active pre-amplifiers will have an impedance matching or isolation circuit in their design, and that does have a theoretical benefit. But there are passive pre-amplfieirs that have been combined with an active impedance matching circuit also, so it is not a trait exclusive to active pre-amps.

These days there are several design choices for pre-amplifiers, and an active one is not the only game in town. If anything, they may be the hardest ones to design that alters the source signal the least.

Regards
Mister Pig

 

[chadnliz]

IME a competently made preamp makes more of a difference in sound than just about all competently made amplifiers. SET's excepted.

Some truth to that but Class A is very different from Class D as a quick example. The bottom line is it ALL matters, its the old chain and weakest link rule.

 

[eljr]

Obviously you have to consider the overall synergy and balance of your system.

Why? :scratch2:

If a preamp does it's job properly there is not "synergy" involved.

If it is not doing it's job as it should, all synergy will be is noise.

I was once told if the power amp is the engine of your system, the preamp is the heart. If so, that would imply it can have a big influence on the overall sound.

The preamp is a switch box. If working correctly it has no influence on sound.

If it has an influence on sound, demand a new one. (tubes being an exception... if you want your music colored by tubes.)

 

[Guest124]

An amp only boosts the signal it recieves so can't get much more important then that. Everything has it place in the chain and synergy plays major roll. Tubes for warmth but bass can at times be mushy on some units, solid state adds great control but then that edgy brightness can be a concern.
One can trade off slight warmth but get huge gains in area of image and depth or slam. It all depends on that synergy. Some will do a hybrid of tubes on pre for the warmth and solid state amp for that control. Some do the reverse.....no hard rule.

Thanks for your comments Mancave. I agree it's all about balance. I used to run a very neutral Boulder 1060 with a heavily modded Ayon CD-5s as linestage which was a good match..best of both worlds. I think the correlation of ss amps with edgy brightness is an over-generalization however.

Yeah i'm thinking the extra power and capacitance, together with the further refinements of this newer amp will give me similar gains to the Boulder. Basically great control, ease, larger image size etc. Certainly with my SIA-025 I haven't found the need to add tubes upstream as it's plenty warm and mellifluous.

 

[Guest124]

The preamp is very important. I prefer a good tubed preamp if your using a solid state amp. Preamps are like women. So many different kinds and flavors lol. Also what is your budget?

Interestingly Sleeper, Vitus power amps seem to sound better with Vitus preamps from my experience. My Dealer told me a story about one of his customers who bought an SS-102 and paired it with a tube preamp. He didn't like the sound & ended up selling the amp dirt cheap to his friend. Friend buys the (then) cheapest Vitus pre (SL-010). Guy comes over to his friend's house to have a listen and is blown away by the improvement. That guy ended up buying another SS-102 and VA pre, but lost a lot of doh. Rule of thumb: Vitus sounds best with Vitus. My budget is in SL-102 territory, though I should mention my amp upgrade is mapped out to the end of the year, so actual prices could change.

 

[Kneedeepinit]

The speakers are the largest influence on your sound and i would think the preamp is the 2nd biggest influence.

IMO, it is easier to build compentant amps and digital sources so the real challenge is the preamp and speakers.

 

[stoutblock]

Assuming your ears are healthy, and your room layout is decent, the most impact on your audio system quality will be your speakers along with an amp that drives them correctly. Once you get that right, it is possible to screw it up with a poor choice of preamps and/or source equipment. Although my speakers prefer SS amps, I like to use a tube preamp because nothing in SS I've tried adds the same audio effect. Some may say this audio effect is wrong, but I don't care, I like it. Currently I use a Decware CSP3 line stage and a ZP3 phono stage. The Decwares are clean, seem accurate and are made right. They are also simple in that Steve concentrates his efforts more on determining what to remove from a circuit to make it sound better than what he is adding. It is both good and bad that you can access the tubes directly. Only bad is related to young children with curious hands but I built a simple screen cage to surround my tube equipment that I bring out when kids are around. If I was six, I probably would have wanted to to roll a few tubes too....

 

[Guest124]

The speakers are the largest influence on your sound and i would think the preamp is the 2nd biggest influence.

IMO, it is easier to build compentant amps and digital sources so the real challenge is the preamp and speakers.

I agree with your view Kdii. I have the greatest investment proportionally in my speakers. And if I added a VA SL-102 for example, that would be my 2nd biggest investment in the chain ahead of my power amp and cdp/dac (just behind).

 

[chadnliz]

Why? :scratch2:

If a preamp does it's job properly there is not "synergy" involved.

If it is not doing it's job as it should, all synergy will be is noise.




The preamp is a switch box. If working correctly it has no influence on sound.

If it has an influence on sound, demand a new one. (tubes being an exception... if you want your music colored by tubes.)

With all due respect I am not sure your view on preamps is factual, its an important part of the entire balance and performance of a hi quality stereo. To think any preamp should not have any affect on sound is IMO short sided and pretty simplistic thinking.
A amp can only boost what its presented, crap in, crap out.
Your last line is also troubling as if a desired affect is a negative is confusing at best. I can see what your point is but you are taking things a little too literal.

 

[Guest124]

.

Assuming your ears are healthy, and your room layout is decent, the most impact on your audio system quality will be your speakers along with an amp that drives them correctly. Once you get that right, it is possible to screw it up with a poor choice of preamps and/or source equipment. Although my speakers prefer SS amps, I like to use a tube preamp because nothing in SS I've tried adds the same audio effect. Some may say this audio effect is wrong, but I don't care, I like it. Currently I use a Decware CSP3 line stage and a ZP3 phono stage.

There is no doubt that the right power amp makes a big difference to the overall sound. I previously owned a pair of Marten Coltrane Alto's which I initially drove with a Classe Cap-2100. Paired with the little Classe, the Alto's sounded anaemic. I later added a Boulder 1060 which was a perfect match & provided solid control, depth and ease, whilst my Ayon linestage added tube virtues of warmth, sweetness and dimensionality.

Ironically my current S5's are not quite as power hungry as the smaller Alto's, yet still like a good amount of power. In the case of my Alto's, the contribution the Boulder made was greater than my Ayon preamp, though that was an unusual case as the Coltranes like a lot of power. In the case of my S5's, given a moderate step up in power, I think I could get the biggest gains on the preamp side as relatively speaking, the weak spot in my current system is my SIA-025's linestage.

 

[bare]

In my experiences, Integrated amps have a lesser Pre section than separates.
Many Intergrateds are simply Higher Gain amps with an input circuit added on.. often as afterthoughts and too often using opamps , for a cheapy addition to a product line.
One Can do better

Pre quality is V important.
Even a Simple Stepped Attenuator, "passive' pre, outsounds Many Kilobuck Preamps... IF one doesn't require a phono.. (although Many ..Very.. affordable Phono pre circuits of Striking performances are available)
Usually a real Eye (ear opener...assuming one can get impedence and capacitance issues under control with whatever gear one has on hand.

As Always Many paths to any given end... pick one?

 

[eljr]

It is NOT just a switch box. The way the pre-amp topology is designed is important because that affects the sound hugely.

If all pre-amps were created equal when I tried 4 different pre's, with one amp/speaker combo, they would all have sounded the same and they didn't. Some were horrid and one was excellent.

Can I get you to agree that a preamp should have no influence on sound?

 

[Gibsonian]

Yes, in a perfect world all preamps and amps would not influence the sound in any way shape or form, simply amplify it from source to you. We do not live in a perfect world and amps and preamps sound different. If they didn't we wouldn't have so many choices would we.

To the original OP's question, uber important.

 

[eljr]

With all due respect I am not sure your view on preamps is factual, its an important part of the entire balance and performance of a hi quality stereo. To think any preamp should not have any affect on sound is IMO short sided and pretty simplistic thinking.

My view is quit factual rest assured.

The preamplifier provides voltage gain. It is
equipment which switches between line level sources and offers a volume control.

Why don't you tell me exactly what effect on sound a preamp is designed to have? Should it sound like a piano, a baby crying, a flute? What key do preamps attempt to play in?

Please be specific.

To think any preamp should have any affect on sound is IMO short sided and pretty simplistic thinking.

 

[eljr]

Yes, in a perfect world all preamps and amps would not influence the sound in any way shape or form, simply amplify it from source to you. We do not live in a perfect world and amps and preamps sound different. If they didn't we wouldn't have so many choices would we.

To the original OP's question, uber important.

Thank you for that qualified but honest answer.

My next question would be, do you agree that level matched double blind tests make differentiation between two properly working non tube preamps virtually indistinguishable?

and that virtually all measurements show any differences so minimal so as to be audibly indistinguishable to human hearing?


and lastly, will you agree that the identification of "better" in non sighted tests, as it pertains to our conversation here, is random?

 

[kfalls]

Why? :scratch2:

If a preamp does it's job properly there is not "synergy" involved.

If it is not doing it's job as it should, all synergy will be is noise.




The preamp is a switch box. If working correctly it has no influence on sound.

If it has an influence on sound, demand a new one. (tubes being an exception... if you want your music colored by tubes.)

I think what he's trying to say is, like many other links in the chain, a preamp should provide switching and not influence the sound. It should be transparent, just as many interconnects and speaker wires say they are. What we get at the end of the chain should be what was intended by the original sound engineer. Any deviation other than neutral is for personal preference. If you like a warm sound, it's your preference.