I’m using an Allnic L3000 Mk II preamp. It’s transformer coupled to its output instead of capacitor coupled. -That’s what drew me to it, like the DSD. -No complaints so far.
There are many things you just said that I agree with, but not when they get assembled in that way.
The absolute primary reason pre-amps exist is to improve electrical compatibility between a source and an amplifier. It was too hard to go in one step from record needle to speakers. It also is a convenient place to perform volume control – by having an abundance of gain combined with a variable resistive attenuator in most cases, or by having a variable gain stage in some designs.
Necessarily, by the laws of physics in general and thermodynamics in particular, every component you add to the signal path increases noise and distortion and reduces the fidelity of the signal in some way. What’s a “bad” pre-amp? It’s one that adds too much noise and distortion. What’s a “good” pre-amp? It’s one that adds very little noise and distortion. What’s an “ideal” pre-amp…? (Leaving that as a rhetorical question.)
I think where the two camps differ is in the overall strategy being applied to getting musical enjoyment and/or audio fidelity. It’s possibly tied in with being part of the digital generation for me, but I take the view that since there in infinite flexibility on the recording/production/transport side, what I want from my audio hardware is the closest possible thing to “straight wire with gain”. That seems to offer the maximum flexibility – it can sound like absolutely anything! If there are pleasing ways to manipulate the audio signal in the digital realm before it hits the DAC, then that’s open to me. But most of the time I try to get my system to represent the recorded signal as perfectly as possibly can be done.
In my case, I do not need any additional gain, source selection, analog attenuation or impedance matching. The DS DAC and my amp and my speakers work brilliantly together in all those respects.
Putting a pre-amp in this chain would necessarily add noise and distortion, because of physics. It’s quite possible that many people would like the sound of those changes, and I’m totally OK with that! But it’s not how I want to do things because it’s inflexible. That noise and distortion is added to everything I would hear.
I refuse to have vacuum tubes anywhere in my system, because they’re inconsistent. But I totally get that other people enjoy tinkering and tailoring their system’s sound via tube rolling. And I’m OK with them doing that too!
In the end I just wish that pre-amp lovers would be OK with admitting that – beyond the necessities of gain and impedance matching, or the practicality of source selection and volume control – the only reason to want a pre-amp is if you enjoy the specific kinds of noise and distortion that it adds to your system. There’s nothing wrong with that, just like there’s nothing wrong with aiming to get a system that is capable of reproducing any kind of sound given the appropriate audio source.
Have you compared it to the BHK preamp?
No I have NOT auditioned the BHK. The BHK preamp was one of my finalists though in researching my purchase. In addition, the number of outputs for the W4S exceeds that of the PSA BHK. (2 sets per channel versus a single set) That was a factor in my decision. The first review discusses the two preamps. I had a W4S integrated amp previously, and was very pleased with its performance. The W4S pre was also considerably less money. I have a high end tube buffer, so a tubed preamp was not a requirement.
Get everything you say, and am somewhat surprised that you seem to be saying that you are a younger person. But you are entirely welcome to like what you like.
The things I take issue with are:
“The absolute primary reason pre-amps exist is to improve electrical compatibility between a source and an amplifier”
There’s other reasons for 'em.
“Putting a pre-amp in this chain would necessarily add noise and distortion, because of physics.”
Math/paper argument. Not a musical/sonic argument.
“But it’s not how I want to do things because it’s inflexible.” I would argue that a preamp ADDs flexibility. Pick whatever one you want, with however much or little type of whatever distortion you like.
"I refuse to have vacuum tubes anywhere in my system, because they’re inconsistent "
'Nuff said - that’s just Crazy Talk ; ). Nobody I know would record anything without tubes somewhere in the chain. (Starting with The Mic itself - all the old Classic microphones and the best new ones, most mic pres, any guitar amp, etc., etc.) There’s a reason for that.
Let me know how you feel in 20-30 years. But I’ll be dead, so - never mind! : )
EDIT: Here’s another way I would respond to this. Digital is not a be all and end all. It does a fabulous job of passing digital audio from A to B without loss. All the more reason so many digital audio artists are flavoring their art with analog. The first part of this addresses this:
Five years ago I used to revel in quoting Monty Python: “I’m 37, I’m not old!”
Math is how this stuff actually works. It is what it is. Adding components adds noise and/or distortion, and if you like the way that sounds then go right on enjoying it.
I just have a different strategy, that’s all. I got no objection whatsoever to how an artist creates their recordings. Vacuum tubes, solid state amps, pure digital creations, I don’t care how it’s done. I just want to have my system from the DAC downwards be as utterly linear and capable and stable as it can be. And tubes ain’t stable.
Putting in a pre-amp with its fixed set of additional noise and distortion is something that would reduce my flexibility. I don’t want it. And I don’t need it for any other practical electronic reason either.
Besides, the sonic things any pre-amp does can in principle be recreated in software – just like there’s now a ProTools plugin to emulate the sound you get by recording on classic reel-to-reel tape machines like Studer.
I would say that math is a way of describing what happens, and works best for digital audio. It regularly fails to describe, or we still lack some of the mathematical tools to describe, what is going on with analog sound as there are clearly things that still are not understood (see the ongoing discussions here and on Paul’s Posts between Soundmind and Acuvox, for example).
I have most of the Softube and Universal Audio plugins that emulate a large variety of analog devices digitally. They’re very good, because they model all of the nonlinearities and distortions of all of a component’s circuitry and tubes quite accurately. They are hugely popular precisely because they make “sterile sounding”, perfectly linear digital audio sound like analog. I recently got a pair of the Townsend modeling mics, that can emulate many famous microphones for a fraction of the cost (though they don’t quite sound the same). Still, very cool.
I like both digital and analog and use both freely. I think each do certain things the other cannot. I guess this is why I do not think a tubed preamp is a crime against digital - more a match made in heaven ; )
Not to offend, but, that is such an old argument, that, just doesn’t apply to the real world, IMO.
Have you ever listened to the BHK preamp in your system?
Which old argument are you referring to?
Not in my system, but I’ve heard the full PS Audio stack with the same kind of speakers and cables that I have. Different room. It didn’t do anything that made me want to spend any money, let alone the amount of money required for a BHK Pre and an additional set of interconnects.
Back to the original question, the best preamp for less than $5K to pair with your DSD Sr is a used BHK.
It will sound amazing, you can play with tubes, it has a superb headphone amp. My son had to downsize his living footprint and I sold his BHK here for less than 4 grand with a shitload of nos tubes.
The deals are there if you look.
Maybe our stumbling block is my use of the words “noise” and “distortion”. What if I just said that a pre-amp modifies the signal to add its own set of audible effects?
In principle, couldn’t somebody build a software model of that pre-amp so that I could apply it to all of my recordings and get the same sound without having the actual pre-amp? And given that, aren’t I best off having a system that is as close to straight wire with gain as I can get it, so that any such subtle effects in any source material can be accurately reproduced?
Check this out. The money I’m not spending on a pre-amp might help me upgrade to a TSS:
The one that suggests that numbers tell the whole story.
We’ve been checking that out for quite a while! LOL
A trade in option would also get you to below $5k for a BHK. Always can buy a piece of used equipment to trade in.
That’s not what I’m suggesting. The “math” I’m talking about is the physical reality that no electronic circuit, not even a straight wire, can transfer a signal without changing it. A purely resistive circuit will reduce the signal’s amplitude in a near-linear manner but will also introduce an amount of random noise. Any circuit with non-zero capacitance or inductance will additionally cause changes to frequency and phase. These statements are also true individually for each and every isolatable component of a circuit – of which there are very many in the signal path of something like a pre-amplifier. And we haven’t even touched on what happens when the signal can take multiple paths at the same time, or travel in loops, or partially reflect…
All engineering is compromise. The best engineering solves a given challenge with the least amount of undesirable side-effect. It’s not possible to connect leads directly from a phono cartridge to a typical power amplifier and get a good result – so a pre-amplifier is necessary and beneficial overall for that case, and the best pre-amplifier will be one with suitable gain and exceedingly low noise. Similarly some kind of buffer effect is required to connect higher-impedance sources with lower-impedance amplifiers, providing much flatter frequency response at the cost of some amount of unavoidable noise.
All I’m saying is that if you have a suitable combination of source, amplifier and speakers, where the issues of overall gain, volume control, source selection and impedance matching are taken care of, the only thing a pre-amp brings to the table is more noise and distortion. It may well be that those particular noises and distortion are pleasing to the ears of many people, and that’s perfectly fine. It’s just not the way I want to go for my own system.
(And the link to the TSS thread was to highlight Ted’s most recent post where direct DAC-to-preamp connections are discussed.)
Cool, I’ve heard this before. I choose with my ears when it comes to audio reproduction. To me a preamp makes sense. I was in the same camp as you before I heard the improvement in presentation of music, that, sounds more like the music I hear live, when a preamp was added to my dac direct to amp.
I suspect you like pleasing your ears as well. Unlike you, I can’t really put any algorithm, or math forward to explain why it sounds more realistic, I just know it does to my ears.
Cool. So you should try putting two or three pre-amps in series then. More goodness! Imagine how great that could sound!