Thanks to the great folks at PS Audio, I got my hands on a Stellar Gold preamp this week, to replace my 5 year old SGCD. It’s only been in the system, running, for about 15 hours, so impressions are not fully formed yet, but there are two things that strike me immediately, good and bad.
The good is that this thing aids tremendously in the retrieval of textural details in the sound (keep in mind this is in comparison to the old Gain Cell). So far this trait seems to be evident even in less-than-spectacular recordings. I have an LP from way back called You Won’t Hear This on the Radio by a young Chris Frank, these days of the Red Clay Ramblers, when he was performing as a solo act with an old Gibson “blues box” guitar, and singing stuff like “Bye Bye Blues” and “If I Only Had a Brain.” It sounds a little muffled, something I had attributed these many years to the quality of the recording. After listening to it though the Gold (in both LP and home-digitized formats), I’m thinking now the muffled quality is just the sound of Frank’s voice, because the guitar sound now has great, minute detail that I never noticed before. It’s taken one more small, but distinct, step toward the sound of a real vintage Gibson in the room.
The bad thing is that, at least initially, this thing has a decided emphasis on the left channel. The first stereo recordings I listened to made me get out of my seat and go up to the speakers to make sure the right channel was working. Mono recordings need to be tweaked to about 25 (units? percentage?) to the right with the balance control in order to center the image, which then makes stereo recordings sound normal. Nothing else in the system has changed, including the positions of speakers and chair, so I have to believe it’s the new preamp. My hope is that as it burns in, that might change. If it doesn’t, I’ll have to decide if living with the balance that far off is acceptable, or if I need to send it back.
I would at least swap the inputs to the preamp to see if the balance goes the other way, and if not, put those back to normal and swap the preamp outputs to see what happens. Should be able to isolate whether it’s the preamp or bad connections. Also is the imbalance there using RCA output to the power amp vs using XLR? If the imbalance is there with all these tests, it’s the preamp.
Hopefully a burn in will correct it, otherwise contact tech support as they may have a few tricks up their sleeves. They may be shut down for the holidays.
I’ve tried a couple of things that seem to indicate the problem might not be with the preamp, though to be honest, I really don’t have a clue what’s happening or why. This is as accurate an assessment of what I’m hearing as I can attest to:
Switching to RCA input #1 for the phono preamp, everything is perfectly balanced, left-to-right.
Going back to XLR input #1 from the DAC, the imbalance is still there, measured (crudely) with a NIOSH SPL phone app at about an 8dB difference.
I unplug the XLRs from the preamp and swap them left-to-right and the emphasis is now in the right speaker. That would suggest the problem, whatever it is, is not in the preamp.
I unplug the XLRs again and put them back the way they were, and here’s where it gets weird - the imbalance is still there, but much less severe. Where a balance setting of 25 to the right was needed to center a mono recording before, now a setting of 15 does it.
Things I haven’t tried yet include moving the XLRs to input #2 (which I doubt would make any difference), and connecting the DAC via RCAs.
I suppose it’s possible that the problem, whatever it is, may lie in the refurbed Mk1 I got about three weeks ago. I didn’t notice any imbalance with it before swapping preamps, but then I haven’t had a ton of time for careful listening since it came in, what with the holidays being at our throats. I suppose it could also be a cable issue, but I guess I’d assumed those either work as expected, or not at all, and they’d worked just fine for a couple of years before my old DSD Jr died on me.
At this point I guess I’ll keep listening, and make note of any further changes before deciding what to do.
Lacking specific knowledge of such things, software gone stupid and misplaced electrons are my first suspects when things get weird. Pin corrosion, bad solder joints, one’s and zero’s getting lost, broken cables, etc can drive you bonkers.
Do you have another pair of XLR cables you can swap in? Maybe also try the DAC single ended outputs. I don’t know, but suspect that a problem further up stream from the XLR outputs within the DAC would also manifest on the SE outs.
Congrats though on the system evolution! Are the M700’s keeping up?
I wasn’t aware the DAC had a balance control. It’s still fairly new to me, and I haven’t done much with it besides plug it in, turn it on, adjust its output to 100%, and play. I know there are a lot of things that can be adjusted/switched/tweaked etc. once I dig into it.
Yes, gremlins of all types drive me nuts. I don’t know if you followed my tale of the buzzing that started while listening to my DSD Jr. Everyone thought that, given the level of quality between the Jr and my SGCD, the problem was likely to be in the latter. I went through all kinds of gyrations to try to determine where the problem actually lay, and it turned out to be the Jr after all. That’s what led to my getting a refurbed Mk1, and then, in an after-the-fact package deal, the Gold preamp. And yes, the M700s are chugging along brilliantly. Love them to death. Considering where I am at this point in my life’s journey, they’re very likely to be my end-game amplification unless I’m forced to downsize.
But for the latest in tracking down this problem, see my reply to Paul’s suggestion (once I get it typed in and sent).
Thanks for weighing in, Paul. After reading your thoughts, I decided to try connecting the DAC via RCAs. That seemed a simple way to discover if the fault was in the XLRs. After pulling out both the preamp and the DAC so I could make those connections, then putting them both back, I started things up again. I hadn’t disconnected the XLRs as part of that test, so when the system came up again, I was still hearing the DAC through the XLRs, and lo and behold, the balance was now perfectly centered with the mono recording I had on. It was like a blocked sinus was cleared and I could breathe again.
I’m not the least bit sure why that would’ve happened, but if the cable was questionable, maybe jostling it might have corrected things for the moment. I guess that might happen if the cable was intermittently bad (entirely possible given its cheap cost). All I can say for certain is that at this moment, the whole system sounds amazing, and I’m enjoying it greatly, even with the understanding that it is still an issue that needs to be resolved.
As soon as holiday expenses are behind me, I’ll get a replacement pair of XLRs, maybe some AQ Mackenzies to match the current preamp/amp connections. But for the moment, the Gold continues to burn-in (about 70 hours and counting right now). I’ll post further impressions later.
Thanks, Paul, and thanks to everyone who’s been scratching their heads along with me.
I have had my Stellar Gold preamp for almost two months now, i really like it, no imbalance issues.
My only issue is that the 12v triggers doesn’t seem to have enough current to trigger my Cambridge EXN100 streamer. It turns on my other equipment, and they can turn on the exn100, but SG preamp won’t do it.
One thing I wasn’t expecting, but should have researched first, is the absence of a headphone amp and jack. I have two pairs of mid-line Focals that can’t be used now, but it’s not a critical thing, since they almost never get used anyway. Turns out when a semi-isolated listening room is pretty well soundproofed to begin with, and no one else wants to go into it anyway, there isn’t much call for headphones. Maybe it’s time to sell them.
Well i was never into head phones, so that didn’t matter to me. I like the SG preamp so much that i was considering getting the SG dac to match, but the price is a bit steep. Maybe if i can get a nice used one for about $2000.00.
My solution to the lack of a headphone amp was to add a Schitt Jotunheim 2 to my system. Pairs well with my Dan Clark Audio Ether headphones-warm sounding, tonally accurate, plenty of punch. Downside was one more box, but needed as Imoften listen when others are sleeping.
Thanks for the reminder about headphone amps. I’ve considered using one, but assumed it requires re-cabling each time it gets used, unless I keep it to a completely different source component like a portable digital music player. Or I suppose I could connect the DAC’s unused RCAs to the headphone amp while keeping the XLRs connected to the Gold preamp. That way I could listen to discs and the streamer and just forego the turntable (which only represents about 10% of my listening at most). Interesting idea.
