Will SQ Improve with BHK PRE

Cloud juice 4 me :grin:

With all those changes you should have one terrific system. :smiley:

Really hope you like the BHK pre.

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He sure will!!

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Just think of yourself as a hamster on the giant wheel of Capitalism. It’s your decision whether to stop running. But it sounds from your previous post that you have already decided the BHK Pre will “improve” your system,

So I don’t think you will be sending it back.

It is a simple issue that these days amplifier power is cheap and so the need for easy to drive speakers is no longer an issue. At almost any budget you can get speakers and an amplifier with plenty of gain. That is presumably why in some markets integrated amplifiers dominate. If you don’t need the extra gain, just put the switching in the same box.

I think this is best reflected in the huge number of pre-amplifiers made by USA manufacturers and hardly any by UK manufacturers (and there is a large hifi industry here). Looking around, most of the products on sale here are American on Japanese.

Like Paul, I’m convinced valves add something, but can’t explain it. My valves are in the phono pre-amp. The added warmth is unaffected by the signal then going through A/D, 40-bit digital volume control and D/A conversion.

Maybe a valve gain stage and zero-distortion digital volume control is the best of both worlds.

Congratulation in advance! To me it was like rediscovering my music!

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Hmm… . I find great pleasure and great texture and “heft” to the music by adjusting between gain stages (I have adjustment available at source, preamp and Monoblocks). Sure I can get music and enjoyment with just “one” gain stage, but I get “more” with more than one.

I tried a few preamps with the DSD. A great one (I have a few from Decware) makes an improvement in my system and room.

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No (IMO), it sounds like he has decided to give the BHK preamp a try and see if it improves his listening experience in his system in his room.

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Exactly, it is the adjusting gain between multiple gain stages.

This is why the improvement of adding a preamp can be beneficial and improve the sound - whether the preamp is tube or solid state. That is, this is not a “tube thing” and not a result of adding “pleasing” distortion.

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Help me understand, when we add gain, aren’t we affecting odd or even order harmonics?

Probably not. Pure gain affects everything the same, i.e. the waveshape remains the same, except for overall scale. High frequencies get the same 2x (or whatever) that low frequencies get…

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Yeah - even order is the “tube thing” Elk refers to. Us electric guitar players couldn’t live without it.

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Thanks Ted. Now where’s my MK2 Ted Special DAC???

True dat

What we need is a Kemper amp for Hifi, so we can dial in the sound of any amp we want🤘🏼

Yeah. I wonder how my speakers would sound powered by a Vox AC30…

:stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: Thin, bright and British.

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How, not if.

Get your products in someone’s house and they are unlikely to come back. I’m informed it is a very effective way to sell.

Why not ask @karthick directly what he is thinking and then wait for his response, rather than trying to back him into a corner with a word choice?

The forum should be an exchange of ideas, not a game of “got you!”

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Oh brother