Affordable Decent Preamp & thoughts on Emotiva XSP-1 vs PS Audio Stellar Gain Stage
I thought they had moved much of their building to the US. Not sure where the parts are made I think they build the top shelf models here,I. THE USA. The rest looks like it's built in China per my interpretation of the info on their website. Please correct me if I'm wrong that's the only thing keeping me from pulling the trigger on one tonight. |
Yeah - I’ve also been debating one of the SP14 kits and building it myself. It seems that nearly ALL of the Preamps that many rave about DO seem to be tube types, and for a single-ended design, the SP14 gets strong reviews from a few whose opinions I trust. I suppose that a YGGY would be a good "stepping stone" (particularly if I can dig-up a used one at a good price) to explore this option as it allows operation with and without the tubes and with a "Pure Passive" mode to boot. Units incorporating Truly Balanced Circuits (those with more than simple transformer-coupled I/O) to drive Input / Outputs with Tubes seem to be largely beyond my price range. |
In your situation I’d consider this Anthem AVM50 prepro. It’s got a decent preamp section, but maybe even more important given your limited speaker placement options and sub you might find Anthem’s room correction and sub integration capabilities to be very advantageous -- perhaps even more so than going for a more pure 2-channel pre. Best of luck. https://www.ebay.com/itm/192921906325?ul_ref=http%253A%252F%252Frover.ebay.com%252Frover%252F1%252F7... If you’d like to try tubes you could do far worse than this Backert Rhumba for a little over your price target... http://www.echohifi.com/details/13757/Backert-Labs_Rhumba-1.1 or this Sachs SP14... http://www.dsachsconsulting.com/custom%20line%20stage.html |
If you are considering a balanced preamp, its helpful (to reduce noise and colorations) if it supports the balanced standard. I've found over the years that most consumer preamps that are balanced don't actually support the standard. The thing is, if the preamp is competent and otherwise supports the standard, there's no going back to single-ended. You might want to consider widening your options! |
