A buddy just bought a pair of Olympica 3’s. He has a Marantz 8802A pre and JC1 mono blocks powering them.
It’s a nice setup. You need to make sure the Rotel can handle a 4 ohm load (not sure) as the O3’s are 4 ohms. I’ve had a Rotel receiver before, but it was before they shipped everything to China for manufacturing.
I understand the desire to find a pre that can take a USB-A to play music off a thumb drive (dsd files as well as 192/24 files). Having Apple Airplay/Wi-Fi/Bluetooth type connectivity is very nice to have when you just want background music (though you can get nice hi-res files off the thumb drive).
I’m currently searching for a 2-channel preamp with all that (and home theater pass through). I think it’s a unicorn, and not the common variety unicorn...
You may want to look at the latest Hegel integrated amps. They have all the wiz-bang stuff we want (except I want just a preamp).
It’s a nice setup. You need to make sure the Rotel can handle a 4 ohm load (not sure) as the O3’s are 4 ohms. I’ve had a Rotel receiver before, but it was before they shipped everything to China for manufacturing.
I understand the desire to find a pre that can take a USB-A to play music off a thumb drive (dsd files as well as 192/24 files). Having Apple Airplay/Wi-Fi/Bluetooth type connectivity is very nice to have when you just want background music (though you can get nice hi-res files off the thumb drive).
I’m currently searching for a 2-channel preamp with all that (and home theater pass through). I think it’s a unicorn, and not the common variety unicorn...
You may want to look at the latest Hegel integrated amps. They have all the wiz-bang stuff we want (except I want just a preamp).