Are Preamplifier’s Relevant Today or just a Hinderance with Digital Playback ?

having recorded a piece and so in theory has something to compare the recording to, is not really close to knowing - unless you are playing back the recording in the same room as it was recorded you get the massive variable of the Room. A recording studio and your listening room will make instruments sound very different.

I have a number of recordings done in several venues including our studio. This helps vastly reduce that issue!

Hey Ralph, by "ducks in a row" you mean electrical parameters and compatibility between digital source and amplifiers?

Yes.

You don't know what the "colorations" are. You're getting into what Floyd Toole called the circle of confusion. Take the mic, room, equipment, speakers etc.. used to record and these Recordings are as different as night and day from each other and whatever you're using to playback with.

I have recordings on LP that I recorded. I know what the live performance sounded like. I know the microphones (U67s) really well. So when I play the LP I know immediately what is going on with the system I'm hearing. It helps to have the masters!

Lacking that your point is profoundly important. It is for this reason that I recommend anyone to get good mics and a decent recording system and see if they can sort things out. Do some on location recordings. Acoustic spaces that you know are good places to see if you can do this. This will really help you sort out what works and what doesn't.

So you are saying that running through a bunch of resistors, transformers and caps, to say nothing of connectors and extra sets of wire/wire's doesn't colour the sound by comparison to running direct?? I mean really??

Yes. There is such a thing as being too simple, and passives are that. As I pointed out, if you get all your ducks in a row they can work quite well. One must always be careful to not construe personal anecdote as absolute. If you plan to go for the extra resolution available by running shorter speaker cables (this is particularly true if you are running tube amplifiers due to their higher output impedance)the passive/active thing becomes even more important. IOW we're talking about the coloration of the interconnect cables themselves; if you've ever auditioned cables and heard a difference you know what I'm talking about.

One fellow that I personally admire as I believe him to be quite forward in thought is Bruno Putzey's

Bruno is quite brilliant.

The thing is that cables can cause colorations due to capacitance, interactions with the output impedance of a source, the input impedance of an amp, EMI issues and the like. Plus you can get noise from grounding issues (ground loop) even if a hum isn't evident. In a single-ended connection, the shield is often carrying the signal (in order to complete the circuit).


A lot of that is why the balanced line system was developed- when running balanced (if the balanced line standards are being observed) even though ground loops are present they can't get amplified, the shield of the cable isn't used as part of the audio signal path and so on. So colorations from the interconnect can be vastly reduced.

If your cables are kept short and you are careful with how your sources interact with the passive control and the amplifier, the results can be quite good. But if you are using speakers and are keeping the amps by them so as to minimize colorations from the speaker cables, you might have to run fairly long interconnect cables. If this is the case then the balanced line system is the way to go; you simply won't be easily able to do this with a single-ended connection without coloration.

I find attitudes toward preamplifiers in general within some computer audio communities heavily one sided against preamplifiers

This is because invariably the DAC is right next to the amp using a very short cable in most cases, and there being several means of controlling the volume. You might also want to keep in mind that such systems don't tend to be high performance. Lacking resolution, this reaction is to be expected. Don't sweat it :)

The long and the short you can then use passive attenuation which is represented by resistance, vs adding via active preamps which can't help themselves but add various flavors of reactance, in so doing distancing you from what is possible.

The issue here is cables; with a passive system the cables are uncontrolled and can cause colorations. If the preamp is able to control the effects of the cable (and if it supports AES48 which is the balanced line standard it can) then its very possible to find that a preamp is more neutral than the best passive available. Most digital systems just don't have a good ability to control the interconnect cables (if you drive 30 feet of cable you'll see what I'm talking about) and if you put a passive between the digital source and the power amps you'll exacerbate this issue.


I've yet to encounter a passive system as transparent as a good preamp.