I use my system for both music only and home theater. I have a ML 390s hooked into a Krell HTS 7.1 processor (which acts as my pre-amp) which then is hooked into a pair of ML 33's. When I want to listen to music only I usually run the 390's straight into the 33's and listen in two channel. I think it sounds great this way; the sound seems very transparent, open and the sound stage is wonderful. Dynamics are great this way also however this may be due to the teriffic job the 33 amp's do with dynamics. When I run the 390s through the 7.1 the sound seems much less involving. There is less of alomost everything, transparency, detail, air and even to a lesser extent dynamics. I must admit that I tend to want to blame the 7.1 as I am not sure it makes such a great pre-amp. While it is an inconvenience to have to wrestle with the cables everytime I run the cd player stright into the amp I find music only much more enjoyable this way.
connectng CD player directly to amp, good or bad?
Some CD players with volume control can be connected directly to power amp, bypassing pre-amp. Mark Levinson 39 and Mcintosh 301 can do that. When I mentioned this to sales reps at dealers, they were all skeptical. They said pre-amp/amp is always better or go for int-amp. I am not s sure. Mcintosh manual shows how to connect CD player to power amp directly and it makes better sense for me since I am not going to have any other source unit. If I need more later, I can always add pre-amp. Is pre-amp really necessary?