@patl In my experience I’ve had less coloration (and more impact) when an active line stage is used. Passive controls are very susceptible to interconnect cable colorations; a good line state can eliminate that. The best place for a passive control, so as to prevent this problem, is inside the amplifier. |
@troutbum If you have an integrated amp you may not need a preamp. But a preamp can be very useful if you have monoblock amplifiers. The reason is simple: the longer the speaker cable, the less resolution and impact you'll have out of the speakers. Monoblocks allow you to keep speaker cables short. This might mean you have to run long interconnect cables to the amps. But if you have a good preamp, and especially if it is balanced line, that's no problem and you can have no loss in resolution or bandwidth doing that- no downside. A good preamp also reduces artifact you get from interconnect cables (usually this isn't a problem in an integrated amp). Integrated amps usually trade off some sonic performance for size. You can see where this is going: the best systems often use monoblock amps with a preamp. |
