2. amps-preamps
  3. 1209044329

Help with finding ultra-transparent pre-amp

I got a new player, Wadia 581i SE, and once I hooked it up directly to amps I realized that my pre-amp is not transparent enough.
To make a long story short, I would like to find a very transparent pre-amp to be inserted between player and amps (no coloration, no shift in tonality, and no loss in dynamics, micro or macro), that would result in a sound indistinguishable from the sound of my player going directly to amps.
Essentially I want a wire with attenuation control. Balanced connectivity is preferred.
I tried a transformers based passive pre-amp (it was a custom, very well executed job), result was not good, not only that it killed dynamics and resulted in a dull and uninteresting sound, but transparency was in fact worse in comparison with my present pre-amp.
Is there such a transparent pre-amp, or it is just a pipe dream?
The cost is of course to be considered, I would not go for anything that is more than let’s say 3.5K, new or used.
I have been reading about Placette (resistor based), has anyone had any experience using it in a system that has very resolving front end?
The rest of my system:
Bryston BP26 pre-amp
Bryston 7B SST amps
PMC IB2 speakers
sashav

Showing 2 responses by atmasphere

atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
12,109 posts
 
The issue with the Wadia has been that while its a great player, the volume control gets you into trouble. In basic terms, its no good below about 85 on the display- you loose too much resolution. So to get the best results with it you have to have a good transparent line stage.

The way you set up the Wadia is to set the internal jumpers to the lowest output setting available, then run it in the preamp.

With some amplifier/speaker combinations, upon resetting the output level as above, you can get by without a preamp, but otherwise, the result **should** be that if the preamp is a good combination, it will actually sound better with the preamp than without.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
12,109 posts
 
We have also found that if you run the Wadia through a good line stage, that it is actually more transparent than running direct. Of course, we do it with tubes, but its all balanced.
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