I wanted to thank you all for sharing your experiences with the STA-200. I am a new, happy owner of the amp and I would not be without the benefit of your experience.
I was a pretty serious budget-oriented audiophile once upon
a time. But after decades of faithful
service, I knew it was time to replace my Audible Illusions Modulus 2B. The volume pots, replaced once already, were
now reliably noisy with any adjustment at all.
After some research I brought home a Rogue Audio RP-1. It added a whole new layer of musical detail,
but I noticed a layer of upper-midrange glare.
I was prepared to look elsewhere.
Then I realized the glare – which turned into some seriously
bad distortion on a solo piano recording – was only in the left channel. I flipped the cables to my power amp and
found that the distortion stayed on the left.
It was not the pre-amp after all – the higher resolution of the RP-1
revealed a problem with my power amp!
So now I was faced with a larger upgrade, both the Modulus
2B and my (also ancient) Forte Audio 1A amp. Unfortunately my budget hadn’t
grown! I went looking for a
highly-regarded inexpensive power amp.
And that lead me to the STA-200 and, ultimately, to this thread.
The discussion of the STA-200’s sensitivity, and aberyclark and jetter’s experience in solving the problem with pre-amp noise ended up being crucial. Because I had exactly that problem – when I first hooked up the RP-1 and the STA-200, the noise floor was, well, more like a noise ceiling. Tube hiss was clearly audible from my listening position and, although the music through the RP-1 and STA-200 sounded great (dynamic, rhythmic, detailed and supple) the hiss was there every time the music got quiet or silence appeared. Not only that, but any RP-1 volume setting above about 17 (60 being full gain) was too damn loud for my room.
I immediately bought a Schiit SYS, just like aberyclark and
jetter. As soon as I popped it between
the RP-1 and STA-200, and dialed down the gain to 12 o’clock, the hiss was
gone. But not the music. I’m running the volume control at anywhere
from 25 – 35 now, so I haven’t even begun to max out the RP-1’s gain. I am very, very satisfied.
So thank you for your contributions to this discussion, especially
aberyclark and jetter. I greatly
appreciate your help!