2. amps-preamps
  3. 136421-89400

Pre amps cost vs. value ... what I discovered last month.

Greetings all.

I’m a mastering engineer. www.magicgardenmastering.com . We use Acoustic Zen balanced cabling, highly modified Cary 211 FE tube amps, Bricasti M1 SE DAs and Joachim Gerhard’s Allegra speakers. TORUS balanced power comes 220 from the street. The room is excellent, and you would love to hear it.

For 15 years the pre amp/router was a Crane Song Avocet. I paid around $1800 for it.

Recently decided to try a couple of audiophile products in the pre amp stage and was shocked and saddened how bad they were. Yes, the studio designed Avocet has a relay click for each 1db step, and yes it has a rack mounted 2U body with a corded remote, but it’s clear folks are really getting taken to the cleaners on pre amps. The older and highly regarded Boulder 1010 (used price $5500), was just terrible, truly terrible. The new and fully broken in BAT vk-43SE (demo price $7500) was much better, but still had a cloudy tone as compared to the class A Avocet. Not sure if that’s the cap or the transformer, but it made everything less clear and more generic, more distant from the music.

That’s all. Happy listening.
128x128brianlucey

Showing 2 responses by astewart8944

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astewart8944
499 posts
 
Ah...on 06.09.18 at 5:11pm OP hammers the nail directly on its head.  IMO this is a great post on SR and its relationship to what we hear.
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astewart8944
499 posts
 
@brianlucey Specifically, I agree that SR appears to be a manufactured market manipulation designed to convince the consumer that there is "more and better" to be heard at higher SRs whether it be via HD Tracks or MQA. While it seems there is something different to possibly be heard, different is not necessarily "better" or worth more. It would be helpful if the consumer could know, before purchase, the SR used during recording/mastering of the original recording. I want to know what the musicians and recording/mastering engineers wanted the audience to hear when they listened to the recording. I'm not interested, at all, in what a record company wants to convince me of so they can sell me multiple versions of the same "recording." I always assumed, prior to being able to purchase HiRez formats, that the music was mastered to sound best via a particular medium.  The mastering of an LP was done with the intention that it would sound its best in analog on a turntable. The mastering of a CD was done with the intention that it would sound its best at 44/16 through a CD transport. I find that, for the most part, well recorded/engineered RBCD sounds very good with a high quality DAC and the recording's overall SQ does not routinely improve in HiRez formats. In essence, HiRez becomes a crap shoot where the customer often is left paying more for something that sounds no better or sometimes worse than the RBCD the customer already owns or could easily obtain much cheaper in the used CD marketplace. 
Regards
Al        
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