I had IIIa's for years, and found that they could really sing with low powered tube amps, but, got very anemic sounding with passive pre amps. I didn't go through tons of preamps, but when I plugged in the Cary SLP 90 it was an awesome and immediate improvment of great proportions. I just saw an SLP 98 on this site today which is the current version of the 90. Well worth checking out regardless of what amps you are using. Don't be scared by all that "warm" sounding description, you can tailor the sound depending on what tubes you use.
Preamp Ideas For 777ES EVo Maggie IIIa s
Hey everyone, the above is my current setup and i am using EVS Ultimate Attenuators right now as my preamp with so-so results. I am also using silver audio silver bullet 6.0 for IC's and tekline copper 1500tl speaker cable. Right now i have a huge soundstage and great detail however my setup is currently very bright, lacks a midrange, and has little to no bass impact at all. I'm not looking for any kind of house shaking thump, but i am looking for something that will realistically portray the bottom end of the spectrum. right now the midrange and bass sound emaciated and pale compared to the musical design sp2b i was running on it. in fact i am almost leaning towards getting that same unit again. anyways, any suggestions on preamps that would benefit my system. number of inputs is not a concern but detail, soundstage, and midrange is. Also i have heard good things about placette and nORh but as i am using passive right now i am afraid i will run in to the same problem again (impedence mismatch?) also, i may be way off track here, i am only running one Bel Canto EVo to the maggies. Knowing the power consumption of the maggies, could a lack of power be one of the reasons? Would a second EVo runing in mono solve my problem? I plan on doing this eventually anyway, but i didn't have this problem with my last pre so it leads me to believe the EVS is the culprit. anyways, i'll leave it up to your opinions which i desperately need. Thanks, in advance for all of your help.