Spatial Audio Raven Preamp

@phono2024 Congrats on the Raven and I am happy to hear that it sounds great with the Tyr monos. I have the latest Schitt Wotan amp, and it is really good. A small powerful beast of an amp. I will rotate the Raven between 2 systems anchored by the Wotan and the CODA #16. Both amps allow for the easy integration of 2 preamps with a front toggle switch for RCA and XLR. Perfect for the Raven and another preamp.

You mentioned in your post that you also use your Yamaha integrated as a second preamp. You may want to check out the new Schitt Kara F for $799. I received it a few days ago and it is a very good preamp. 

Once taxes are done, I can start thinking about the Raven.

Hello yyzsantabarbara,

Thank you. Lots of good amplifiers out there to choose from. The Raven is perhaps one of my better decisions made to add on to my joy of listening to music.

Please share your experience with the Raven when you get it.

Cheers

Audio-gd Vacuum HE1 XLR Tube Preamplifier Review - HomeTheaterHifi.com         the best pre this reviewer ever reviewed.....and I can vouch for that.

@mbmi Glad you are enjoying your preamp. Not sure how it is relevant to this thread.

The most dangerous of all are DC-coupled preamps and power amps. If the DC servo system in a preamp fails, the failure can propagate all the way to the loudspeaker. I saw this happen when I was visiting the home of a reviewer.

@lynn_olson The highlighted statement above is false.

I don’t contest what you saw.

We’ve been making preamps with a direct-coupled output (which we patented) and its been one of the most reliable design aspects of the preamps over the last 35 years. If it were to fail, our preamps wouldn’t make a high Voltage anyway, even as it warms up. As a result this is something that we’ve never seen.

If a tube amplifier was used, DC at the input would not have caused damage.

If a solid state amplifier was used, it should have gone into protect mode as any competent solid state amp will have a proper protection circuit!

So IMO if this anecdote is true, the designers of both the amp and preamp didn’t know what they were doing. Equipment should always be fail safe!!

Was the preamp of this story a tube preamp?