Specific Pre-Amp advice
darkstar1 As you correctly said your dual 4 is 100kohm input impedance, which makes it a perfect match with the Schiit Freya in all modes. As not only does it have a great impedance match, but if you look in your user manual you'll see it only needs 1.2v input for full wattage output, so it also has a very good input sensitivity for the Freya being low gain in all 3 modes. You don't need a preamp with high gain, you'll be using the volume control down near zero. Cheers George |
If the dealer is not that helpful, then forget him. The entire brick store idea has got to provide something to keep the mail-order channel at bay. So let him go out of business, and buy from one of the many places selling new on the internet, or a private party with used equipment. I'm a fan of ARC. They sweat the details. many great components for < $2,500 tho |
darkstar1, I am thrilled with the HERRON AUDIO VTSP-3A tube pre-amp, and you might be too. I run mine through a solid state power amp. When I was looking for a pre like you are, I don't think I was able to find anything but praise for the Herron. Hifi Shark shows that they have sold used under 3K. http://www.herronaudio.com/index.html |
In your budget range, you have a lot of good preamps to choose from. I recently upgraded my preamp and ended up choosing a Don Sachs custom 6SN7 model 1: http://www.dsachsconsulting.com/custom%20line%20stage.html Base model is $1,699 with the following options available: • Change one pair of basic 6SN7 tubes to Shuguang Black Treasure CV181z $129 • Upgrade from cherry case to walnut $40 • All film cap power supply using Mundorf Tube Caps $150 • Change one set of RCA inputs to XLR (balanced) using high quality Cinemag line transformers $225 • Change the output capacitors to one pair of Jupiter Copper Caps $60 • Change the output capacitors to one pair of Duelund CAST PIO-Cu (expensive, but even better) $375 Since all units are custom built, Don will build your preamp to match your particular amp. I can attest that Don is very knowledgeable, honest and really knows his stuff! |
Thanks for all the help so far. I guess I am going to listen to some Arc again. I am going to email the current president of Exposure. He responds quickly. Hopefully he will know the gain off hand. Also info about running a passive into the dual 4. Jeff Rowland has never been on my radar. Will do some research. |
For what it's worth, I did some detailed research on passive preamp stepped attenuators a while back for a different project. The conclusion I came to was that the current products available from Khozmo were the absolute superior in any passive preamp. Since you are running unbalanced RCA interconnects in your system (based on Exposure 17), a Khozmo Passive Preamp Dual Mono with input selector (with what looks like 3 sources) is $558 shipped to US with all options (such as Vishay nude Zfoil and Takman REX shunt resistors). They can be built with an impedance of anywhere from 10k all to way up to 200k, depending on the best impedance for your system. That being said, this is truly passive and not introducing any sonic signature at all. You are entirely dependent on the sonic signature of your turntable and amp. Since your using a turntable, this might be an option. I would not normally recommend a passive preamp for a digital DAC, unless you were using a tube-based DAC or a DAC with a nice Class A based output stage. That being said, the amp may not have enough gain to work well with a passive preamp. Some amps can have a gain as low as 26db. While this can, obviously, work with passive preamp, usually people like to have an amplifier with a gain of 30db or more if they are using a passive preamp. I couldn't find the gain for your Dual Reg 4 amp. Since my experience and skillset is all on the solid-state side, I will refrain from giving a strong recommendation. However, I did do a little bit of research into ARC in the last 8 months (just for the heck of it). What I found is that ARC usually seems to be more neutral and fast for a tube device (definitely not slow or laid back like some tubes). However, I did find that you could not try different tubes because the tube choice of ARC can only be obtain from one Russian manufacturer. This won't be like swapping out 12ax7 tubes to get your preferred signature. I will say that ARC puts a --tremendous-- amount of work into designing, testing and fine-tuning their designs. All their equipment is hand-built and hand-soldered. Their board layout and design are excellent. All board traces are very thick and heavy for good current transfer in signal and power supply. That being said, they are designing towards their own idea of the "best sonic signature", which may or may not be what your idea is. Their listening room is also setup a certain way (they use a LOT of QRD diffusion panels on the front/side walls which may affect the end-result sound). If I was into tubes, I would probably heavily consider an ARC preamp. For example, there's an LS26 on audiogon now for $2489 |
darkstar1No it won’t be OTL (output transformerless) you can see that in the attached circuit pic. But I’m sure it will be OCC (output capacitor coupled) the 4 big fat red ones, for each phase for each channel of the balanced output in tube mode. http://schiit.com/public/upload/general/freya-PCB-1920.jpg . Cheers George |
Randy Of the two dealers I have locally one carries Audio Research. I kinda of viewed them as pricey compared to the competition. I do realize on paper it really makes sense to suggest Arc. I have mixed feelings as some of the dealers setups leave me less than impressed while the main room with the high dollar Arc and maggies 3.7 does impress me quite a bit. Some of the systems I have heard with Arc seen fade or bleached out while the one I love cost a fortune. Maybe I should go give them another shot and no the dealer would never let me take a pre home. He is not that helpful to be honest. |
Interesting on the Freya choice. Way under budget. I don’t think passive will work with my amp. I read a post about someone not having luck with a passive with the dual 4. I don’t know the technical reasons behind it sadly. Maybe it just needs more gain? I did dip my toe into the Schit line with headphones for a short period. I had the Valhalla 1 with Sennhieser HD600. Honestly I liked the sound but wanted to focus on one system. The amp was OTL and really that is where sound wise I would like to head but in a speaker system. I will look into the Freya. It does not say its OTL but I will research it. |
I would opt for a straight passive preamp seeing your amp has 100kohm input impedance, a perfect match. But you could: Try the Schiit Audio Freya, as it can be a passive pre, active tube pre, or active solid state pre. So you can suit your mods. All with low gain so you’ll have plenty of range control with your volume control. Plus it has balanced or rca input and outputs and comes with a extremely high quality 128 position relay based volume control, and it’s all remote controlable as well. For just $699 with a trial period, so you could send it back if you don’t like it. http://schiit.com/products/freya Cheers George |
