What's The Big Deal About Battery Powered Preamps?

my preamp can take a battery input (Nagra PLL) I've had a Red Wine Audio Black lighting at home. The battery gave a much improved pace and rhythm, lower noise floor, improved dynamics all for a low cost. My current AC cords (Shunyata King Cobra with a Shunyata Triton) may beat it (it's very close however) but at 8-10x the cost.

It's worth hearing what well done battery set up can do...

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Red Wine also has a battery powered amplifier. Don't you need juice from the wall socket to get serious power from an amplifer??
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Mitch4t

The main reason for a battery power preamp is to avoid any type of contamination that occurs with ac power. I'm sure you have noticed all of the different types of line conditioners and power cords that are on the market. With batteries, you avoid all of that. Also, the preamp runs on DC which eliminates the need to rectify.

Jfrech,

Your comment about improved prat with a battery preamp is very interesting. If anything, I would have thought it would be the opposite. If that's the case, I might try one myself.

Batteries can have a lot of "juice". Actually, that's where they're best. How many amps is your car battery rated for?

Had the original battery preamp, the Mission 776 from the 80's, and it was more dynamic and without the bloated bass of the dual chasis SFL2. Preferred the Mission. If it had XLR, might still be using it. Now, gone passive with no power at all. With a healthy source, there's no shortage of dynamics with that either.

If the preamp is otherwise well designed, a battery power supply lends a very low noise floor. The importance of low noise at the preamp stage cannot be overstated - as noise and distortion are additive, and the amplifier magnifies the input signal from the preamp, preamp noise and source noise are particularly deleterious.