2. amps-preamps
  3. 1362551378

Whats my weak link?

Classe ssp-25 pre amp, classr ca-150, musical fidelity a3.2cd, parasound z dac, mostly stock power cords.

I picked up some new speakers today (kef qx5's) and they sounded a good 15% better at his house than mine. He was running a modded rotel pre amp, bryston 3b-st, arcam transport, older parasound dac, upgraded power cords.

I have a feeling that it was his pre-amp mostly. His set-up had that certain sound that I'm looking for, hard to explain but it sounded sooo good. Any suggestions?
b_limo

Showing 3 responses by jmcgrogan2

jmcgrogan2's avatar
jmcgrogan2
6,346 posts
 
+1 Winoguy17. I would start by eliminating the pre/pro. I never found one that could do music right, including Classe. Your amp has an input impedence of 75Kohm, so a nice tube preamp should fill the bill nicely. Even a solid state stereo preamp would be an upgrade though.
jmcgrogan2's avatar
jmcgrogan2
6,346 posts
 
Slow down B_limo, you move too fast.
jmcgrogan2's avatar
jmcgrogan2
6,346 posts
 
03-06-13: B_limo
Ps, again, Jmcgrogan, what pre amp would you recommend? I can probably try my buddies to see if that's partly responsible. I've read reviews stating that the classe ssp 25 isn't that great for a 2 ch. pre.

B, I went through that HT phase about 15 years ago, trying fancy SSP's from Classe, Proceed, Krell, etc, none of them was very good for 2 channel audio. I still remember inserting a Classe CP-60 into my system in place of one of these SSP's (I recall I was running a CA-200 amp at that time), the difference was amazing. At that point I realized that no SSP would work in a 2 channel system.

Since then I've had about 20 different preamps in my system. I try to make sure they have a HT throughput, picked up a cheap Denon AVR to handle the other speakers for HT, and let a stereo preamp handle stereo.

I would recommend that you try your friends stereo preamp and see if that makes a difference. If it does, as I suspect it will, you now know where to start. I won't bother with any recommendations, since I find that the preamp is such a personal choice. For me, it's the heart of the system and difficult to find just the right sound and features. That's probably why I've been through over 20 preamps, more than double the amount of amps, CDPs, speakers, turntables, or any other piece of gear.

Cheers,
John
More to discover