SPL - Pro Audio Blasphemy?


In my never ending quest to scale down, I have been looking for a preamp with headphone out. I enjoy passives/buffers and stumbled upon this when I was looking at the Newport Show report on Innerfidelity:

http://spl.info/produkte/kopfhoererverstaerker/phonitor2/in-kuerze.html

Does anyone have any experience with gear that runs on 120v rails? Sounds intriguing, but I plead ignorant. This might seem like a good alternative to the usual preamp and this amp among headphone enthusiast is much revered.

There is also this 2control monitor controller which might be more suitable to my needs because of the flexibility and the ability to switch to mono, but this does not run on 120v rails.

http://spl.info/produkte/monitor-controller/2control/videos.html

Any opinions, ideas or experiences?

Also, has anyone dived into the pro-audio segment for any of their gear as an alternative to traditional hifi?

Cheers
enobenetto
As far as I know most gear for use in the US runs on 120V rails unless I am missing something. When I worked in the recording studio most of my stuff at home was so called pro gear. My current system which is not called pro gear but High End Audio gear is much better. The major advantage of pro gear is it is designed to play 24hours 7days a week without ever failing. Also most pro gear does not look very appealing
Alan
I'm a pro gear pro…I've been paid to use this stuff (mix mostly jazz shows these
days) for decades both as a musician and sound tech and I can say without
question that home gear sounds generally better in the home. I don't like amps
with fans even in my home recording rig, or need horn loaded high spl speakers
to listen to things from 8 feet away…but use anything that isn't heavy duty for
live sound reinforcement and you will fail. New pro stuff can sound better than
ever though (as long as the operator is paying attention and isn't an idiot), so
that's good news. Note that most audiophiles would be horrified to hear what
major recording studio's playback systems have sounded like over the years, but
often the studio engineers and mastering techs make the end results come out
OK anyway…amazing.
I'm tri-amping with Crown XTi 1002's and a 2002 and going preamp-less (using the gain input control on the Crowns). While I would tend to agree that high-end usually sounds better, I've also have been steadily acquiring a lot ($10k+ and counting) of some Alan Maher Designs electronic noise reduction gear...all that has collectively raised the level of their performance, under my roof anyway, just into high-end territory (I'm sure nicer hifi amps would've been improved by all that even more, of course). I suppose these Crowns may not have the utmost degree of sheer "magic" of timbre that the best amps can have, but it's easily good enough for me and, with AMD, all the attendant qualities like tonal purity, pitch accuracy, resolution, textures and harmonics are so good that I never have the feeling that anything is missing. It's nothing for me to get wrapped up in the performance and the music. What drew me to the XTi's were the pro tools: EQ, Crossovers, digital gain, delay...that way I could ditch my passive crossovers which has been a great step toward better sound here. And, from the beginning for myself, no worries about trying to win the "passive crossover parts" sweepstakes and that let me save a nifty buck or two. Normally, going digital there might sound worse because of the noise, but that as well is what all the AMD is for and it's all sounding rather gorgeous right now to me. The system itself costs well less than all the AMD, but everything here is working together well. If asked, I'm more likely to rave about AMD than the amps in particular, but these pro amps have certainly found a home here. They're not going anywhere anytime soon. The one DIY mod I had to do was to hardwire bypass the Speakon connectors...rather good for allowing buckets of currents through, but detail?...not so much.