Wouldn't the ideal preamplifier have no sound of its own? Why is it companies talk about their product's sound? Isn't that just wrong? Have a question you want to ask Paul? Go to www.psaudio.com/ask-paul/
as well to remember that most of the time the music we listen to is recorded on machines with microphones , consoles , preamps etc chosen because of their characteristics ( or lack thereof). musicality is the key .
I remember many years ago I read an article in which this was discussed. They used a regular volume control pot , and then made a pot using ganged switches, each position having a high quality resistor , which reduced in value as the knob was turned. The difference in sound was easily identified, the one using resistors clearly superior.
As an audiophile that have tested most gear on the market, I can say that a preamplifier is the hardest thing to get right. Most preamplifiers are really not good, and many people can't understand that it is usually is not a good thing to have a brand mix up where for example you have a PSaudio preamp with Mcintosh mono blocks or vice versa. If you have PSaudio preamp, have it together with a PSaudio mono blocks, and the same with Pass Labs and Mcintosh and all the other brands. Do not save money on the preamp solution, you will most of the times get screwed and not know why! I am making a video soon about this topic...
Why would the mixing of brands make a difference? My feelings towards many of the high end audiophile solutions is that they may make a measurable difference, but I doubt can be heard by the human ear
Every single piece of gear in the world makes a difference. The most important things to understand is: 1. How many % efficient is it running. (most people only run their equipment at 5-20% efficiency) 2. The lower quality gear you have, the less it reacts and everything seems the same. (a sort of numbness) I could take a thing like a PSaudio preamp, and create 10 totally different quality sounds, because it is a pretty decent piece of gear. To answer your question... Different brands use different designs and different components. PSaudio have their tradition of sounds that carries through their entire line of products, creating a synergy. Just like any other brand. So mixing brands is a lot like mixing alcoholic drinks, you get more the effect and the cross interaction overlaying rather than the purity/balance/deep integration typically. Typically when you mix brands, you quickly hit a wall, because everything to some degree collides because they both want to go in a different sound direction. And when different audio sounds collide, you get less deep intended detail and more of a superficial sound effect rather than the true sound itself. There is also the extra factor of the signal cable binding the preamp with the mono blocks, which also has it's own sound. Personally I ALWAYS recommend to people to just buy a really good integrated amp, is has the pre/effect part built in and totally alligned in sound, plus it removes the extra cables which most of the time creates problems in itself. And integrated amp usually has more focus around the essence of the sound, where preamp-monoblock combo has a tendency of being a lot more structure oriented in sound, making it most of the time a bit more mechanical.
Ah , pure genius , this video sums up ideal audio to perfection ,,,simply put its like this The more you pay .... The less you get. One day if your not careful we will all end up sending 10k in a box to a guy on a mountain in Switzerland and he will in return send us a can full of clean and pure Audiophile grade air , so we can listen to unpolluted pressure waves ..
No the more you pay the more you get. The problem is just that most people who test expensive equipment, don't have the ability to deal with equipment that is sooo much better. Expensive equipment should be tested with expensive equipment and most users don't even have a proper set of cables or powerbar or they often destroy the signal around the SOURCE, making everything else they test almost useless. Most people on the net that test gear and make a review should not be trusted.
@@RealHIFIHelp i've run 200k stadium systems on cooker cable and used 19 pin lighting cables as speaker multi core before today .. but you are totally correct .. before trusting any ones opinion I always ask the simple question .. what have they to gain from the answer ... then I adjust accordingly.
@@jaymuraleedharan Would you like the small tin now .. or we could get you a fresher large tin tomorrow .. unfortunately its a custom order ... and will cost slightly more ... but .. the tin will have a picture of a valve on it and a scale that goes from zero to eleven 🙂
Hey Paul! Man viewers really come up with some great questions. Thank you for giving us an "under the hood" look at that preamp. The insides are a work of beauty. Thank You much for another great explanation functionality.
It doesn’t look much different from any other PCB in a box. Their real efforts are in the values of the components. You cannot see their work physically. (Though i am not convinced by the audiophilism world.. I think it’s just baked air.)
@@Engineer9736 I also second that. I build amps myself and I'm a big believer of using quality components. Funny thing is, it doesn't even need to be overly expensive or overly implicated for that matter. I think this is a market that they are trying to perpetuate by letting us believe they invent new things all the time and put out new shiny things, while in reality it hasn't really changed much in the past 30 years or so.
@@xanderguldie My stereo system is from around 1980. I recently heard a new high-end stereo system and it sounded pretty colored compared to my old system which was pretty high-end in 1980.
Everything in audio has a sonic signature, nothing is completely neutral. Yes in theory you would want equipment that has no coloration to the music. One way like Paul mentioned in determining the sound of a piece of equipment is listen to it with it in the chain and without. You can do that if you have a cd player or digital source that you can vary the output and run it directly to the power amplifier. Listen and then do the same evaluation with the preamplifier in line. This will give you a good idea what kind of coloration the preamplifier is producing to the sound. Inevitably in most cases most will prefer the sound with a preamplifier. Most preamplifiers are increasing the level of the input source, and is also designed to drive a amplifer properly. Especially if your running longer interconnects to the amplifiers. For a while there were line level preamplifiers which had no gain, just a input selector and volume control. But they were not very successful because they lacked the slam, dynamics, and musicality of a active preamplifier. So yes in theory a preamplifier should be as neutral as possible but that's like saying you should eat the food from exactly how the chief made it, but how often do we season our food the way we like it.
Every preamp (or any other component) modifies any dynamic signal passing through it. The issue is how objectionable are the changes. Numbers can lead you astray in that department if one is not careful.😊
Thkan youe Misters Paul. The same with a 500k pots for Gibson and pickups. When the volume knb on the guiter is turns up to 10, the pickus sound nise. When the volues gets turned down the hier frequencies from thrgutar thy disspear like a tone knobs turn down the TONE! Morley make the OPTICAL volume pedlas. would a OPTICALS volume can you use it in a preamp to make it sundes bitters? THANKES YOUR and thumbbs ups!
Might have been worth mentioning that a buffer after the pot can help solve this issue by bringing the impedance back down and making it consistent. Also, stepped attenuators may offer a better alternative.
Preamps are very important. In fact the Herbeth speaker designer Allan Shaw/Master Yoda said most integrated amps he tested are starting to clip at the preamp section of them once you turn the volume passed 11 o’clock! It doesn't matter how low distortion the amplifier is if the preamp is clipping and sending distortions all the way down the line and amplified.Interview is him showing off his 40th ani 7ES3
when you combine a resistance factor with capacitance you create a low pass filter. The cutoff frequency of the low pass filter is determined by the impedance of the signal passing through the circuit, which is controlled by the variable resistor that is a guitar volume pot in combination with the variable impedance of guitar pickups at various frequencies. When you turn a potentiometer on a guitar you are changing the impedance of the signal, and thus the frequency of cutoff (removed frequencies are all just bled off to ground since a guitar is an unbalanced signal). A higher resistance pot will raise this cutoff frequency's upper limit effectively allowing more high frequencies to pass through with the knob turned to full The more ya know i guess.,
I really enjoy learning about pre amps as thats the toughest part to get right. Myself I want pre/amp co.bo from the same company and the same line. It seems like the synergy just works better. For me its hard to understand all the mixing of componets although many do it with good results.
sometimes we try too hard to rationalize something we don't understand when all it takes is comparing and picking what we like .then usually tend to talk like we designed the damn thing ourselves and everything makes perfect sense...some pre/power combos from different brands sound great but that's for people that enjoy the search as well. if you are happy with the sound that's all that matters.
@@yaniv-nos-tubes THIS. None of this ever made much sense to me until i started learning and tinkering with my own preamp builds. Once i learned about amplifier input and output impedances and how to properly match them i realized how little i actually knew about audio. After a while it becomes quite a cringy memory how little you once knew when you thought you knew it all. Its all part of the dunning kruger curve. When you start to learn, you feel invincible, like you know everything you need to about something. Then comes a point that you lose enough ignorance of a field to truly realize how ignorant you actually remain. You then become wise enough to realize how ignorant and mistaken you really are. Then actual learning begins.
If you're a phono lover like me, it's pretty easy to get rid of the preamp. Get a phonopreamp, which you need anyway, that has a volume control. Connect it to the poweramp and you're done. Very sadly the new PS Audio phonostage doesn't have a volume control.
Can anybody explain this to me? Why pay $6000 just to be able to increase and decrease the volume... when you can do that on the Poweramp directly without any additional cost ? In the video, Paul seems to suggest that the preamp is not doing any (low noise) inherent amplification but just volume control,why pay so much money for something that can be done (freely) on the poweramp?
Dude: a power amp doesn't have a volume 😂 That's why it's called *power* amp..once you turn it on, its output depends on the strength of the signal coming from the pre-amp. What you're thinking of is the integrated amp (preamp section and amplifier section in one box).
Bedros Daoudian If money and space were not an issue having them separated would be the way to go. No matter what people say, having the pre-amp and amp section inches away from each other is not ideal...there will be interference. That said some well made integrated amps sound bloody amazing (Pass Labs, Audio Research, Krell).
Does not a preamp adjust the levels of all sorts of connected component inputs to bring them to a standard let’s say a 1 volt peek to peek level able to drive a amplifier to its optimum level? For instance a moving coil compared to a moving magnet phono cartridge, their needs to be some kind of amplification. At lest that is the way I have used preamplifier. I really like your description of the input and output.
If you need an audio device that colors the sound to get the right sound out of speakers then you may well have used an equalizer instead, but then I think it's most likely speakers that don't have good sound! A preamplifier should change the sound as little as possible! Yes everything you run the sound through will color and change the sound in one way or another. But the sound out of a preamplifier should be as unchanged as possible and then you can't use the vacuum tube! If you use earphones to plug them into the CD player and then into the preamplifier then the sound should be as unchanged as possible!
If you turn on a preamp and no one is listening, does it make any sound? Hehe After a lot of research and learning, i'm ready to DIY or choose and amp and preamp... and I think i'll just pick an integrated amp. I'll need music to do all that. Thanks for answering all those questions. There's a lot of weird info on the search for coulored sound and mystic stuff, so hearing from experience is great, tahnk you.
If I've learned anything in my decades of pursuing pleasing sound is that EVERYTHING has a sound. From a high end or entry level audio component to a piece of common copper wire. The math may not support that but my ears do. And for all of the skeptics out there just because the asking price for a piece of audio gear is low or high to ridiculously high, doesn't always mean that the sound will be better. Being an audiophile to me means paying attention to and identifying subtleties in sound and performance. Peace.
A great preamp doesn't have a sound that can be distinguished from a pure wire. An even greater preamp allows me to tailor my sound, when I want it, through an EQ or multi band tone control (no room is perfect, my ears are losing treble and the loudness curve is a real thing), and allow me to bypass it with zero "damage", when I want to. Such great preamp doesn't exist, however, and I'm still hopeful that Paul will make it.
Hello mine fredns! Morley makes an optical volume pedals. There is not poentimeters to change the resistance. It has an electric eye and a light DIODE LED insted of a POTemtimetors. They use if for gutars to not ruin the sound by turnigs down the 500k oms pots on Gibbsons Les Pauls. Can they use the opticals volumeinstead in a preamps? THANKES YOUES AND THUMS UPPSS!
All the pot did in Paul's first preamplifier was to introduce noise from the carbon track and the contacts ... the cables and RCA connectors would have no effect at all ... unless they were heavily oxidised
Not completely. It depends on the source's output transformers. The pre-amp must pass the in-phase and the out of phase carrier signal to the amp without phasor errors.
You prob have a mismatch between your pot and input resistor on the path right after it (if you have an input cap the resistor is probably the very next thing in the signal path after it). Try a higher value volume pot and replace the inpout resistor with one roughly half value of the volume pot, and chances are more high frequencies will make it past ground as you turn down the volume. There will ALWAYS be an amount if high end bled off through a standard volume pot as you turn it down, but you can indeed get it low enough that it's not perceivable. If you have an input capacitor after the volume pot, you could also try lowering it's value one tick as well as matching the following resistor to about half the volume pots total resistance something in my tired brain tells me this may help too. but it may also roll your low end off slightly at high volumes depending on the implementation of your circuit I try to use a resistor right after the input cap on the input of my tube preamp builds about roughly half the value of the volume potentiometer, because then at roughly noon my preamps sit at the same volume as the source signal. It may be placebo but to my ears, this also seemed to help high freq roll off as volume goes down, seems like the volume knob is almost as willing to shunt low frequencies to ground evenly with high freqs while i lower volume. Any times you have resistors and capacitors on the same signal path you are creating low pass filters, and a volume pot is just a variable value resistor. I may not have given you THE answer here, but there should be enough info here, should you actually see it, to figure out what your issue is. Anyhoo, ive never found handling the volume pot high end roll off of a preamp a difficult thing to sort out so long as you know (to some degree) what you're doing, and know exactly what your input/output impedance match is, and what kind of low pass your creating with the volume sweep. Ideally the sweep of the low pass created at its LOWEST is over 20khz. if you can achieve this you wont have any perceivable high end roll off, even though it's still technically there. Some very trained ears CAN however, notice the loss of phasing info above 20k, and it can be perceived as a loss of "air around the sound" or similar perceptions. It can also sometimes be difficult to keep your low end in tact and holding authority the way you want it to doing this as well, but ive had no issue with that on my particular circuit implementations. And ideally you get it right at the preamp... because adding it back in with your EQ will introduce noise and distortions you do not want in your signal
Of course their is, many ways of doing it... 1. Sound is all about good power and controlling the source signal. 2. Use a very good powerbar and power cables. Of all the cables in HIFI, Power cables are the most important ones. 3. I generally only recommend 3 powerbars/conditioners: a. Gigawatt evo 3 b. Top Audioquest niagara. c. Isol8 mini sub axis which is my opinion is the best in the world. Also a very good tip, if you amp is very weak, try just using a very short powercable that is maybe half as long. It has a very different timing and if you have a relatively good setup, you can get away with it, without it sounding to harsh. I suggest using a 50cm, 100cm and 200cm power cables. They all have a different sound priority. Check my channel for more tweaks...
To be honest i always thought that it was the purpose of a pre-amp to do the first bits of amplification. PS Audio just told me otherwise. But i don’t think that i got my original thoughts out of oblivion. According to PS Audio a pre-amp is another word for a mixer with less functionality than a mixer (one channel at a time).
And don’t listen to Real HIFI Help with his power cables.. What a nonsense. The voltage to the speakers is much lower than the voltage from the wall, so the speaker cables are the ones that would need to be beefy to carry the amps without heating up. If it would be a topic at all. I don’t believe it. But anyone can do what he wants.
A preamp boosts the signal, and making a very convincing preamp sound natural is one of the most difficult things in HIFI, so I suggest using an integrated amp, unless you really know your sh#! which most people don't. It is a vey easy way of burning a hole in your pocket. But when done properly, it is totally worth it.
Paul, thanks for the video. First, a pot and two connections is not an "amp". I'm sure you just misspoke and know this. Secondly, we DO want our amps to have character. We love tubes because they have second harmonic distortion. This idea that what you get in you should get out is not what people want. It's a good theory but it ends there. I specifically design my preamps to have character, one of the reasons I use tubes. You designed a $6k amp to be a line stage? I absolutely don't want one - at any price! Things like super low distortion have little if anything to do with listening pleasure. We simply can not hear the difference between 0.05% distortion and 0.005% distortion, these are manufacturer's selling points.
Come on now Paul has been Around for a while I use to listen to him on AFN radio in Germany I even have some old recordings of his off the air. I'm still listening to him today, I have the same A.V background, but I don't have the job he has . Point is we pay attention to his knowledge of A.V. equipment not ABS. That could be us when we get to 70 in 20 years Funny thing is what I say said and I'm still listening to Infinity reference standard speakers (IRS).
Valve equipment usually goes better with valve equipment. If for some reason you are using a valve preamp with a transistor mono block and it sounds better, then that is an indicator that it is just compensating or you got a bit lucky. But yes, most transistor equipment have a tendency of sounding bright/fake/harsh/unsettled/2d/lacking true intimacy and being more focused on the mechanical part of the sound. (not all but most) And yes then a tube preamp can usually take some of the edge of and make the sound more smooth. But usually what happens is that it is more smooth and slightly suppressed, and the tube sound goes on top of the transistor sound, instead of fully integrating. But yeah, it is fun to try, you can literally create millions of different sounds this way.
Real HIFI Help 1. you really think that applies to good eg even class A solid state equip? 2. I have a prima Luna tube preamp and parasound amp (class A up to certain point) in trying to avoid what you describe.
Yes, having tested over 1000 different amplifiers I can tell that, the more expensive the gear is, the more it generally reacts, also depending on how good you are at harvesting that potential. I can count on 1 hand all the really good preamp amplifiers in the world. They almost don't exist, most of them get in the way of achieving the best possible sound signature, and just gives you power and control and locks the sound. If you want a really good preamp that just blasts everything away at a good cheap price, I only know of the audio note m3 signature. It also is one of the few that is good with mixing with other brands and can handle transistor mono blocks quite well.
Ive gone the pre/power valve route with Shanling, the all solid state with Musical Fidelity, but for the last 15 years have been hybrid with my beloved DK Design Reference V.3. All the clean power of solid state, yet the ability to roll the tubes and change the sound whenever I get bored. I love it and it has ameliorated the itch to upgrade. New (old) valves are much less expensive than a new amp. For me at least, hybrid ticks a lot of boxes.
Back to the old chestnut of no preamp is the best preamp vs active preamp. This has been a long journey for me, I have tried passive preamps that use a single high quality resistor in the signal path and as Paul said, they sound different. I have tried dacs with digital volume controls but I still prefer the sound of an active preamp. They seem to make the sound larger and with much greater image depth. No preamp always sounds a bit thin and dry to me and lack dynamics when directly compared to a good active pre. My own favourite is a good valve preamp every time.
But aside from the price . . . if all speakers sounded the same -- where would the competition be -- the price would go up exponentially. People's hearing is no more equal . . . and even with controls -- no two people will set the parameters the same, because of the differences in hearing, the room dimensions, the difference in furniture, and the list goes on; therefore, how can there not be abilities to adjust along with how many thousands of manufacturers coming and going in an industry where what is the VERY BEST today becomes trashed and bad-mouthed tomorrow. That is one reason I gave-up on audiophile magazines with their Class A equipment. What was Class A this month . . . was next month no longer worth the money that they recommended playing last month . . . and now they wanted to you take a great loss on what they recommended and buy what they NOW recommend -- it is a CON -- a big CON! Planned obsolescence and more money in their pockets. There is nothing wrong with improving nor in making a profit . . . but these people have models already making their present equipment OUTDATED and they know it, yet they will see them at premium prices . . . and then only reduce them when the new models are coming out to replace them. IT IS AN ABSOLUTE RACKET -- one I no longer participate in -- NOR SHALL, and I am SICK of these big mouths know it alls -- WHO KNOW ONLY WHAT THEY ARE TAUGHT IN TEXTBOOKS . . . AND THE REST IS THEIR UNSCRUPULOUS BUSINESS VENTURES IN WHICH THEY TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE PUBLIC! If the industry is suffering -- they have NO ONE TO THANK BUT THEMSELVES!
Back in the day -- say 60 years ago -- there were control preamps. They had bass and treble controls as well as the volume control. I guess that is passe today.
sorry to contradict you , my friend . any audio component has a sound and it's intended ,paul is only one amp manufacturer not all of them think the same. according to his mind set no preamp should sound better than a preamp ,but reality is different and at least he has the integrity to admit it. some engineers won't. it's the same about tubes (or as i call them:the cure for digital sound)vs solid state. do you want accuracy or something that humans like to listen to? dry stiff immediate harshness or body ,color ,finesse and some airiness on top? ice cream or vitamin pills? we are not oscilloscopes! some good amp manufacturers like ps audio represent the scientific way , they are engineers,while some amp makers are more like artists (and some are more like clowns everything looks flashy but no guts). a great sounding audio set up(s.e.t class a tubes ) is not a very practical or efficient thing ,it wastes gobs of electricity ,heat and space ,has too many components which you can consider "sound degrading" if you go by measurements and have no ears. the preamp is the heart of your tone. if all preamps had tubes the word "harsh" or "sibilant"would not be related to sound that much. the preamp is more important than any source since all the sources go through it. you should pick components by their sound which is not an accident ,someone listened to it many times till he made it sound exactly the way he wanted and you just can't take that way from him.it might not suit your taste ,other components or room but when you do find something that's right for you after years of trial and error ,you know it's no fluke, you just had to investigate which amp maker has the same taste that you have. and unfortunately there is no easy way to find out.
The perfect preamp should have no sound, but i know how hard it is to realize the so called "piece of wire" with gain/attenuation. Even the traces on a pcb can produce unwanted coloration of the soundquality. Another problem is, that many of the soundshaping parts/topologies/technologies etc. are very small, so they dont show up in standard audio measurements.
@behexen250 I hate getting involved with people who express viewpoints that have NO basis. You can Google the reviews and discover this, "Benchmark Media Systems' AHB2 is an extraordinary amplifier. Not only does its performance lie at the limits of what is possible for me to reliably test, it packs high power into a very small package, especially when used in bridged-mono mode. It is truly a high-resolution amplifier.-John Atkinson" www.stereophile.com/content/benchmark-media-systems-ahb2-power-amplifier
@behexen250 I quoted one of the most, if not the most, respected TECHNICAL analysts with SOTA devices to support his findings. The same amp also gained similar stratospheric ratings in EVERY review. Adds nothing, gives everything presented. Now as to your condescension, you're an asshole who is entirely self-approving. It requires little for you to enter into egocentric rants about which once again, you have no basis to support your position of self-appointed supremacy. Fuck off.
why spend 6K on a preamp when you can use one of many DACs that have volume control? That truly adds nothing to the sound. 6K back in your pocket. Now a tube preamp, that's a different story. Add warmth, tweak the tone rolling tubes. That would make more sense than Spending 6K for, well like Paul said, NOTHING. However if you listen to vinyl I guess you need one...... Here is a question Paul...... When will phono preamps come with a gain stage and volume control? That would be interesting!
@@Mark-lq3sb Mark what I said is I liked when tube preamp ads to the the tone. Im not surprised that tube preamp sounds like nothing because PS Audio gear sounds sterile to begin with i, my opinion. I do like to hear what Paul has to say from time to time though.
In today’s more digital chain audio system a separate preamp has lost his function. No separate preamp means also one device less and one interlink and power cord less. It all adds up so don't add, subtract.
Good point! I once owned an Audio note pre-amp. It did make the digital source (after going through a DAC) sound better. But not enough to warrant the cost. So I sold it.
@@yaniv-nos-tubes I have officially crossed the gangplank. I'm using a PsVane blue bulb in a Schiit Saga Plus. Going through solid state Quad current dumping power amp into Tannoys. Boom. I've never been happier with my sound. I will give it a few months before delving into NOS. Thanks for the recommendation. Happy listening
