if you are not averse to tubes i would suggest a conrad johnson or herron linestage meeting your stated budget
A warm natural sounding preamp
I currently have a Bryson 4B Amp a pair of dynaudio special 40 speakers my preamp is a cocktail X45 I HAVE A LINN BAsic turn tabel with a Lin Adict cartridge in it. Now I don't like the sound from the preamp the cocktail X45 is a great streamer cd player and ripper and digital recorder but identical like the sound from the preamp. I have a budget of between 6000 and 8000 dollars together a new preamp. Now I am looking for a preamp with a very warm and natural sound to it it can be tube or solid state. I need it to have a phono section that can take MM or MC have digital inputs and analog inputs must have balanced outputs tothe Amp and have at least a 2end output as well either analog or digital to send the music to the cocktail X45 so I can record it digital when I want to. The only brands i have considered at this point are MacIntosh and the Rotel Michi line. Can anyone out there direct me in recomending any other preamps out there Thank You Michael.
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jjss49, But adding warmth to warmth is not what you want. To best reproduce warmth you want neutrality. I am not so sure adding additional harmonics is what would be ideal. As an example I wouldnt call Atma-sphere amplifiers warm, I would say they are neutral sounding as far as tube amps are concerned. One of the reasons the SET guys sometimes call OTLs cold or sterile sounding. Now adding good harmonics to signal is better than adding a bunch of bad harmonics if this is your point. |
i have no well grounded opinion on how ’warmth’ is created and delivered in audio reproduction equipment, my comment below was only on the sound of a lovely live musical performance, in a good venue on the subject of added warmth in hifi gear, i am hardly an expert at a technical level but it seems to me that skillfully rolling off some treble frequencies and boosting midrange or midbass can provide a sense of perceived warmth, relative to a true flat response... of course playing with various distortion harmonics can do the same, but perhaps to a slightly different perceived effect the elephant in the room here is what subtractive effects result from the recording mastering mixing processes? i believe that these effects can lead to the music itself sounding lean and/or stripped of some of its harmonic richness, so perhaps components that do add back some warmth have a useful role in this (common) case... analogy i think of is fresh caught salmon tastes a certain way, but then you freeze it, thaw it, you then prepare it... it is just not the same... so skilled chefs add something back to make the taste real nice again... even if its not the same as the true ’og’... i do feel that the commission of great hifi gear deals with this reality in the recorded material we are often listening to |
@jjss49 ”if one has been to a live, unamplified jazz or classical performance in a nice music hall, one will sense that "warm" and "natural" are not at all inconsistent”.
Absolutely! I attended classical concerts every other week and frequently acoustical jazz concerts for over a decade. That is exactly what you want. |