How much do I need to spend to get a preamp that sounds better than no preamp?

I believe what Nelson Pass is indicating, is that with many sources, and in a perfect world ( system match ), passive would be ideal. However, he knows, as most of do, the perfect world does not exist. Just my interpretation of all my readings. Enjoy ! MrD.

Thank you mrdecibel, and that's exactly what I post  "system (impedance) match" whether it's direct or with passive, which today is more the norm than the exception.
 There are just some here that are protecting their interests, like a dog with a bone.

Cheers George

kosst_amojan
Like mrdecibel said, the perfect world doesn’t exist.

Don’t cheery pick mrD, a perfect world does exist if the impedance’s are good, low output and high input (>1:10 ratio), and in most cases they are.
Go away now, you are so annoying.

You really have lost it, as I said 10k pot has at worst output impedance of 2.5k, a 1:10 ratio of that is 25kohm, so any amp with >25kohm or higher input impedance will be fine 
Please go back to school or stay off the *****, it’s effecting you really bad, seek help.

 Nobody building an amp with a 25kR input impedance has any intention of it being fed with a 1kR+ source!

And why not, that's a input to output ratio of 1:25 
And if you look your Pass B1 is 1kohm output impedance (linked circled in red) you really have lost it sunshine.
Now please I ask nicely go away, or I'll report you for stalking.

https://ibb.co/e32XTT

Ok. The Arye preamp sounds better than no preamp to me. Finally!

Will try out the Belles ARIA preamp shortly, and evaluate whether it can wring out even more potential from my Belles SA30 poweramp. Currently the SA30 is direct-connected to a SOtM sDP-1000 DAC/preamp, but I suspect the SA30 is not firing on all cylinders here. For a while I’ve been a rather devout "no separate preamp, thanks" fellow, being that I’ve found it generally requires a pricey separate preamp to pull itself from the sonic equation (i.e.: transparency), so to speak, will bringing to the picture the qualities a capable separate preamp can deliver, like a livlier, more dynamic and firmly anchored meat-on-the-bones presentation. In addition to likely giving the SA30 more optimal "working conditions" with the inclusion of the ARIA preamp, there’s also the potential upside of by-passing the internal volume control of the SOtM DAC/preamp, of course only to be relieved by the one in the ARIA. 

Why the ARIA? It would seem to defy my preconception about requiring a costly preamp to make it worthwhile (i.e.: the ARIA retails for under $1,500), but several I know have pointing to it being extremely capable, despite its relatively low cost. Moreover Dave Belles is an excellent engineer with a particular knack for making rather authentic sounding amps - to my ears, at least. We’ll see how it turns out.

Cost for adding a proper preamp? depends demands of the system.

1.  A low-end system with no PreAmp would benefit from a $300-500 preamp. (eg. Schitt Lyr 2, tubed)
2.  Mid-end system: $500-1500 (several on the market)
3.  Hi end: $1500 on up, the skies the limit, but $1500-3000 should suffice for many systems that are not the crazy expensive hi end stuff.

this wonderful pre was just listed. I had one over a decade ago. Fully balanced with phono, but old school- no remote

https://www.audiogon.com/listings/lis9100g-klyne-audio-arts-7lx-3-5-solid-state

No preamp is still a preamp. It’s just built into the device.  

Generally a good stand alone preamp fed by the line level output of your source will be better than an amp fed directly by the volume controlled output of your source.

FWIW, devices that only include line level outputs are less complicated, have better interior layouts, and sound better than “do it all” devices that include direct volume control capability.  

It’s really pretty much about the two methods of volume control.  My ET7 and my SP20 pretty much whoop the volume controls that are available to me using any of my $2k level sources.  I’m better off feeding undegraded line level into either SP20 or ET7.  Same was true with ET3SE or PV8 or PV11.  

Generally a good stand alone preamp fed by the line level output of your source will be better than an amp fed directly by the volume controlled output of your source.

Sorry but you have this wrong, volume controls in sources (cdp’s and dac’s) don’t feed the amp, they have output buffers after their volume control stage, and in many cases this buffer is the same or even better at driving an amp with lower output impedance and better current than some preamps outputs can especially tube preamps.

Cheers George

I am using simple terms to keep from obfuscating the issue in play.  

I’m happy to agree to disagree.  

But experience tells me that, as seems to be true of most forum dwellers, I should wait with bated breath for you to have the last word.  

Go go for it. 

Sorry broadwayjoe you are not even using simple terms, you simply have it wrong, accept it, if your going to state things, check to see if you have them right.
The volume control from sources such as cdp ,dac, even computers ect do not drive the amp/s, their output buffers do (BIG DIFFERENCE to what you implied), which as I pointed out are more than up to the task, in most cases.

Cheers George

To George and all. I have been listening to my Luminous Audio Axiom II with Walker mod, single ended 3 in 2 out, with remote, for a week now, and I have to say, I am connecting with the musicians, as well as the mixing and mastering engineers who have worked on the recordings, like never before. A veil has been lifted, the colorations are gone, and nothing is missing from using my 2 expensive preamps ( will not mention what they are ). I am feeling lucky ( punk ), that the synergy is working for me, and quite happy I made the move. The background is dead quiet, as there is absolutely no noise, hiss, hum ( etc. ) in my system. Thank you George for steering me in this direction, as I always thought an active preamp ( with gain ) was absolutely necessary( and I have been at this for 50 or so years ). Of course, experimenting with my pro amplifiers, with their built in volume attenuators, allowed me to hear this as well, but now I can use my favorite little amplifier, which I could not, successfully, use before. Cheers ! Enjoy ! MrD.

I am feeling lucky ( punk ) ....

Lest anyone wonder, this is a humorous reference to a famous line spoken by Clint Eastwood in the 1970s film "Dirty Harry."

Congratulations, MrDecibel.  As you said, enjoy!

Regards,
-- Al 

Al, thank you, and I am glad someone caught the line. Enjoy ! MrD.

I just sent my Axiom back

mrdecibel
  A veil has been lifted, the colorations are gone, and nothing is missing from using my 2 expensive preamps
  Thank you George for steering me in this direction, as I always thought an active preamp ( with gain ) was absolutely necessary

No problems MrD, you've obviously got a good match if your hearing all that, now you've seen the light and just turning that passive up some more compared to the active. As Nelson Pass said:
"  Really - I’m being serious here!. Maybe they are reacting psychologically to the need to turn the volume control up compared to an active preamp."

Cheers George

Per my earlier post above on trying the Belles ARIA preamp in my setup, a little update.

I borrowed the unit from my kind dealer for just short of 3 weeks, a period of time I found sufficient to evaluate its impact. Overall, the encounter hasn’t led me to deviate from my initial "preamp, no thanks"-stance - via my specific setup - but it’s not without acknowledging some qualities with the ARIA preamp in the mix.

The ARIA imparted more energy in the upper bass region, which seemed to smoothen (i.e.: make more flat) this area compared to the SOtM DAC-direct connection, and moreover spatiality and/or the sense dimensionality was more pronounced/convincing, which was especially apparent during live applause sequences that seemed to emanate from a plane just behind the speakers with striking realism - quite impressive. The uptick in upper bass energy also made voices come through with a bit more solidity.

The areas that detracted from the otherwise positive impression of the ARIA were a variation of factors, the most pronounced of which was a sense of filtering of the sound. I felt this robbed the presentation of some "information" or very fine details. The sphere of sound also appeared to take a little step backwards which I found took away some of the tactile and enveloping feel of the music. Lastly there was slight darkening of the sound, as if the top end had rolled off a bit.

I then, with the assistance of a friend, ended up thinking over some tweaks with the SOtM DAC-direct approach to address the upper bass prowess of the ARIA, and looking into some added gain and phase correction of the sub we found just what we needed here. Moreover the synergy with a different software playback program proved an advantage, leading to a huge and uninhibited soundstage, depending on the material; intimate recordings has a wonderful presence and focus, and large scale recordings open up accordingly (as if) outside the plane of the speakers. These tweaks gave us what we found the best of both worlds, and so rendered the ARIA moot.

I’m aware, or can at least easily imagine some may have found the contribution of the ARIA more to their liking overall, at least via my setup, particularly in light of the slightly more laid-back, more spacious and perhaps more pleasing presentation. As is - without the ARIA and with the tweaks mentioned - the plane of sound seems more direct, less restrained, and more enveloping and spherically even. There’s no lack of "meat on the bones," dynamics or life in the sound - indeed that’s where the ARIA-in-the-mix would fall short in most aspects.

Through all this what has amazed me is the chameleon-like character of my speakers, where what was previously considered to be limiting or signature-related aspects of the sound imparted by them turned out to be source or (pre)amp based limitations/character instead.

Just my $0.02..

The ARIA imparted more energy in the upper bass region, which seemed to smoothen (i.e.: make more flat) this area compared to the SOtM DAC-direct connection, and moreover spatiality and/or the sense dimensionality was more pronounced/convincing, which was especially apparent during live applause sequences that seemed to emanate from a plane just behind the speakers with striking realism - quite impressive. The uptick in upper bass energy also made voices come through with a bit more solidity.

The most common problem with operating a passive control is the loss of bass impact; in this passage you are confirming it.
What I don't get is why you stopped with the Aria. There are a lot of preamps out there, and they really vary! IMO/IME it is a statement about how bad many of them are that a passive system can keep up with them. Getting a sub adjusted correctly is always a tricky bit- and I know David Belles well enough to know that his electronics are really flat- so the bass you are referring to above was not being enhance by his preamp. It some other interaction, and setting up the sub to compensate is creating a synergy.
IME again, synergies are usually a situation where one weakness is played against another, resulting in something that *seems* better than either on their own. An alternative is that if you worked with stuff that stood on their strengths rather than their weaknesses, you create something that is even better.  I would try a variety of preamps and see if you can do better that the Aria, and be willing to readjust the sub in that light (since you were willing to do that to compensate for the usual loss of bass otherwise...). You might also look into tube preamps; IMO they offer more detail than solid state.

When I inserted a Hattor XLR passive (sans buffer) between my Oppo 105 and my then EP 100.2SE amps(newest AA amp on its way)  everything improved, especially bass

It could be that my  system  is 100% balanced, Isn't everybody doing that by now?

No. Balanced definitely helps. I find I get better bass going from single ended to balanced when running active preamps as well.

When I inserted a Hattor XLR passive (sans buffer) between my Oppo 105 and my then EP 100.2SE amps(newest AA amp on its way) everything improved, especially bass

It could be that my system is 100% balanced, Isn’t everybody doing that by now?

It was far more likely that you were experiencing "bit stripping" (a loss of resolution) when you went direct, as you were not using your Oppo’s volume control above 75% as the level was too loud to do this.
And getting the better bass with the Hattor Passive pre you had you Oppos volume control up higher so there was no "bit stripping" going on.

And as far as balanced sounding better than single ended this is a Furphy, the only time this may happen is if the interconnects are very long (over 5mts> 10mts)

Cheers George

And as far as balanced sounding better than single ended this is a Furphy, the only time this may happen is if the interconnects are very long (over 5mts> 10mts)

This statement is false- balanced lines offer less coloration even if they are only 6" long. This is way you can run longer lengths with them, since they have far less coloration. Just today I installed balanced cables in a system that were only 1/2 a meter and the improvement was instantly audible.

balanced lines offer less coloration even if they are only 6" long

6" This is false, your either hearing things or your biased toward your own retail preamp product.

In many cd players or dacs I've seen the balanced output is just an added opamp changing the "real' single ended circuit to balanced. Same goes with the input of many poweramps, which btw are single ended output to the  speakers. 
The only time balanced is better from source to to pre, or pre to power is for noise cancellation with interconnect over 5mts>

Cheers George  

tweak1
It could be that my system is 100% balanced, Isn’t everybody doing that by now?

Here is Nelson Pass’s take on balanced vs single ended.
When asked by an owner what sounds better on his X350.5
On diyaudio.com

Nelson Pass The one and only Join Date: Mar 2001
"Except for noise, it gives pretty much the same performance, and this is
because the inputs are summing junctions, and single-ended inputs are merely another balanced source with ground as the (-) input."

Cheers George

george, you just proved Ralph's point with help from Nelson. Noise is audible. The rest of your post is BS pushing your product.

When I first switched over to XLR, decade+ ago, I compared a 0.5m v 1.0m of the identical run of the identical XLR ICs. The difference was immediately apparent 

6" This is false, your either hearing things or your biased toward your own retail preamp product.

In many cd players or dacs I've seen the balanced output is just an added opamp changing the "real' single ended circuit to balanced. Same goes with the input of many poweramps, which btw are single ended output to the speakers.
The only time balanced is better from source to to pre, or pre to power is for noise cancellation with interconnect over 5mts>

I certainly do hear things :)

George, one thing you will see me harping about a lot is that a lot of high end manufacturers don't support the balanced standard, or for that matter don't seem to know that such a standard exists.
You seem to be one of them. The standard is defined in the AES File 48. Here are the basic aspects of balanced line operation, going back to the 1950s:
1) the operation is low impedance, in particular the source
2) the signal occurs with respect to its opposite, rather than ground (IOW the non-inverted and inverted phases); ground is ignored and is only used for shielding- no signal currents are in the ground connection!
3) pin 1 is ground, pins 2 and 3 carry the signal (neither is 'hot' or 'cold'). In the US, pin 2 is non-inverting.

If the device used does not support the standard, you may not get all the advantages that balanced operation offers. Off the top of my head, this is one reason I don't recommend passive volume control systems, since I can't think of a way they can be set up to support the standard; see points 1 and 2 above (a TVC could do it, but I've yet to see a TVC that had all the loading issues solved and didn't color the sound).

As a result, with a passive you still have to audition the cable in the resulting system, and the whole point of balanced line is that you **don't** have to audition the cable, because its simply going to work right and sound right, 6" or 30 feet no difference.
Now to address some other misunderstandings you have in your statement above, many DACs fly in the face of your comments about their internal construction, for example MSB, where the internal construction often includes more than one DAC, running out of phase.  But more to the point, the reason to go balanced and whether you can do it properly has nothing to do with the internal circuit and has everything to do with how that circuit talks to the outside world. An example is the old Ampex 351 tape machine, which uses input and output transformers to do that job. Audio Note made a DAC that operated in a similar fashion. IOW if you have an entirely single-ended circuit which drives an interface that properly supports the standard, the result is that you don't have problems with the interconnect cables.

Although our circuits are entirely internally balanced differential, that isn't needed if the circuit simply has the right interface (there are benefits from balanced differential operation of the circuit, but that's another conversation). From your post, it seems you don't understand what that's about.

I've always thought that audiophiles would jump at the opportunity balanced represents. I've heard interconnect cables make a night and day improvement in a system; many audiophiles have. When you run balanced, the cables no longer editorialize (and you get lower noise). I've seen a set of $200 30 foot cables beat out a set of 20 foot cables that were $1000/ foot, so this can be pretty significant.

Your comment about amplifiers is also false- I don't have to go very far to prove that; the amps we make are balanced all the way to the loudspeakers and I can name quite a few more- the GAS, BAT, any amplifier that is bridged, any tube amp running zero feedback.

george, you just proved Ralph’s point with help from Nelson. Noise is audible.

You need read and absorb better.   I did nothing of the sort, I have always said the only advantage balanced has over single ended connection is for the cancellation of noise with long interconnect runs.
Nelson Pass: " Except for noise, it gives pretty much the same performance "
And we should get back on the OP’s topic " How much do I need to spend to get a preamp that sounds better than no preamp?

The rest of your post is BS pushing your product.

As for me " pushing" my product sunshine, I have never bought it up in this thread unless asked specifically about it, all the other posts are for passive preamps in "general".
And why these days active preamps are not needed in many systems, as there is already too much system gain without an active preamp adding more gain. Quote: Nelson Pass again! my god he’s eveywhere!

Cheers George

Looks like someone didn't like what I posted and got it removed, it will come back once looked at by admin, with if any modifications done to it so it's not so insensitive to their feelings.

Cheers George

Too bad your thing isn’t balanced. It really limits it’s usefulness with a Pass amp

Not really as "my thing" as you so quaintly put it, is used with many Pass amps they have rca as well, and those that don’t my customers use these http://www.cardas.com/adaptors.php as Nelson said above about rca v xlr.
" Except for noise, it gives pretty much the same performance " and that noise is only becomes a factor with very long interconnects.

Nelson also made an un-named buffer for "my thing", (with over 900 world wide I think it deserves a name) the Lightspeed Attenuator to drive one or two models of his amps that are low input impedance amps around 10years ago on diyaudio, a few years later to be sold as the commercial B1 buffer by itself to be used with other passives preamps.
https://ibb.co/choBZS

Cheers George

I don’t understand why you keep posting that.

Because it was the original balanced power supply direct coupled (matched) complimentry jfet buffer that Nelson designed for the Lightspeed.
Afterwards it became (I believe the cruder) unbalanced supply re-configured capacitor coupled p channel jfet buffer (didn’t need to be matched) for the B1
Once again go away your stalking, also calling my product "thing"? you really need to see someone.

Cheers George

If you play digital, the MSB DAC can drive any amp, using passive analog volume control only. 

$1.000.000.000.00

@honashagen  you ask  question , the answer is very simple
Absolutely no difference how much money you can spend , the  pre
amplifier -is device  can change the sound in only one side- make sound
worse, The  ideal preamp just  no change the sound quality 

bache129 posts07-16-2018 6:51am@honashagen you ask question , the answer is very simple
Absolutely no difference how much money you can spend , the pre amplifier -is device can change the sound in only one side- make sound worse. The ideal preamp just no change the sound quality

Very true bache, the best preamp is no preamp if you can do it, with the source having it"s own digital domain volume control.
But the trouble is a digital volume control in the source will start to "bit strip" (loose resolution) below 75% of full up, if you have to use it below 75% (because it’s too loud) then your next best to no preamp, is to leave it up full. And then use a passive volume control after the source, this way you retain all the resolution and most of the advantage of no active preamp in the signal path.

Cheers George

So @honashagen what did you decide for your preamp, the Ayre unit?

Well had to give up the JC2 and am now borrowing a Parasound P7. Forget this one. Not in the same class as the JC2.

I got the Ayre upgraded to the MP version. Holy crap! More air and heft too. Absolutely worth the $850 charge.