Preamps for dummies that would be me


This is one of those “why is the sky blue” questions that I feel like an idiot for asking, but here goes.....

Other than switching inputs and controlling volume, what exactly does an active preamp do? If that were all to it, we'd all be using passive preamps. I've tooled around the web looking for articles, but I'm not really hitting anything. I've seen some veiled references about 'conditioning the sound' for the amp. Whatever that means.

So what, other than a fixed and usually too high output level, is coming out of the CD player(or tuner or whatever) that the input of the amp does not want to see. Thanks in advance for not slamming my ignorance.
randalle

Showing 1 response by subaruguru

Aside from the technical discussion...I'm VERY glad I chased a used Aleph P to drive my lowish-impedence Aleph 2 monos. Sometimes it's simply best to let the designer (Nelson Pass in this case) design the gain stage needed to drive the subsequent ones of his own pen!