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 2 responses by tok20000

For most people who are just starting out into audio think that preamps are not terribly important components. Their purpose is to regulate volume. How hard can that be???

Well, I will tell you it is a lot harder than you can probably imagine (at least doing it really well). There are quite a few good speaker, amps, and sources in the world... HOWEVER, there are far fewer good preamps.

A wise audiophile once told me: 'Any given music systems signal has the most chance of being screwed up by preamplification.'

Well it is passed my bedtime...

KF
If a passive preamp did the job better than my Ayre for the same price or less (and had phono as magical as the Ayre), I'd buy it in a heartbeat. My main goal iis end product sound quality and not fancy smancy equipment (unfortunately, I have found that if you really want to get world class sound.... well, you need to dish out at least national class dolars...) Eeeking that last %10 of heavenly sonic quality from your speakers tends to be pricey at best.

I am the first to tell folks that if I could get the same sound out of coat hangers used as speaker cables as I could my Nordost SMP speaker cables, I'd be the first to raid all the closets in the house. (I remember an audio designer telling me that monoblocks and coat hanger could sound very good. I asked him to demonstrate, but he declined.) LOL.

KF