Seperate Power Supply and Preamps


Several of the top end tube preamps like Hovland, Joule Electra, Herron, and Lamm have no seperate power supply. Others like First Sound Presence, Atma-sphere, Cary, have seperated out the power supplys with some of their models. What are the advantages of this sonically or is this just a physical limitation problem with the manufacturer?
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Showing 1 response by rushton

Albert provides a good list. Isolation and size limitations seem most common. If you look at the power supplies in some of the components that use a separate chassis, you'll see that they are large enough all by themselves to equal the size of many separate preamps or power amps. For preamps, an often cited rationale is to move stray electomagnetic fields generated by the power supply components as far from signal-bearing circuits as possible in order to reduce the possibility of interference.