Matching preamp to amp

Marakanetz has it right.

Usually the easiest way is to use the same brand, but that may not necessarily be what you'll musically like the best. Did that make sense? Heheh.

Components within a certain brand shouldn't have impedance matching problems, but when mixing different brands careful selection is necessary. Case in point. I auditioned a friend's Pass Aleph 3 for a month and loved its sound. Fabulous on guitars and great layering front to back! But its low 23Kohm input impedance wasn't a good match for my system, which resulted in big loss of dynamics even with the volume cranked way up. In the end, even with the great sound I couldn't consider owning it with my current system.

What Marakantz has detailed is a good guideline for matching any preamp to an amp, but it becomes even trickier when throwing a passive preamp into the mix. Then you have to consider the output impedance and output voltage of your source components along with the amp's input impedance.

Thanks form the info Marakanetz and Gunbei! Being new at this I didn't know it was that complicated. I'll do a lot more investigating before I decide on a pre amp.

Clyde, what we've done is to give you a heads up on possible problems, because in most cases you shouldn't have a problem.

My experience of impedance mismatching with the excellent Aleph 3 is a pretty well known issue and was corrected to a great extent with the release of the Aleph 30. The input imedance of this amp was bumped from 23Kohms to 47Kohms which is pretty much in the standard. The BAT VK200 I use has an input impedance of 100Kohms.

I checked up on the Cinenova Grande 5 and it actually has a pretty low 27Kohm rating, so as Marakanetz advised make sure the preamp you pick has enough gain to drive it. I'm confident you won't run into problems though because this is a popular amp for home theater and most processors should be able to mate with it.

Good luck!

Wonder if that is how the Audible Illusions L-1 and the Aragon 4004 MKII seem to mate so well? It surely cant be impedance because the Aragon is 22kohms where as the Audible Illusions is 1.2kohms which is in the lower limits of what is recommended. But the Audible Illusions has enormous gain.

Hi Kool. Yeah, It may be that the AI has a lot of gain. But its 1.2Kohm output impedance mated to the Aragon with 22Kohm input impedance actually works out to 18 times, so it's well within the 10 times guideline. I've heard people say the range is 10-100 times.