Are Pre-Amps necessary?

I have a pal with a Mytek brooklyn bridge ( he's waiting on the Mytek Empire to arrive). His amp, speakers and connects are high end to die for gear. He played a track I know with and with out his pre-amp and directly out of the streamer. We could here no difference. YMMV

Are Pre-Amps necessary?

vanson1 With all the advances in digital sources, do we still need a $5,000 pre-amp?

jasonbourne521,167 posts10-15-2021 10:31amPreamps can look real cool - like my Audio Research SP6! However a passive pot works just as well since most all DACs output 2 volts - enough to drive most all amps into clipping (1 volt needed).

Jason is correct here, a little more elaboration below.


Many amps are 1.5v or less input sensitivity for full output, and most dacs today are well over 2v output these days, so there’s no problem with being able to voltage drive.
And most dacs today have very low output impedance output stages, that are equal to or better than many solid state preamps to drive any capacitive interconnects with, especially bettering most tube preamps.
So it’s a furphy to say a preamps drive better than dacs can direct.
And like I said if a passive pre has no voltage or impedance issues then it is the next best way.

Sure balanced has it’s place in over 3mt interconnect runs, for noise cancelation only, below that there is no need for it. As single ended is just as good, and better in many cases better, as the balanced inputs of many poweramps are just a "balanced opamp" then leading the into the real single ended input of the amp which will sound better.

Cheers George

Sure balanced has it’s place in over 3mt interconnect runs, for noise cancelation only, below that there is no need for it.

This statement is false both audibly and measurably. The benefit of balanced operation is there even if the cable is only six inches long.

Not when many poweramps use opamps as their balanced inputs, and then it routes to their single ended input.
In these cases  by using the single ended input, you get a better sound, as there’s no opamp in the signal path then.

Cheers George

Not when many poweramps use opamps as their balanced inputs, and then it routes to their single ended input.
In these cases by using the single ended input, you get a better sound, as there’s no opamp in the signal path then.

OK George, by this comment I have to assume that opamps are not a thing with which you are familiar. Opamps (operational amplifiers) have very high gain open loop. Their gain structure is thus defined by the feedback resistance vs the input resistance. When both values are the same the opamp has unity gain. This is a lot of feedback, and most opamps today can support that amount of feedback such that at any frequency in the audio band they will be entirely neutral.


And unity gain is how such at thing would be set up, since the amplifier in question would have no need of additional gain when using the balanced input. At any rate, if the designer did execute the opamp input in a substandard manner (and I have seen that), such a thing does not reflect on balanced operation nearly so much as it does on that designer!


Take this from someone who made their career in tube electronics, OK?

So the sound quality will be unaffected although I do concede that using an opamp solely for this purpose is a poor execution of the amplifier design; better if the amp simply has differential inputs used for either balanced or single-ended operation (and many in high end do exactly that). McCormick and Pass Labs being two examples off the top of my head...