Mixed Brand Pre-Amp Power Amp Pairings that Work

An original version Schiit Freya 9 with NOS GE tubes into a Pass Labs XA-25. Yeah man. Yeah. That's right...

I remember that Jay's Audio Lab mentioned this a while ago. His take was that everyone should start with the same brand since that will work. Then you can try to switch one part and listen if the sound improves. This means borrowing amps or buying but being prepared to sell directly if it does not improve things.may have been for high end amps but it is an interesting idea.

Impedance matching and voltage output can be tricky. My

Supratek Cabernet pre has very high output and makes finding power amps

a bit difficult especially if one is looking for class A power amps.

I prefer the sound of an Ayre K-5xeMP preamp with JC 1 monoblocks to that of a JC 2 preamp.  I've yet to try a V-5xe amp with that preamp, but may be doing so soon.  I do use the newer KX-5 Twenty & VX-5 Twenty pairing in another setup.

db

I know that the performance of these two elements will be tightly coupled, so they need to match.

...

assume that they have optimally paired their own components to work well together

Utter bleedin’ nonsense 😲

Other than face plate esthetics, it 100% irrelevant. Assuming the gear was actually listened to and didn’t go directly from design to shipping, any impressions are only valid on the test system & program.

Change source / load / interconnects and room / program and any matching is toast.

And what anyone else has is 200% irrelevant for the same reasons. Best advice is to ignore every "I have..."