Quick and easy answer: yes. You absolutely need a separate preamp from your streamer / DAC / preamp unit. You will hear a significant improvement. The next step, if possible, separate the DAC from your streamer at some point. Happy listening.
Help and opinions needed on pre-amp situation
For this one, I would like to hear from enthusiats instead of people who sell stuff. I’ve been using integrated amplifiers for all my years in this "hobby." I recently went to mono blocks- a pair of the class D Atma-Shpere’s to be specific. I’m using balanced XLR connections straight from a Lumin S1 streamer/dac/preamp into the mono blocks using Lumin’s LeedH volume processing deal. It’s a nice and simple setup with nothing else in the signal path.
The question is: am I missing out on better sound by leaving out an Atma-Sphere MP-3.3 tube preamp? Will adding a preamp improve, diminish, or retain the existing sound quality- as far as soundstage, imaging, depth, tonal balance etc is concerned? This preamp deal is not cheap (for me). Has anyone been in this situation? Did the preamp improve the sound, keep it the same, or make it worse? Am I better off just leaving it as-is with my minimalistic setup?
A couple of other things to consider:
My turntable is collecting dust since changing over to the mono blocks, I didn’t listen to vinyl often even with the integrated since my digital front sound better then my vinyl gear. If it made $ense, it would be nice to have the ability to listen to vinyl again.
At some point I may also have to connect a projector to my system to play audio. Then the issue becomes that projectors do not have balanced XLR output. Most are HDMI. I’m not sure if the MP-3 preamp will work or if a different preamp is better choice here etc. I’d like to keep with the same brand for obvious reasons if possible.
Has anyone been in this situation before and pulled the trigger? If you have- your input, suggestions, and opinions would be greatly appreciated.
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@veerossi It doesn't. |
Thanks again to all for the great information here. I called Atma-Sphere and spoke with Ralph. If you haven’t dealt with them yet, please do yourself a favor and check them out. These guys are the real-deal. Passionate people who love what they do and take the time to ensure their customers are well taken care of. It’s such a rare treat nowadays. To top it off, he helped me evaluate a used MP3 on a different site that someone else mentioned to me. When I mentioned 1/2 way through the discussion that I felt bad to take up this much of his time to talk about some used item from a private seller instead of buying a new one from them, he mentioned: "It’s still our product and means you are a customer." We talked for another hour. Wow! I mean who does that anymore?!? We had a great conversation and it was the first time in a long time that I felt like someone actually cared to explain things and not just try to set me up for their eventual pitch on whatever they have the biggest profit margin on this week. I bought it and looks like this one will be a slam-dunk! |
OP, True audiophile companies are like this. The people in them are passionate about what they do, and above all else want folks to achieve and enjoy high end audio. For those of us that have been pursing high end audio for a long time have connected, and are people like this. This is one of the reasons I find it hard to tolerate folks that incorrectly think the real core of high end is some trick to take their money or companies like Atma-Sphere, Wilson, and others are get rich schemes. These companies are driven by folks passionate about audio and truly want to share the experience.
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