Review: NVA P50 Passive pre-amp

[cjm123]

Hi Guys,

Years ago (many many) whilst gainfully employed in our beloved industry I bought a Crown D60 power amp which I hadn't used for donkeys years and I am grateful to DSJR for looking after it for me for a while and recapping it. Anyway I had been intrigued by passive pre-amps :hmm:and decided to give it a go so placed an order for an NVA P50 to work with my D60. The P50 arrived within 12 days and was beautifully finished and very well packed. So I hooked it up to my Denon DCD520AE CD player (good beyond its budget price) with Klotz MC5000 cables courtesy of Brian of AOS land and with Talk 3 cables to my Stirling broadcast MS-88s (think modern driver LS3/5as).....an eclectic mix I guess.

I sat there listening to it for the first time thinking Wow, Wow:wow:! I loved my Rega gear that had served me well but IMHO this system provides more resolution larger wider deeper soundstage, better image focus and stability, tighter bass more detail and nuances and a quieter background.

Of course my next challenge was to find a good budget phono amp to work with my Denon DL-110 HOMC cartridge. Unfortunately my budget didn't stretch to an NVA one or a Croft so it was quite a problem matching impedance and system gain levels especially with a passive pre-amp driving the fairly insensitive D60 professional power amp. After much reading of online reviews etc I got a Schiit Mani (yes I have heard all the jokes) which I will post a review of later but safe to say my early day impressions are it is very impressive.

Seems to me if you are looking for more detail, resolution and nuances then you could do a lot worse than investigate passive pre-amps and see what you think.

Oh I should say I have no business connection with NVA I am just delighted with my NVA P50 passive pre-amp.

:cheers:

Chris

[southall-1998]

Interesting write up, Chris.

Are your Talk 3 cables the green ones? I have a set, and will never sell them!

S.

[cjm123]

Hi Shane,

Thank you and yes they are the green ones. They are really good, not just for the price (which is a steal), but period.

Chris

[Gazjam]

Yup,
NVAs very good amps, Brian's cables really bring out the best in them.

[struth]

The Mani is a fabulous bit of kit, for silly cheap price tbh. I really like mine although it is my spare, I do bring it out every now and then for a run.

[cjm123]

Grant, great to hear I don't have cloth ears!

Chris

[DSJR]

It's impossible for the P50 to ADD to the signal fed it and it's my view from experience that it loses next to nothing at all, although I've never compared a stock one with the SA stepped attenuator version, which uses boutique resistors and not in a 'ladder' form I gather. I appreciate that many amps will need an active buffer stage to drive them but so many others don't :)

Chris was worried about the Crown D-60 as to whether it could be used with a passive pre, as when current, it supposedly had an insensitive input. He need not have worried, as I tried my passive with one of my D-60's with no issues at all and plenty of gain. By the way, the 're-cap' was a replacement of four caps not directly in the signal path that had been changed before, one of which was inserted backwards (ouch! :lol:), with a catastrophic effect on the sound...

One thing I've learned by all this is that the old AVI preamp I've been using as switchbox, sometimes phono stage and driver of one of my headphone D-60's, tends to force the sound out a little (it was designed for long cable runs to remote amps). I'm going to dig the Croft back out of retirement as I can switch with it if I don't need the headphones..