Valve Preamp with SS Power Amp

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Originally Posted by LittleTone

Hi Paul,
Hope you're well also.
Thanks for all the input guys; definitely gonna knock this one on the head. If I'm gonna spend that sort of money it needs to be
right and this is definitely a mismatch that I don't intend to try putting right. It was a worthwhile exercise; but it's going back to the dealer.
Do all valve preamps exhibit the same 50Kohm ish requirement of a power amp or is it just the Quad. You'll see from my profile that I do have the matching Elite SS preamp but I'm curious about alternatives, and now I don't require any phono input; in fact just a single input from a DAC is all that is required - What are your recommendations ?
The Quad valve pre did add some heft and body to the sound, integrated the bottom end quite nicely, or was the sound of overloading ?????

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People often recommend using a valve preamp with a SS power amp, but personally I've had good results working the other way round. The input sections of a valve power amp have better tolerance on the whole for overload than SS, which usually work best with tightly-matched parameters, while a good SS pre can leave the signal pretty much untouched (as you'd want) and can sound great into a valve power amp, while at the same time sorting out the whole impedance matching issue that makes passive preamps such a hit and miss affair (for me they are at least an 80% miss, that's my experience anyway).

If you really like that Quad preamp I'd think about using it with a Class D power amp like some of the Lyngdorfs that work really well with valve input but have lowish (I think 1.2v from memory) input sensitivity. Some of the EAR power amps also have lowish input sensiitivity which make them easy to match with preamps.

There will be people who tell you that you should get a DAC or CDP with a volume control but in my experience 1) this rarely sounds that great mainly due to poor impedance matching - for the most part I see the gain control on a CDP either as a remote control friendly thing or as a gain matching device into a proper preamp, and 2) you might want to add further devices later though if you go for a multi input DAC and they are digital, this won't be an issue. But having said that it may well be worth exploring the main thing you want to be careful of is gain matching, you don't want a DAC or CDP that has 15 DB of gain into the Quad power amp like that preamp or you are back at square one.

Has the OP tried a Croft preamp with a Quad power amp? It's an excellent match; I've heard it with a 405-2 and I'm sure a 909 or one of the more recent ones would be superb. It's a shame you aren't close by or I'd propose an experiment, since I'd really like to hear the QSP with one of my Croft preamps or my ARC LS26.

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Originally Posted by Elephantears

Has the OP tried a Croft preamp with a Quad power amp? It's an excellent match; I've heard it with a 405-2 and I'm sure a 909 or one of the more recent ones would be superb. It's a shame you aren't close by or I'd propose an experiment, since I'd really like to hear the QSP with one of my Croft preamps or my ARC LS26.

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That's a good point and Glenn will tailor the gain to suit whatever you need.

Croft pre into Quad QSP or QMP is a combination I often use for customers with power hungry speakers. It works well.

Well I have bought something. I was looking around on Ebay on Wednesday and came across this.

http://www.eeaudio.com/eeaudio_009.htm.

I've never heard of it before; but after a bit of google'ing, decided it was worth a punt. A bit of a gizmo maybe, but it is a valve line pre-amp in its own right.
The owner had also upgraded the valves to those recommended in the review. ( nice).
It arrived early yesterday and I'm pleased to say that after listening to it, pretty much all day, this item does do what it says on the tin and I rather like it.
I'm currently using it as a preamp between DAC (Mytek) and Power Amp (QSP) and it HAS added the desired characteristics into my system. (nice)

The review is pretty much, spot on.
http://www.dagogo.com/eastern-electr...plifier-review

Thanks for all your previous comments guys, particularly to Tom for taking the time to write such a lengthy response.

Bit like an X10-D with a volume control.

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Originally Posted by LittleTone

Well I have bought something. I was looking around on Ebay on Wednesday and came across this.

http://www.eeaudio.com/eeaudio_009.htm.

I've never heard of it before; but after a bit of google'ing, decided it was worth a punt. A bit of a gizmo maybe, but it is a valve line pre-amp in its own right.
The owner had also upgraded the valves to those recommended in the review. ( nice).
It arrived early yesterday and I'm pleased to say that after listening to it, pretty much all day, this item does do what it says on the tin and I rather like it.
I'm currently using it as a preamp between DAC (Mytek) and Power Amp (QSP) and it HAS added the desired characteristics into my system. (nice)

The review is pretty much, spot on.
http://www.dagogo.com/eastern-electr...plifier-review

Thanks for all your previous comments guys, particularly to Tom for taking the time to write such a lengthy response.

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This is a superb choice for what you outlined as your requirements and kicking myself now for not suggesting it (especially since you said single input). It should provide everything you want from it in terms of both volume control and impedance matching, without throwing additional gain or undue noise into the mix. Perfetto.

Thanks Tom for the vote of confidence. I'm a bit chuffed I actually found it.

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Originally Posted by LittleTone

The review is pretty much, spot on.
http://www.dagogo.com/eastern-electr...plifier-review
.

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That's an interesting read. A pity there is no technical analysis of what it is actually doing, though.