Marantz SA8260 Direct to Amp

from what ive heard in my rigs running passive preamps & running amps with gain controls direct to a cd player i didnt care for it at all,i read alot of stuff where guys really liked listening that way so i tried it a few times with very poor results,maybee my rigs were mismatched,who knows but the result was dull & lifeless music that reminded me of a AM stereo radio station.

running a rig this way for the sake of a shorter signal path opens up other problem areas like having your system perfectly matched & leads to more cash being spent on cables,speaker wires & other tweaks trying to get it right.

you still cant go wrong spending your entire budget on an amplifier,if you dont care for the sound you can always add a preamp when cash flow allows,just remember when your looking for your new amp to pick an amp that has gain controls & you can use them as your volume control with no chance of damage to any equipment.

good luck,mike.

What I meant is that if he hooks up the Marantz directly to the amp without a passive at minimum it's likely he'll blow his speakers. The Marantz has no volume control I'm aware of and I have one. Standard output of cd players is about 2 volts or more than the maximum required by many amps to put out full power. He should at least get a passive as that's the closest thing to no preamp but personally I'd just get a real preamp. I've not tried any passives but would not want to lose any dynamics that I've read people talk about using passives.

Mikesinger, thank you for your recommendations, I'm looking into their availability.

To those of you whose experience was poor, running source direct: As rule of thumb, I understand, output impedance from the source should be below 300 Ohms, input impedance on the amp should be >50k Ohms and capacitance of the interconnects should be below 100pF/ft. Violating any of these measurements would cause high frequency roll off and mush bass. By any chance can anyone validate this by confirming that their components did NOT adhere to this rule of thumb???

Mikesinger,

You mentioned a 'midbass/bass suckout' when running a CDP directly to an amp. I assume this phenomena occurs even with players that have a variable output. You've obviously experienced this first hand. I wouldn't make sense to me that such a problem could be written off to a system mismatch.
So what causes this to happen. Naturally, if this occurs as a rule, people would avoid this arrangment. Could you offer any insight into why this happens?

Thanks,
S.Hebert

I would strongly recommend buying a good used Integrated Amplifier. You could easily buy a high-powered Integrated right here on Audiogon (or ebay) for around $1,500-, including models from Krell, Musical Fidelity, Classe, Plinius and others. Some of these models put out such excellent sound that it would take big, big money to better them with seperates. This is where you need to be with your budget and even quite a bit beyond in my opinion.