Modern Linestages


This is a general question about how complex and expensive some linestages have become. I'm looking to understand why? I can grasp that really good volume controls are complicated and that equally good switches are not inexpensive. I also have a general understanding of the importance of a high quality power supply, which again is not going to come cheap. I just don't comprehend how you get to a 50lbs. plus preamps that cost well over $20k. Is this level of complexity really needed or is it the equivalent of the spate of 500hp "sedans" for every day driving?
128x128onhwy61
No that implies that a correctly implemented passive will be true to the source, just like a direct source to poweramp connection is the best you can get.
It's up to you to get the best source you can. Then if you have to spend $15,000 -$35,000 on an active preamp to change the sound of the source, then you are colouring/distorting what the source gives, and all you are doing is an expensive bandaid fix of the source.

Cheers George
Atmasphere, we want to see a $35k preamp from you. And $70k power amps. Can you do it? And retubing of either should not cost less than $5k, preferably more.
A preamp is often times the one component that brings a total system together and just makes it sing. Active or passive, a preamp is just one part of a stereo system intended to create music.

True to the source means true to the first link in the stereo system chain - the digital front end for instance. All front ends are flawed and what George is missing is fidelity to the particular digital source does not make one particular preamp the gold standard.

A stereo must have all of its sub-parts working together to create what sounds most like the instrument and voices it strives to recreate. An active pre in my experience can deliver this end system result with as much fidelity to the voice and instrument as a passive mated with ideal companion components.

A CD player direct to an amp in not the gold standard of fidelity to the human voice or instrument. It is however possibly the gold standard of assuring the signal gets to the amp exactly as it left the CD player.

The two have nothing to do with each other. It's all about the total system result.
Onhwy61, if you want my opinion, keeping in mind that our preamps have a patented direct-coupled balanced output...

We solved a major problem facing tube preamps with that patent. It means that we can build a tube preamp that is flat to 1 Hz and can drive 32 ohm headphones directly, without additional circuitry for the headphones (other than the connector). So its my opinion that when you get into preamps that have that sort of price tag, you a paying for eye candy- really nicely machined, nicely finished and often very thick metal work to house a circuit that otherwise might be found in a preamp that costs 1/2 or 1/3 as much.

However such a budget does allow for more ornate switching schemes for the volume control and inputs and perhaps a few other things...

Now in our case we are already using custom materials for our circuit boards (to reduce dielectric effects of the board material) which is also extra thick (for the same reason). We have custom-built resistors, V-Cap Teflon caps, custom-built wire, proprietary regulators, the whole thing is balanced differential from phono input to line stage output with only 3 stages of gain in that path. In fact we set up the standards for how you connect a phono cartridge (which is a naturally balanced source) to a balanced input. We figured out how to do differential equalization and deal with a host of other issues, simply because no-one had done anything like this before we did. And that patented output does allow such cable control that if you set things up right, you will not be able to hear the difference between a cheap cable and a very expensive one (and it can drive over 100 feet of cable with no problem)! Overall its a pretty tweaked out preamp that has been refined over a 22-year period. So I don't think I could do your question justice with a casual answer.