integrated amp vs Pre&power amp combination.

The advantage of the seperates is that preamps are low voltage low current devices and power amps are high current high voltage--too big a power amp in the same box will eminate a strong enough magnetic field to interfere with the preamps circuits, although you can shield like brian said. Also, both pre and pwr in an integrated will often share a common power supply, which is not necessarily bad, but.. if you need a lot of power for your amp its usually best to give the pre its own pwr source too. And, if its a high powered class A amp being horribly inefficient there's going to be so much heatsinking to deal with too it becomes mandatory to stick the preamp in a separate box for cost reasons alone. Tecnically you could have a 5 foot wide chassis and you could get them far enough apart and deal with the heatsinking but its certainly not cost effective, especially from a marketing standpoint. It comes down to matters of cost, performance, and flexibility. If you've got to drive long runs of interconnect to remote locations then a pre is necessary. The only real plus for the integrated is that a passive linestage can be done nicely and save cost and improve performance since there is no cable interface the source would have to drive. Passive control units in place of a seperate pre in a pre pwr combo are not necessarily that great since the source is getting bogged down. Active loudspeakers offer the potential to be the best with the necessary electronic equalization, so from that standpoint, pre-pwr is the best. I don't know enought about those digital loudspeaker systems--the real kind that convert the digital signal into a a soudwave all in one step so...

Thanks for all the feedbacks.
In general I think the more tranformer you have in your system is better& also the most interesting part of HI-END stuff is changing/upgrading your equipments for new taste & It is easy to do that with pre & poweramp plus interconnects,speaker cables etc....
Thanks again,
Henry

I owned a Simaudio Moon I-5 integrated for over a year. I've had an Electrocompaniet ECI-3 for the past three months. And, I'm currently running the Blue Circle BC21 preamp with the BC22 amp.

In comparing these different setups, I would agree that it depends on the components being considered. These three systems all have their strengths and weaknesses. Each has something the other doesn't. The reason I favor the Blue Circle gear right now may have to do more with my tastes in sound rather than the difference between separates and integrateds. I've really grown to appreciate the tube preamp in this combo.

Overall, this is a tough question to answer not knowing what you're considering. I was only able to form an opinion by owning and comparing these pieces.

Good luck!