Are active preamps necessary?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ก.ค. 2024
- If sources output more signal level than power amplifiers can handle without clipping, why would an active preamp make sense?
Have you gotten your copy of Paul's new book, The Audiophile's Guide? www.psaudio.com/products/the-... - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
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I hope the PS Audio family and friends are all safe. My first instinct this morning was to look at google maps and shocked to see how close it was to your building.
Wow.. high quality pot and "beyond pot"! What's this channel about? 😁
Great post, as usual! Learned something new today!
Thanks Paul!
I have been soldering for over 25 years and never knew it came in bar form... I guess it's true you learn something new everyday, especially when I watch ask Paul. Thanks for another great video sir. Also I saw the mains distributers you have mounted on the equipment racks, I was just looking at them on amazon to add some extra plugs to my work bench. If you get to read this I would love to hear your thoughts on them?
I was shocked and saddened by the recent travesty. I hope all of you are safe and well.
Sorry Mike its not a travesty it a Homicide performed by either a mental case or a flat out murderer Colorado I think has a death penalty and with a law officer victim I think the go to the front of the line . Tuff shit for him. Sooner the better.
@@larryh.4629 point taken. No offence meant.
Thinking of you and your community at this time.
Love the concept of a variable gain stage to replace resistive elements!
Thanks for information on pre amp. I worked at a job that had a wave soldering machine there was blocks there.
Paul I am happy to see you and your PS Audio family are okay.
Paul I always thought that tube sound always sounded best when done in the preamp stage. That's why my Counterpoint SA-10 I believe and your 2C amp which I still own and use with my Spica TC50s was the most musical system I ever owned. Oh for the good old days before home theater.
I wish that you had expanded on "buffering" a bit.
I also thought of the PS Audio “family” as I processed the terrible news. Even if you were not directly affected I am sure this is having an impact on all of you and will for some time. My thoughts are with you.
Bars of solder in old plumber's kits. Still have one from my grandfather's toolbox when he was a Master Plumber.
Thank god paul is okay, i saw boulder on the news and immediately thought of him
LMFAO! Dude so did I, not joking.
not sure about the premium stuff but you can get some passive preamps really inexpensively if you want to play around with them for whatever reason (to play around with an amp camp amp, IDK)- both Schiit and Rolls/Bellari make one
My granddaddy used to have stacks of solder bars he was a plumber back in the 40s and 50s I believe he also had bars of lead and vials full of Mercury
Plumbers used to use bar solder all the time, back in the days of oakum and lead joints in soil pipe. 50/50 was the most common alloy.
@@dick66482209 so that's what happened beyond pot?
@@TobyIKanoby LOL that’s what beyond pot is! I’m sure Paul has some LSD stories he hasn’t shared on youtube.
My first preamp was a PS Audio 4.5 (later updated to a 4.6) with a straight-wire. I could never quite decide whether I preferred the straight-wire or the active option.
I work for a a company that manufactures its own PCB's and we use wave solder machines. I was wondering if firms like PSAudio use silver solder for some of the analog output sections?
Stay safe paul💙
We have bars of solder where I work. I tried a passive preamp once in my system and the highs were really rolled off. I have a 20 foot pair of interconnects and that requires a preamp that can drive them. My preamp has a low impedance cathode follower output (tube) that drives the interconnects just fine. The Dynaco Pass has trouble driving my interconnects because it has a rather high output impedance (no cathode follower).
A solder pot is great for "tinning" wire, cap leads, resistor leads, etc. before they are soldered into place on a PC board. Makes for a more solid joint.
As a Colorado native my sincere condolences to all who are effected from the insidious mass shooting at KS in Boulder. As for preamps, an active gain/buffer stage has the advantage of being able to drive difficult loads many interconnect cables can present or even amp input stages can have. If cables and the passive preamp (amp input stage) are designed correctly then less in the signal path is best.
Paul Says (PS) a high quality pot is crucial for great audio, I agree 100%.
Wonder what mic you have used for this video?
I once visited a high end "carrozzeria" (body shop) for classic cars in Italy. No epoxy body filler was allowed there. They had a whole stack of thousands of solder bars. And that was their body filler.
Pre-amps add color point blank that easy and I must admit I love color ! Clean and flat is whacked !
It depends on how much gain the power amp has. A single ended Class A amp hasn't much gain compared to a push/pull AB amp - it also depends on how long your interconnects running from the preamp to power amp are.
Was thinking about you when hearing the news today.
For non-American folks, what happened???
@@ronbradshaw7404 a shooting in a Boulder supermarket
Hope you're safe Paul
Hi Paul, Hope you, your loved and staff are safe from the recent horrible event in Boulder?
Yes. I was also concerned
Am I wrong in saying the EU has banned lead solder and if so why do you have any at all? Good vid, Paul.
What’s sodder? Is it a type of solder?
Depends on your location, if you live in an area with high radio frequency in the background, inadequately shielded passive preamps could make it act as if its an AM tuner. News and talk radio could play along with the music.
Paul I hope you, family and employees are all safe.
What is going on with PS audio speakers
hi paul, thanks for the great vids.
ps, i would just like to point out that the word "sol *d* er" actually has a "D" in it.
No Kester solder?
Active preamps may be necessary if the power amp has a lower gain like first watt SIT3
Somebody please help him with the year when they started PS Audio.
If you misbehave at PS Audio you get one finger dipped in that molten solder cauldron ! That's why they are such good products lol 😂
I'm partial to old school Haze.
Condolences
god bless the boulder community. a terrible time. lost a cousin at virginia tech shooting
When you're talking about line level but mention the 0dBu/0dBV ref voltages instead... lol
A properly designed DAC with volume control can easily do the job of feeding a signal to a power amp directly with no fuss.
Good luck finding one.
@@jeremyhughes6485 LOL, DACs with proper output are plenty. To drive a typical power amp is quite trivial as the input impedance is already high and the input voltage range is well within what most DACs can cover.
I have found good Preamps with built in DACs but in general most DACs are built for a price point that doesn’t include a high fidelity volume control. A playback system's volume control is often one of the weakest links in the audio chain. This is especially true when remote control is required. It is a subject that most would not expect to be complex but actually it is benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/13095789-volume-control-technologies - all the impressive DAC specs are lost when you heavily attenuate inside the DAC. Highest performance is only at full volume.
@@jeremyhughes6485 Of course you don't want a DAC that is losing a bit of actual audio resolution for every -6dB of volume attenuation from max...but nowadays that problem is avoidable with modern high resolution chipsets (e.g. the 32 bit ESS 9038).
Rarely do you find more than a mere handful of devices with the equivalent of 21 bits resolution above the noise floor at the analog output. A 32 bit DAC chip is not going to provide much if any advantage over 24 bits except where very heavy computations are done to the signal. The quality of the analog circuitry is the big difference between an excellent preamp and a DAC with a remote.
My short answer, Adding more manipulation of a signal along the path just adds noise. Everything in the future will be digital end to end up to the speakers. How far into the future, not sure. Can already get this today. Digital source to Class D amps digital in. No DAC, no analog component outside of the speakers. For better or worse.
Unless you like clicks and pulses, there's got to be a DAC in the chain SOMEWHERE. SomeTHING has to convert PCM/DSD into an waveform (thus AC current to a driver).
@@infinite1der You missed that I mentioned a Class D amp. Those can go digital source all the way up to the LC filters without a DAC. It's easy to convert a numeric value into a variable pulse width (PWM). Class A, A/B well yes you would need a DAC.
@@jeffm2787 Yes, but class D amplifiers heavily rely on feedback to get the output right and the feedback is analog thus if you want to use PCM as data to digitally calculate the PWM you will need an ADC for the feedback loop turned into PCM data to go in the math. So it seems you end up with a choice of using a DAC for the input or an ADC for the feedback.
@@ThinkingBetter I agree. Not sure how the chip based class D's with pure digital are doing this currently. I suppose if you just went with a very low output impedance and ignored quality it would work. i.e. your PWM becomes the DAC. In the end one could argue Class D PWM is a form of a DAC. I would say that external DAC's or none integrated DAC's will become a thing of the past. The days of analog inputs are numbered.
@@jeffm2787 I once asked this question to a leading DAC chip supplier with similar reasoning as yours and they claimed that from an audio fidelity perspective, it was better to avoid the ADC in a feedback thus they ended up with an analog input and analog feedback loop. But I still believe it’s a matter of optimization and digital input is the future.
0:54 We just had pot.
Yeah, a "high-quality pot". 😅
We all like high quality pot!
@@davidhardaker192 Especially those motorized pots... hmmm! 🤤
High quality pot? I wonder what this “beyond pot” that Paul’s smoking is.
Have 4th generation family in the US . Love your country , hate your updated second amendment. Yesterday I immediately thought of this dear gentlemen and the families of the PS audio employees. From Europe with love !
This is OFF TOPIC, but I noticed in the recording studio Paul saved a few dollars by using some 40 year old Fisher speakers that were sold by Sears. That is what I call being thrifty. :)
I remember fisher speakers did not know sears sold them but as I recall they were a well built and respected speaker in the day. Or not? Thank you for noticing.
@@larryh.4629 I saw the "look" of them and it reminded of speakers way back in time. I thought Paul might possibly remember them too. Hopefully he would get a laugh out of my post. Yes, I'm old!
I am so sorry for what happened in Boulder yesterday. Arms control is becoming imperative!
Criminals will always get arms. You mean controlling the normal people, right ?
Who do you want to control the arms ? Military, police and criminals ?
Criminals don't obey laws bud. Just need people looking out for one another's mental health.
Are you going to control criminals or myself?
Do some research, and you'll be able to put the number of deaths due to the kind of event that happened in Boulder in perspective. Like, did you know more people are killed by blunt instruments than any kind of rifle every year (look up FBI statistics)? Would you suggest that hammers, baseball bats, etc be registered and require background checks?
The fact is, "gun control" has never been about keeping Americans safe. It's about controlling the population, taking away any and all possibilities for we the people to defend ourselves against a tyrannical government. And it isn't just our Second Amendment that is under attack; the First, Fourth, and others are also being ignored and violated every day by our governments (and businesses).
And, whether you "like" guns or not, the very foundations we base our United States of America government on guarantee the rights of every citizen to keep and bear arms. ANY gun control law is a violation of that foundation our country is based upon. You can't violate the fundamental laws of our society without eventually destroying it.
I own and use firearms. I have brandished one in a home intrusion event, and it worked thankfully without incident.
No civilian has reasonable use for automatic weapons, high capacity magazines or bump-stocks. There's also no reason that a law-abiding citizen should not submit to a background check or waiting period. We do with everything else.
What I read in all of these "constitutional" arguments is "Don't take away my toys."
Q. Were do these interesting questions come from ?
A: DOWN-UNDER 🦘🦘🦘
They come from *us.* I asked a question that was graciously answered here awhile back.
soy el primerooooo
Fu King Solder Company!
If you connect a pot to the output of your power amplifier, you're smoking pot!
*Ba dum tss*