Do preamps enhance sound quality?

[Music] welcome back I'm Paul let's see what we have Brian in Houston Texas oh geez Brian I hope you've dried out from all the hurricane stuff our hearts went out to everybody in Houston and in Florida Puerto Rico jeez Louise so anyway Brian wants to know does a preamp enhance sound or is it just a necessity for multiple inputs well there's a lot of debate about that and for years I was in the camp that there is no preamp we am why because any time in general that you can eliminate something in the signal chain it usually is better one of the great mysteries of high-end audio that has come my way and one of the great reversals of Paul's philosophies has been the damn preamp because even though I espoused for years the fact that a DAC should go directly into the power amplifier and for good reason I have I've changed my position on that after being shown that when a preamp is of a certain quality level it definitely sounds better to have that preamp in the system than a straight DAC so let me address the first part you know the multiple input part a lot of systems require multiple inputs most of them do if your system is a complete analog vinyl based system well you most definitely need a preamp if you have a digital based system and occasionally used vinyl unless you have something like our new way photo converter which not a lot of people do you still are gonna have to have a prenup because now you have a mix of analog and digital but let's imagine you have a purely digital system and you're not worried about multiple inputs that have both analog and digital in that case you certainly don't need a preamp so are you better off with a preamp to specifically answer Brian's question depending on the preamp and the quality of the preamble I would give an unqualified yes my good friend are needed out who were designing speakers again that someday we'll have PS audio speakers yeah whoo I am excited about that anyway in fact check this dude out this tweeter it's a folded AMT tweeter and a huge magnet on the back this is a beautiful device anyway we're playing with this right now to see how it sounds and it measures amazing it's really cool I diverge preamps so okay if you have a preamp of a certain quality then you can have a much better realistic musical sound and are needed l was the first person that really showed that to me again he had showed it to me many years ago invited me over his house and he goes you know you've been talking forever about the fact that there's no preamp like no preamp and I agree with you to a certain point but listen to this one and at the time he had an aesthetics Calypso preamp it's a tube preamp excellent excellent preamp and we played it with and without and I there was there was simply nothing I could say with the preamp in the circuit there was life and space around all of the instruments there was a separation and a realism to it there was highs that went on forever bass that was in in the in the basement that was with with the preamp in the system I was there in the musical experience and without it it was drier and sounded good but not like that the preamp and so I had to reverse my position now there aren't that many preamps out there that I would say that about so in that case it definitely enhances the system it's one of the reasons why we hired Bascom King to design a preamp that would be something worthy of the PS Audio name something that is worthy of the BHK name I mean Bascom has been designing preamps and amplifiers and circuits for just about every company around he's never put his name on something and we said Bascom you you've got carte blanche do what you want doesn't matter just make us a world beater put something in as a preamp that you love and of course the first thing you said is it's gonna have to be had tubes I love tubes but we'd never had to put him in our equipment and I all right I said you had carte blanche you do so tubes and MOSFETs later we've got a great preamp that absolutely enhances everything you do in that system so under certain conditions absolutely it does great question and I do hope you dry out thanks bye [Music] [Laughter] [Music] you

Channel: PS Audio

Views: 406,579

Keywords: 8-27-17

Id: Dh27E7YKN9s

Length: 6min 17sec (377 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 30 2017