Some of you know that I'm looking to build a passive preamplifier and I've already bought some bits and bobs to start me off.
I currently have two passive preamps feeding a pair of Extron class D monoblocs with varying success:
The Little Bear preamp has both balanced and unbalanced inputs and outputs, the Tisbury preamp II is unbalanced only.
The Little Bear preamp although cheap is rather good having a clean sound without any apparent nasties, the Tisbury however is a little bit soft and lacking in upper mids, it seems to have an odd issue that stereo balance isn't linear but shifts around depending where the volume control sits.
The Little Bear preamp has a 50k pot where the Tisbury preamp has a 10k stepped attenuator - would the difference in input impedance be the reason for the obvious difference in frequency response and balance?
I've read up that using low capacitance interconnects are a must for passive preamps to prevent upper frequency early roll-off, the Little Bear seems totally agnostic to cables but I'm wondering if the Tisbury would benefit from lower capacitance.
I've made interconnects with Van-Damme XPE patch cable that claims 50 pF/f oot core to core but 95 pF/foot core to core? So wich is it?
I've splurged out on a pair of Mogami 2964 interconnects that spec 19.8 pF/f - wow!
Both the Van-Damme interconnects and Mogami are 300mm (1 foot in old money)
I currently have two passive preamps feeding a pair of Extron class D monoblocs with varying success:
The Little Bear preamp has both balanced and unbalanced inputs and outputs, the Tisbury preamp II is unbalanced only.
The Little Bear preamp although cheap is rather good having a clean sound without any apparent nasties, the Tisbury however is a little bit soft and lacking in upper mids, it seems to have an odd issue that stereo balance isn't linear but shifts around depending where the volume control sits.
The Little Bear preamp has a 50k pot where the Tisbury preamp has a 10k stepped attenuator - would the difference in input impedance be the reason for the obvious difference in frequency response and balance?
I've read up that using low capacitance interconnects are a must for passive preamps to prevent upper frequency early roll-off, the Little Bear seems totally agnostic to cables but I'm wondering if the Tisbury would benefit from lower capacitance.
I've made interconnects with Van-Damme XPE patch cable that claims 50 pF/f oot core to core but 95 pF/foot core to core? So wich is it?
I've splurged out on a pair of Mogami 2964 interconnects that spec 19.8 pF/f - wow!
Both the Van-Damme interconnects and Mogami are 300mm (1 foot in old money)