Reccomend me a Pre Amp

I have a budget of £800 tops, and would naturally lean towards second hand.

System at the moment:

JM Lab Cobalt 826S
AVI Lab Series S21 V2 Power Amp
Arcam Alpha 10 (used as a pre amp) (Think it's the weak link?)
Meridian 506 CDP with modified M Audio SuperDac

It has to be remote control, and I would like something that errs toward exciting/dynamic rather than warm sounding.

Not many AVI pre amp's up for sale, and would happily consider other options.

Any tips/finds that are for sale much appreciated!

 

Sell the AVI power amp and the Arcam 10 - replace with a Cambridge 840A/2 integrated.
Bags of power, superb sound, excellent pre section with relay driven stepped attenuator, loads of inputs including proper balanced.
You even get those new-fangled things called tone controls

At £800 new it will be nearly free if you sell the other kit.

That's what I'd do in your situation.

 

Are you serious!? Some kind of joke? I thought the AVI was pretty well up there, it was a £1500 amp a few years ago and known for being very good at that price point. 215WPC and high current delivery. I like it anyway.

 

Of course I'm serious.

The AVI is excellent, but so is the CA840 and it gives you what you want in one box with plenty of cash to spare.

The designer of your AVI rates the Cambridge very highly indeed - ask him!

 

The designer is on this board? ok. Any other suggestions all the same?

Therre's secondhand 840 V2 on ebay at the moment, but I remain to be convinced I'm happy to say I stand corrected if I do try one.

 

I cant help

I only like valve pre-amps and passives.

heard a DNM once that wasnt too bad. Worth a look on ebay.

 

Second a CA....Rob does know his stuff!

 

Phone AVI, ask for Martin Grindrod (chief designer and co Director) and ask for his opinion on the 840A.

What makes you think it won't be as good or better?

 

Prob same as my first thoughts when I heard about it! CA was always Richers budget gear, but then along it came with the 840 cdp and it all changed!

 

I really shouldn't post seeing as I design and make amps, but really, it is Chinese crap! though better made than most, it is over complicated and not very well voiced. I can understand why a AVI man would like it, the same as I would understand why a Quad 405 man would like it, but to make a blanket recomendation is naive.

Anyway I hate these *name* hi-jacks - Cambridge Audio was Stan Curtis - Audiolab / Tag McClaren, Quad and so many more that read like a UK hi-fi history who's who, all gone, all owned and made in China. Is that what you want, marketing men living off a name and milking it for all its worth.

Let them come here with product in their image, these names are alien to them. They would call an amp something like "Angel Heart" given a chance (and one of them did).

It is mutton pretending to be lamb, and we are recommended to fall for it!

At least the Japanese in the 60's came here with their own companies. They established their own expertice and eventually in some way exceeded us, especially in engineering quality.

 

The 840A is a Douglas Self Design, designed in the UK by him and his UK team based near London Bridge, then built in China.

It does what an amplifier needs to do.

 

But we have clearly established that we have different needs. You can't or wont hear differences as your intellect tells you they are illusions.

And so what Douglas Self designed it, you could just have easily said Fred Bloggs had designed it, it means nothing apart from that like Ken Ishiwata he has bullshited himself more than his products.

It is built in China, do you know what that means, well I do because I know the Chinese mind and the Chinese ethic, why, because I am adopted Chinese. Chinese tradition means only members of your family are important and any one above you is to be publically kow-tow-ed to and any body below you has to kow-tow to you in public - it is all about "face". But behind *everyones* backs you rip off and make money any way you can, and the conflict this creates is astonishing which is why Chinese history is so violent. The pressures just build up until they explode. Confucian (Con-Fu-Shi) philosophy was created to try and control it, and the most successfull at it has been the Communist Party of the Peoples Republic of China. Everyone in the west sees Mao as a Hitler, but he understood China, and the way China functions today is the best compromise for continuing to function without going off on one of its historic bouts of mad self destruction. I am not saying Mao was a great man, but in many thing he deserves more credit than he gets.

I suppose I should explain why I am adopted. In China if you want to learn something traditional it will always be a secret that is only taught to family members, and not daughters (though this has now changed and the female voice will be the salvation of China). Daughters do not belong to your family, they belong to the future family of their husband. My Tai-Chi Master Tian Yin Jia who lived in Shanghai, appointed me as a Tu-di, roughly translated as son/disciple. My responsibility was to show him the respect of a father and his part of the deal is to give me the real goods.

So how does this apply to Chinese manufactured goods. Well the number one priority is to cut corners and costs in order to compete better for price and make profit. The only thing that is important is perceived value, not actual excellence, and the west has been feeded on it greedily like a drug. But what you get is cheap product that is on the edge of function as it is cut to the bone and may cost half the price of a European product but will have less than half the life.

Now just a little promotion and product shilling as an example. I have amplifiers 30 years old still functioning perfectly without even the bullshit of needing cap changes, you see how many of these Chinese amplifiers are still functioning in 30 years, we are now addicted to the throw away society.

Now the Japanese are and were different, for them "face" means excellence and respect for company (which becomes part of self) so for their home market products they are truly excellent, but for foreign devils they couldn't care less, we are here just to sell the crap to.

Ask any Chinese living in China if he wants to buy Chinese product, he has to unless he is rich. If he is rich he wants western product as he know what the Chinese production is like because he is part of it. This was never the case with the Japanese they were proud of excellence and their products for their own people showed this.

 

I've heard quite a bit of kit and performance wise there seems very little difference between a well designed integrated and a pre/power . Bridging two power amps or dedicated mono's does raise the bar imho . Your source is considered by some to be quite soft on presentation so i' might look at that rather than replacing the Arcam .

If though you go with a pre i'd would definitley consider second hand or a good deal on an ex-dem . It condiderably improves your chances of upgrading rather than sidegrading .

 

My intellect tells me the ears can be tricked very easily, and that verification is a good thing. It is extremely useful in eliminating duff marketing and half baked notions about hi-fi. It serves me well, and I've no intention of abandoning it!

WRT China, it is very simple and boils down to the question of how reliable are the products.
Are they well constructed, reliable and do the they perform the job in a technically competent way.
Perhaps you've never opened a CA product?
You should - the quality of construction is on a par with the best Uk, EU or Japanese kit outside of the truly esoteric. It would certainly put much uk designed audiophile kit to shame.

You simply cannot lump everything together and label it 'Chinese crap'.
Yes, the £30 amp or dvd player will end up in landfill in a few years but you can't simply assume those standards apply to more expensive kit.
In the case of CA, it isn't especially cheap for Chinese built kit, there are cost savings certainly but that does't have to translate to poor quality.

I've discussed the issue of Chinese manufacture with Thorsten at AMR a few years ago. He was quite clear in that you can pay the bare minimum and cut corners, or pay what is a very good (for China) wage and insist on good factory working conditions, to get better product.

It is nothing like as black and white as you claim.

 

On the other hand have u considered a decent dac?

As Duvet says a good source may help and one such as the Benchmark as an example has a dac and a preamp in one box, this would then allow u to get rid of the Arcam and leave u with a better sound from each of ur future sources

There are some other dac/pres around such as the Caiman amounst a few

What do u guys think, I have a mate who went to a dac/pre and he seems very happy with the decision

 

Chinese manufacturing is as good - or as bad - as the people you use to run your product lines on the factory floor. That doesn't mean 'hire a Westerner to run the factory', but many people see it as just that.

Simply supplying a spec and hoping you get good products from the factory is an exercise in futility.

Chinese manufacture is no guarantee of low price or low quality. Very well built products come out of China, and prices are rising as Chinese workers demand better pay and conditions. Pretty soon, China will follow Japan and Korea in almost pricing the workforce out of the labour market.

I reckon in 20 years from now, we'll be having the same arguments about 'made in Africa' stickers.

-

Back to the OP: Unfortunately, £800 preamps are thin on the ground now. The rise of the up-market integrated took care of that. Given your requirements (remote control, exciting sounding), your options are pretty limited. The Rega Cursa 3 and Cambridge Audio Azur 840E are probably closest to your requirements, if you are buying new. I think of the two, the CA will probably suit your needs best.

If you are going s/h, the options are significantly more open.

 

You are being naive, I can quote numerous examples, but just one will do. A UK tai-chi instructor wrote a book on the subject and went to look for a printer, he had many quotes the best European one being from Sweden, but the one from China was half the price, so he took that. He received delivery and was very happy until he found the printer had printed an extra 10,000 copies and was selling them himself. There is no business ethic, and very few ways of enforcing the law especially if you are a Gwailo up against a Han Chinese. They rip each other off so don't expect anything different. They are working fine with Cambridge and will do as long as numbers keep up and they are making money from you. Any problems and they will pirate your designs and undercut you, sell on ebay and all the other ways they can to make up the shortfall.

 

I'm being realistic.

What you propose is a bit like saying all English workers are lazy, the Americans work like dogs and the Japanese are thick.

You just cannot generalise.

 

Excuse me but isn't this thread about finding someone a pre-amp ?

 

Odd that since there was a thread about derailment.