Shortly after I bought the VTL I took it back to the dealer to try it in his system. The noise wasn't nearly as pronounced through his McIntosh amp and B&W 800 speakers. I had to put my ear right up to the speaker before I heard any noise. From that demo I concluded that my preamp wasn't broken, but my system was somehow more sensitive to the noise (possibly a low input impedance of his amp vs. my 100 KOhm amp??). In looking for another preamp I've been shying away from tubes because of the noise problem I'm currently having. Going to a dedicated stereo system is not practical in my house. But I like the idea of trying an upgraded VTL preamp. It would tell me if I need to just get a better quality tube preamp, or move to solid state. >From the comments you've given me it sounds like passive preamps are not for me. You mentioned the Ayre preamps. Can you describe their tonality (i.e. compared with your VTL or with other solid state preamps)? The Ayre K-xr is out of my league, but the K-5xe has a surround bypass and is within my price range.
-- duke43j ------------------------------------------------------------------------ duke43j's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=15911 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=63739 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
