Quote:
Originally Posted by Bombadil
I use 5 different preamps in my systems, moving them around from time to time. Two are tube, two are SS and one is passive. All of them work well with my Inspire amp, however it is the most insensitive amp I've ever owned and thus I have to position my preamp volume controls to higher levels to achieve the same volume levels in my room. This can be an issue with my passive, as with some sources I have to turn it up to 9 to achieve moderately loud levels. I do have a DAC which has high grade outputs and a 2.75V output signal, this works okay with the passive and Inspire, but with sources which have the more typical 2.0V output, this combo falls short.
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Good to know. This partly explains when I bypassed using a preamp all together and tried connecting my streamer player directly to the Inspire tube amp, it was not so great. Just kinda Bleh. I use an Arcam DAC on my main system, also paired with an Arcam RPlay unit which has
0–2.15V RMS variable out. It appears this "fell short" too, a good description for the results I experienced. Not only did I need to turn up the volume up notably more so, the overall presentation of sound seemed to lose it's character, missing dynamics, almost as if it was no longer energized in a sense. What I can confirm, the moment I connected my SLP-98 tube preamp in front of the Inspire Hot Rod, the overall sound was back, sounded real nice.