Integrated Amp or Pre & Power Amp

[admin_exported]

Hi peeps!

Could you educate me on a matter regarding amplifiers.

Why would I choose a pre and power amp combo over an integrated amplifier for the same money? What is the rationale behind the decision to choose one over the other?

I'm just curious, that's all.

Thanks

 

[chebby]

Makes it easier for manufacturer and dealers to fleece you again and again and again and... etc.

It doesn't stop there. They'll want you to buy seperate PSUs, then biamp and triamp. Then you take on extra jobs and use the holiday/car/kids money to pay for mono-blocks and then the specialist mains cables for everything.

By the time the #######s have run you into terminal debt, your family will have left and you will be a gibbering wreck living in a hostel (or your mum's place) with the best damned hifi a semi homeless person ever posessed and feeding coins in a meter to listen to it!

Eventually another pile of boxes (the ones from your pizza deliveries) will topple over and bury you, and you will eventually be found (after someone complains about the smell) gnawed by cats and lying on a bed made from hifi packaging.

Don't do it!

 

[Sizzers]

Hahaha @ Chebby!

 

[Dan Turner]

The advantage of separate pre and power amps, is that the pre-amp containing and manipulating delicate low level signals is physically separated from the power amp, which has the potential to cause interference which will deteriorate the integrity of those low level signals. Separated, each has it's own case and own independent power supply scaled and tailored to the job at hand. On the down side the signal path from pre to power is hugely lengthened by separating them and introduces a set of interconnects which will deteriorate the signal to some extent.

On balance whilst separate pre and power amps are inherently superior to an integrated amp, as with all things in hi-fi it depends hugely on the implementation at hand, and it's especially harder to call which 'should' be better if you're talking about a pre/power combo or integrated amp at the same price, because you have to weigh the inherent advantages of the pre/power combo against the fact that in that combo a substantial part of the money went towards the 2 cases and 2 power supplies and therefore not on other critical components.

My personal experience:

Creek pre amp and Arcam power amp was superior to an Arcam integrated amp (in which the power section was identical to that in the aforementioned power amp). What I ended up with was the creek pre with 2* Arcam power amps bi-amping my speakers. However when I compared this set-up to the Naim integrated amp that I have now (not too dissimilar on price overall, and the higher price of the Naim over the combo could easily be accounted for by the Naim's built-in DAC), the Naim absolutely spanked the pre/power combo it into the weeds.

So it's really just a case of trying it and seeing which you prefer out of the models that you have in mind/within budget.

 

[plastic penguin]

sedish chef:

Hi peeps!

Could you educate me on a matter regarding amplifiers.

Why would I choose a pre and power amp combo over an integrated amplifier for the same money? What is the rationale behind the decision to choose one over the other?

I'm just curious, that's all.

Thanks

All integrated amps have a pre-power stage and power amp section (the [pre] section controls the volume, tone controls and, generally speaking, most of the inputs) while the power side dictates the the volume, ohmns etc. Now it's claimed that separate pre-power amps offer better sound quality, which in the main, is true. However, as Chebby, in his own delectable way, that if you took all the advice from the pros, you could spend a fortune for fairly small returns.

 

[Anonymous]

Nice one Chebby. New Years Day probably isn't the best time to ask serious questions. I'm hungover and now on my third whisky. Look out for my posts later tonight.

 

[plastic penguin]

sedish chef:Nice one Chebby. New Years Day probably isn't the best time to ask serious questions. I'm hungover and now on my third whisky. Look out for my posts later tonight.

Can't wait...

Normally, alcohol and forums aren't a good mixture.

 

[Anonymous]

It was a tongue in cheek comment plastic. Chill out.

 

[AL13N]

chebby...

 

[Anonymous]

Would your advice then be to 'keep it simple' and go with an integrated amplifier, until I win the lottery?

 

[chebby]

sedish chef:Would your advice then be to 'keep it simple' and go with an integrated amplifier, until I win the lottery?

Yes. But that's just a personal view.

I bought a very simple Naim seperates 'entry level' system with an amp that has no facility to add pre-amps or power-amps or PSUs, and a CD player that also - mercifully - has no way to add any of those strangely acronym'ed and expensive devices (HICAP/FLATCAP/NAPSC/TOPCAT/NICNAC etc.)

Great, but...

...then the swines announced the NaimUniti precisely 10 minutes after the returns period for my gear had elapsed! By the time Naim had actually started making them, a few months later, it was far too late. The used values for my system - good as they are - would still have left me finding £800+ to buy something just about as good as my seperates, but in one box rather than three. (Four if you count the DAC too.)

I spent about a year resenting my system for this, not for the quality (I love that) but for it's bulk and cables and what could have been if my timing had been better.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks everyone.