I've been intigued by passive pre-amps for a while, so i've been keeping my eyes peeled for something on ebay. Anyway, I found this Creek OBH-12 and purchased it for a very reasonable £120 (plus £8 postage).
I hooked it up, switching my A32 to use as another identical power amp to my P35. Ergonomically it's a bit of a backward step - it's well put together and all, but it's a little agricultural in operation, has one too few inputs for me and it doesn't exactly compliment my nice Arcam FMJ stuff in the looks department. At least it remote controlled!
So I fired it up and there was no bass, then after a few minutes of panicking I realised I was being a dumbass (I won't go into the details) and switched around a few connections, and fired it up again. It took me approximately 5 seconds of playing whatever happened to be in my CD player (Jeff Buckley) to realise that this was not only the best £120 I've ever spent on my hi-fi, not only the best value for money upgrade that I've ever made, but the best upgrade I've ever made full stop, and that includes £1k worth of new CD player, that I was and still am very happy with.
Every single aspect of the sound is improved bar none. The 3-dimensionality and detail that has been unearthed is simply unbelievable - I'm hearing things i've never heard before and also interactions between things (e.g. something that I could hear before making more sense now that I can hear something else). The bass is so much more deep and powerful (and that always seemed like a particular strength of my system). Everything is tighter and crisper and just so much more life-like. And there was really nothing that I was unhappy with before - this whole passive pre thing was just an experiment for the sake of curiosity!
All I can say is that if you're using an integrated amp - even a pretty respectable one - and you handle a little loss of ergonomics and convenience (and believe me you won't mind if it makes as much of an improvement for you as it did for me) then I really can't recommend enough that you investigate a passive pre (just check output level of sources and input sensitivities of power amp first).
There are a few out there from Creek, Icon Audio, NVA, MFA ranging from about £245 (Icon) to about £2700 (MFA) and I'm sure there are very much more expensive ones out there, but I'm absolutely astonished by this second hand Creek.
I hooked it up, switching my A32 to use as another identical power amp to my P35. Ergonomically it's a bit of a backward step - it's well put together and all, but it's a little agricultural in operation, has one too few inputs for me and it doesn't exactly compliment my nice Arcam FMJ stuff in the looks department. At least it remote controlled!
So I fired it up and there was no bass, then after a few minutes of panicking I realised I was being a dumbass (I won't go into the details) and switched around a few connections, and fired it up again. It took me approximately 5 seconds of playing whatever happened to be in my CD player (Jeff Buckley) to realise that this was not only the best £120 I've ever spent on my hi-fi, not only the best value for money upgrade that I've ever made, but the best upgrade I've ever made full stop, and that includes £1k worth of new CD player, that I was and still am very happy with.
Every single aspect of the sound is improved bar none. The 3-dimensionality and detail that has been unearthed is simply unbelievable - I'm hearing things i've never heard before and also interactions between things (e.g. something that I could hear before making more sense now that I can hear something else). The bass is so much more deep and powerful (and that always seemed like a particular strength of my system). Everything is tighter and crisper and just so much more life-like. And there was really nothing that I was unhappy with before - this whole passive pre thing was just an experiment for the sake of curiosity!
All I can say is that if you're using an integrated amp - even a pretty respectable one - and you handle a little loss of ergonomics and convenience (and believe me you won't mind if it makes as much of an improvement for you as it did for me) then I really can't recommend enough that you investigate a passive pre (just check output level of sources and input sensitivities of power amp first).
There are a few out there from Creek, Icon Audio, NVA, MFA ranging from about £245 (Icon) to about £2700 (MFA) and I'm sure there are very much more expensive ones out there, but I'm absolutely astonished by this second hand Creek.
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