Speakers or Preamp?

[admin_exported]

I've just bought an Art Audio Concerto tube power-amp (having, a while ago heard a pair of Quad II-40's through my system, and fallen in love the with whole valve sound), and while my system sounds great, I'm not convinced that the pre-amp (actually a Musical Fidelity A3.2 integrated, acting as a preamp) is as good as it could be. I also wonder whether my speakers (Castle Inversion 15s) are doing the system justice.....

I'm not **definitely** going to upgrade either piece of kit (any upgrades will have to make a decent improvement, I'm not looking for an iterative improvement), but does anyone have any recommendations for what and which I should demo first? I'm figuring that my max budget will be about £1k (probably just for one item, the other can wait for a year or two....) and I'm perfectly happy to go with used gear. I'm also in no desperate hurry, I'd rather take my time and do it once.....

The preamp will need to either have a phono stage, or come in a wee bit cheaper to allow for me to buy a separate one....

My room is about 20'x10', with the stereo firing across the shorter dimension, in about 2/3 of the room (the remainder is the dining room...)

My tastes are difficult to categorise, covering everything from classical, through folk, to (eventually) the noisier end of metal (no matter what anyone says, Carcass' 'Reek of Putrefaction' is a classic, even John Peel agreed...) And despite what various people told me before I bought it, Rob Zombie's 'Black Sunshine' sounds amazing through valves......

So. Suggestions? Oh, and 'Hi'. I've been hanging around the forum for a while, but never actually spoke out.....

Andy

 

[Dan Turner]

You could look into a Creek OBH-22 (or older model OBH-12 like I have) passive pre-amp. It's basically just a couple of inputs and a volume control, it doesn't amplify the signal at all, so it's very transparent and really just lets everything flow through to your power amp unmolested. For me it really lifted a veil off of the sound. Best of all new they are only about £300, I got mine second hand for £100 ish I think. This is a great solution in a system that doesn't need to be any more complicated.

It does have a power supply just to power remote control functionality.

If you're interested in this approach, then you should definitely ensure that it would work OK with a valve amp, I'm not sure about that.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks - I really need four inputs though (Tuner and PC - both for the kids really, which is why I don't tend to bother listing them....)

I suppose I could get three.....