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In the Forum: Audio Discussions
In the Thread: The ultimate buffer – light in the end of a tunnel
Post Subject: Placete Active … with gain!Posted by Romy the Cat on: 7/27/2018
The reads of my site know that for many years I am a huge
fun of the Placete Active preamp. In my new listening room I faces a problem
that I have not enough gains with some material. The room kind of big and it is
integrated with video. Many video programs are not recorded at right level and
my video DAC is not high output. It is impossible to find a very good quality line
level gain devise, so I decided to bite a bullet and to ask Placete to make one
foe me. To my surprise and please Guy Hammel informed me that he has a new product
that does exactly what I need to do: an active buffer with up to 12dB gain. It is
pricey, $1200 but according to Mr. Placete it is as transparent as his original
Placete active pram and it has the same ultra-low output impedance that I need
to drive my 6 channels with input filters.
After some design negations on with Guy I decided that I do
not want to compromise my current Placete and we went for dual architecture: it
means that my Placete Active remains untouched but in case I put a button on my
remote control I have my 12dB. It is done by removing the Placete Active unity
gain buffer after the attenuator and substituting it with absolutely new active
buffer with gain. So, effectively I will have 4 preamps operational but only 2
of them will be in signal path at any given time.
Well, I have a beast sitting in my listening room now and
last two days I have been listening it. It is interesting. I am far from my
final judgment to confirm that the new buffers with gain is as spectacular and
as transparent as the old unity gain. I think the new output stage is being broken
in and I think the contestant is more than noble. It is a bit tricky to compare
two preamps with different gains. At this point I realized that it would be
nice if the high gains preamp is activated then the volume should be automatically
dropped to it’s half. I did not ask it and it is possible that I would not need
it in future. I am trying to figure out how to powers the thing. Both preamps
have different power supplies, old one analog and the new one switching. I am
looking into the isolation the switching and see how it makes any difference.
I think it will be very interesting to hear how the high gains
preamps will mature in my playback. The sonic benefits are very cool: push a button
and I have extra 12dB. I do feel that at very strong signal and 12dB gains I
run out of class A1 power wise but it is at very insane level of loudness, something
that has no practical meaning. Anyhow, I am happy with my extra gain. The
preliminary listening make me to feel that the Placete Active with gain was not
wasted direction to go and it will be useable. Still, in my unlimited audio
anal-retentiveness I do not believe that two completely different buffers with completely
different topology must not sound identical. I am sure that one of them is
better in “something” and since 95% of my listening might be done very
comfortable with or without gain, then I would like to know what of the preamps
will be my “reference”.Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site