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Headphone amplifier as HiFi Preamp

post #1 of 5
2/4/09 at 3:10pm
Thread Starter 
I have a fairly good HiFi system based on Threshold electronics. My amplifier is a S550e, the pre-amplifier is a T2 and my DAC is the Dac 1e.
I just ordered a Rudistor RP010B MkII which is fully balanced (just like the rest of my system) and has the option of being a pre-amplifier.

Does anybody has experience of using your headphone amplifier as apre-amplifier in your HiFi system?

Have you noticed any degradation in the sound quality?

The RP010B is not a cheap piece. It retails for over $4,500 usd but my T2 when in production retailed for $5,200 usd and I can tell the number of electronic components in the T2 is bigger.

What do you think.... replace the T2 with teh RP010B or just add it as stand alone headphone amplifier in the chain?
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post #2 of 5
2/4/09 at 3:57pm
I have no experience with your gear, however, I run the Zana Deux as a preamp. It's wonderful, and I'm surprised more people don't buy it as just a preamp. Most headphone gear is much quieter than speaker gear, which translates well when playing speakers. I'd recommend you give it a try.
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post #3 of 5
2/4/09 at 6:54pm
I run my ß22 as a preamp with wonderful results. Generally, any competently designed SS headphone amplifier will have the characteristics of a good preamp (high Zin, low Zout, low noise, to name a few) as long as it doesn't have too much gain.

I am not sure if this is the case with tube designs.
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post #4 of 5
2/4/09 at 8:23pm
I have been using my littledot mkivse as a pre amp as well. Sounds good.
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post #5 of 5
2/6/09 at 12:13pm

Meier Opera

I have been trying to find a good preamp for my old hybrid micrex amp. I have been using a Rotel pre-pro,.but the Rotel needs some sort of buffer to avoid noise when changing inputs, etc. I solved it initially with a musical fidelity x-10d, but have been looking for a preamp so I could run my NAD player directly. I tried a tube preamp and did not like it finally.

Recently I bought an Opera, which I find to be a very good headphone amp with my recabled Senns. When I decided to try it as a preamp, I found that the speakers sounded very good and I am keeping it in that position in the system. The sound is very involving and it makes me curious about Meier's speaker amps.
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