Voley
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2017
- Posts
- 10
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- 13
Great post. It is a genuine question because the ability/quality of pre-amplifiers to drive a power amplifier varies greatly and people are willing to pay a lot for one that is better than another. I am genuinely interested in the experiences of people who pair the Cavalli with a Mojo and use the combination as a pre-amplifier.
At the end of the day, whatever your philosophy is, the sound you like is a personal preference. That is one of the tough parts of this hobby. You can read as many reviews of a component as you like. You can however never really tell how much you are going to like it until you actually give it a listen.
With respect to driving headphones, that has already been covered, don't you think? I wonder how loud your headphones would be with 4 Watts? What headphones are you using?
My speakers have a 175 Watt power handling but I am using a 25 Watt amplifier to drive them. Why? Because I love the sound.
Ah - apologies! I've never used the Cavalli as a pre-amp, so can't be a lot of help there, but I know it sounds great with my headphones and a Mojo (as you say, a personal preference - I like warm sound signatures and strong bass / mids). I have the LCD-2s, and yes we've covered driving headphones and volume, but I admit I'm still puzzled. I've spent quite a while in the last week or so trying to get to the bottom of how/why/if different headphones need to be matched to different power outputs of amplifiers. I haven't found a definitive answer - which surprises me (I'm a professional research scientist, and am used to being able to find the answers to what should be pretty simple questions like "does an amplifier's power have any benefit beyond just providing more volume to headphones"). From the fragmented bits I've uncovered on various forums the answer to my question is probably "yes" - my understanding is that power to provide an average volume is one thing, but amplifiers also need headroom to meet surges in headphones' demands when the music spikes, even for a few milliseconds...and if they can't then this has perceptible consequences. So that might explain why I hear a bigger soundstage with the LC. Or it could easily be a placebo / simply what I want to hear having shelled out for an amp . As I say if there's a definitive article on this I'm yet to find it.
And in general I'm rapidly concluding that this hobby is in desperate need of a lot more properly controlled testing of gear and preferences to separate the snake oil from the facts. It would be pretty hard to argue with a randomised blind trial of people's preferences for DACs, for example - imagine we took 500 audiophiles and played a variety of music, blind, through 20 leading DACs to see if a) they could reliably, and repeatably hear any difference between different DACs and b) if there were any consensus on preference. That would help consumers but upset the manufacturers, I suspect...
But yes, I agree entirely: it all comes down to personal preference, and I've found a combination I love at the moment! Phew...sorry that turned into an essay.