[Chiliman]

Someone please explain to me the difference between these two.

 

[GotNoRice]

In a standard stereo setup, people typically use receivers, but at the higher end the various functions of a receiver are spread out amongst individual components. In a high-end stereo setup you might have a separate tuner for radio, a separate CD player, a Separate pre-amp, a separate speaker amp, etc. In that sense a pre-amp is generally the device that handles volume control, switching between the sources, and often times a headphone output. In a regular setup an “amp” is simply the power amplifier that powers the speakers.

Then you have headphone amps, which unlike standard stereo components which are tailored for use with speakers, are tailored for use with headphones. Typically stand-alone headphone amplifiers offer better headphone sound quality than using a preamp or some other component where headphone output was merely an afterthought.

Where things get complicated is that some headphone amps offer the ability to also act as a traditional pre-amp in a home stereo. In this case you could simply hook up a traditional speaker amplifier.

Here you can see my Little Dot II+ which is a headphone amp that also has the ability to act as a preamp. When I use it as a preamp, the pre-amp outputs on the LDII+ are connected to the inputs on my stereo speaker amp which can be seen below. The black Yamaha is an example of a traditional “amp”.

 

[hciman77]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chiliman Someone please explain to me the difference between these two.

Audio Amplifiers of the genus ampus-soundus
subtypes Pre-Amplifier, Power Amplifier, Integrated Amplifier

Generally speaking a pre-amp will boost very very low level signals such as turntable or microphone and may apply some EQ for turntables, after that a pre-amp is mostly a source selector, tape-monitor and a volume control. The oooomph is provided by the power amplifier.

A power amplifier applies a fixed gain and is controlled by the pre-amplifier.

An integrated amplifier has a pre-amplifier and a power-amplifier in the same box. Old NAD integrated amps had external U jumpers to connect the two sections so they could be used as either Integrated or pre-amp or power amp.