• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

Stereo gooruus, come in...

PRB

PRB

Administrator
Staff member
I have this power amplifier. Do you people remember power amps and pre-amps? Back in the 1980s I had this “stereo amplifier” which meant the power amp and the pre-amp were in the same box. On mine there was even a set of “jumper” devices that connected the pre-amp to the power amp, on the rear side of the amp. Back then if you were really serious about your music, you bought your power amp and pre-amp as separate devices. I have no idea why that was better. Never bought mine that way. My “combined” amp sounded fine.

I thought all this was “old” technology, but evidently you can still find separate power amps. And so it is that I find myself in possession of one, and a new one at that. The instruction book says to connect your pre-amp or other source to the line in, then connect speakers and away you go. It's the “other source” bit that has me intrigued. Can the “other source” be the audio out from my computer? I have my computer's audio currently connected to the line in of one of those “home theater receivers”, which is, for this purpose, a combined pre/power amp.

The line in connectors on the back of the power amp are the same RCA connectors that are found on the back of the receiver, so it should work, right? Except now there is no “pre-amp” in the system. What the heck is a pre-amp anyway? The entire phrase makes no sense. Power amp makes sense, it amplifies the signal (power) so it can be sent out to the speakers. But a pre-amp can't be amplifying “pre”. Sounds a lot like “pre-determine” which makes about as much sense as pre-eating your breakfast.
 
PRB,
To the best of my knowledge,...a 'pre-amp' would be your control unit for your audio system. It controls the aux inputs, volume, treble/base, inputs on what devices to be operated. Such as: CD, DVD, Docking Station, TV input and so forth. And of course,...the tuner unit,....for your AM and FM radio stations.
I remember the 'separates' well. Couldn't afford them so I always had a stereo receiver instead.

 
In simple terms the signal output from a turntable is/was at a very low level and thus you would need a pre-amplifier to raise those levels to a point where the amplifier could do it's work. Basically a pre-amp is an amplifier stage before the main amplifier in the signal chain.

For your power amp the 'other source' refers to whatever you would like to connect to it be it a pre-amp, DVD, CD, tape deck, musical instrument with a 'line out' output (keyboard, drum machine etc.) or even the 'line out' from a PC.
 
That makes sense. The pre-amp isn't an amp at all, but a device that comes before the amp, which takes as input various devices (CD, tape deck, etc., ) and sends the selected source to the [power] amplifier. I wonder if the seprate power amp had any advantages like noise reduction since it's isolated from all the circuits in the "pre-amp". Cool. Thanks!
 
No, a pre amp will amplify the signal by a small amount. Basically, a power amp is a pretty dumb beast - it can only amplify a processed signal, nothing else.

A pre-amp will amplify the signal to a small extent and process it with the tone controls before passing it to the power amp stage for conversion to maximum noise.
 
Pre amp may also be used to filter (remove noise from) input signals before going to greater amplification.

Makes it possible to design a high-quality amplifier (the pre amp) less expensively because it doesn't have high power requirements, then use a simpler design in the power amplifier to boost the cleaned-up signal.
 
I sold stereo during the '80s. A pre-amp is what the others are saying. Something to control the other components. If you are using a turntable you will need the pre-amp or a phono pre-amp. Be very careful when plugging something other than a pre-amp into the power amp. If the power amp does not have a volume control it will send the signal out to the speakers at full strength and fry a crossover or even melt the speaker. The power amp will only do what you tell it to. The outputs on the power amp will determine how you can use it.
 
traindriver98 said:
I sold stereo during the '80s. A pre-amp is what the others are saying. Something to control the other components. If you are using a turntable you will need the pre-amp or a phono pre-amp. Be very careful when plugging something other than a pre-amp into the power amp. If the power amp does not have a volume control it will send the signal out to the speakers at full strength and fry a crossover or even melt the speaker. The power amp will only do what you tell it to. The outputs on the power amp will determine how you can use it.
Click to expand...

Rgr that. This is the sort of thing I was concerned about. The power amp does have a volume control though. Beides that, only a balance control and speaker A/B selectors, like the power amps I remember from decades ago. Thanks!
 
The last power amp I had dealings with didn't even have a volume control! Just on/off and the input/output connections. It was the last thing in the chain before the Tannoy monitors in the recording studio I used to run.
 
One thing you can try is to use the power amp to drive a sub-wolfer. The bass on most, if not all, soundtracks is mono. If you can find the owners manual for the amp, it may tell you how to do this. I've always liked it when you can't tell where the sub-wolfer is. Some people use them as a coffee table.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top