Yes I've been away from the blog for a while, I've been developing some new products and I kind of get tunnel vision when I'm doing that , and devote most of my time to it.
Some exciting new phono designs coming out soon, and a big development for the line stage.
I'm the first to admit my products are designed to be first and foremost of the highest quality sound, with practical considerations still important but not at the expense of sound.
The Suprateks have always been high gain preamps, mostly for the dynamic performance it brings, and it works a treat, as an example, the last few preamps I've built for customers brought comments like -"astonishing sound" and "incredible soundstage" but one of these customers has a very high gain power amp and combined with a high gain preamp it resulted in some hum and noise.
Which is why high gain tube preamps are rare- its very hard to get them quite enough when used with high gain power amps.
Low to medium gain power amps are fine- there will be no audible noise with them, but sadly there are too many power amps with high gain these days, which really makes them integrated amps with a built in second rate preamp.
So in fact your putting a preamp in front of another preamp, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but real audio excellence comes from a high gain preamp providing voltage, and a low gain power amp converting that voltage into current, to drive the speaker.
But it isnt a perfect world, and high gain power amps do exist , and if people must use them, then a Supratek preamp isn't ideal.
Of course I have been conscious of this for a long time, and for a long time I've been trying to build a lower gain preamp with the same sound quality of the higher gain , but I've always felt that the many prototypes I've built "de-tuned" the sound. It always felt liking I was replacing a V12 Ferrari with a V8 Ferrari, still very good but not quite in the same class.
I'm happy to say I've finally found a circuit that has lower gain with all the dynamics of a high gain preamp, and may actually sound even better!
It works with all power amps, tube or solid state, high or low gain.
It's also a little less complex and will be even more reliable than the older designs, most of which are still performing 25 years later!
This design is now the default Supratek preamp line stage and is in production.
Tomorrow how to build a (very) cheap digital server, that sounds pretty good.
