• WARNING: Tube/Valve amplifiers use potentially LETHAL HIGH VOLTAGES.
    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
    performed by someone who is thoroughly familiar with
    the safety precautions around high voltages.

What is the best cheap tube pre-amp?

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#7
Just a single DAC input these speakers and amp.
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#8
Looks like you already have a volume control on the amp. Is there enough gain when plugging the DAC directly into the amp?
If so, and it's very likely there is plenty of gain, then that's all you really need, unless you want tone controls, etc.
 
#17
djn said:
I need a pre amp for my desktop and don’t feel like building one. Any recommendations?

Because I’m not listening critically, good sound and cheap price is the goal
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First ask yourself if you really need gain while looking at your sources and power amplifier. What do you really need? Then think you possibly need source selection and volume control but no or little gain. Also take input impedance of the power amplifier and output impedance of the sources into account. Write stuff down.

Then go on from there.
 
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#20
Added dynamics is about right as multiplying the sources output voltage with the preamps gain usually means way above normal line levels. This can be noticed at such setups with the "maximum volume at 10 o'clock" phenomenon. When having picked a wimpy preamp with worse drive capability than the sources have bass roll off may also occur. For some reason many if not most tube preamps have way too much gain and think 50 kOhm to be a heavy load. This also means (amplified) hiss/noise/hum and what not. It is a choice that will force one to non critical listening 😀
 
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