What is the typical gain of a preamplifier line stage?

[DualTriode]

I guess one thing you could do, is to make yourself a list of twenty or forty "typical preamplifiers" sold by reputable high-end audio companies. Then dig through their marketing material to find out what is the line stage gain, and enter that information into a table.

Once you have the data on all of these high end preamplifiers, you can plot it, or make histograms, or calculate mean and standard deviation, or any other gyrations that seem like good ideas to you. And then you'll know what high end manufacturers think is a sensible gain for a preamp line stage. Naturally you can always say, but, but, but, that's JUST THEIR OPINION. It frees you to use whichever preamp line stage gain that YOU like, and to hell with reputable high-end audio companies' opinions.

Hello All,

If we are speaking about high-end audio companies, my favorite is the Benchmark pre-amp / headphone amplifier that sits on my bench. It uses relay switched resistors in the amp's feedback loop.
Only the gain that you need. Nice remote and display.

If you are interested in a diy version read Douglas Self's Phono Pre-Amp book.

Thanks DT

 

[triode_al]

A 'typical gain' has to be seen in the context of the chain - what comes in (0,7VRMS or mostly >1VRMS?); - what does the power amp do (*4? *10?); - how efficient is the speaker (83 dB or 95dB is quite a difference). And do you rock the boat? (I once made a sub that was able to rock the concrete of the large floor here, 12 m long; I got a nauseating feeling in the stomach; and it was less than 100W even).
All companies have their gain schema with this in mind; many have e.g. the possibility with high/low gain, to cater for other systems.
There is a whole world of power amps needing only 0dB (so just a buffer, e.g. HDAM) to bing a capable speaker to bloom.
With uncertainty, I like the idea of a transformer tapped volume (AVC?)- you can use it at any high max position (=max gain) you want.