Mark Levinson 380S Preamp

[magtrw]

I use this preamp which drives a Audio Research D400MKII
power amplifier for adjusting the levels of my Magneplanar
Tympani bass panels. The volume control has extremely
fine volume adjustments of . 1db. and one can obtain an
excellent balance. The output impedance is under 6 ohms
and can easilly drive several power amplifiers. Having
balanced inputs and outputs is also a big plus giving one
a great signal to noise ratio (dead silent). Having a
rotary subwoofer with bass down to 1 hz requires a preamp
with very low frequency response and the Mark Levinson
meets this requirement.

[bobsticks]

I'm not familiar with that particular model but I am familiar with that "medium laid back" Levinson house sound. From a system-matching perspective one can only imagine how glorious an ARC, Levinson, Maggie, ML combo would be. Any analog in the mix?

[magtrw]

I'm not familiar with that particular model but I am familiar with that "medium laid back" Levinson house sound. From a system-matching perspective one can only imagine how glorious an ARC, Levinson, Maggie, ML combo would be. Any analog in the mix?

I have an Oracle turntable, but don't use it any more. There are a number
of reasons that I do not like records, despite what some of the experts
say about analog playback. Under the best conditions, analog does
have qualities that most digital playback systems lack. My opinion
is that high resolution digital playback is as good or better than analog.
I use PS Audio's Perfectwave Dac, transport and with Reference
Recordings HRx wave files, the sound is about as good as it gets. Most
of Reference Recordings utilizing HDCD are also superior in some
ways than analog. First off is the complete absence of any noise
(no ticks, pops, etc.) Next is dynamic range which is awesome, with superior
bass and extremely low in distortion. One area that I am very sensitive to
is pitch, which the Perfectwave system absolutely trounces analog. One
never listens to the rotating disc anymore with this system as it takes all
the digital information and puts this into a solid state memory. One now
listens with the accuracy of a crystal clock and pitch is spot on. PS Audio's
Perfectwave system captures all the ambience, detail, and most
important the spacial qualities of the recordings. Also the background
is totally silent because once again there is absolutely no noise added
to the recorded sound. The system also has quite a few different
filters to adjust for different recordings, which is quite useful. Standard cd's
sound very good as well with this system. So, this is my opinion, but
once one hears what the PS Audio Perfectwave Dac and transport can
achieve, there is no going back to analog.

[harley .guy07]

Yeah my Nuforce Preamp has .5 db adjustments which are very nice for getting just the right volume so I know what you are talking about and it has a quick way of stepping the volume up as well so you don't have to set there and slowly turn the volume up until its right. But I do like a smaller DB volume attenuator.