high gain amp

WhatNow · 1382

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Offline WhatNow

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on: January 31, 2016, 02:30:10 PM
Hi.  First time poster.  I am looking at a high gain solid state amplifier.  I would like to purchase and build the Bottlehead 300B pre amp to pair with it.  Is the 300B preamp considered a "high gain" preamp?  Thank you in advance for your help.



Online Paul Joppa

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Reply #1 on: January 31, 2016, 05:00:48 PM
BeePre is a moderate-gain preamp - gain is around 2.5 times (8dB).

There are things you can do to optimize the gain structure of a system, so don't worry TOO much about it. Most systems have too much gain, and gain can be reduced much more easily than it can be increased. The trick is to distribute that gain among the components to best advantage.

Some time ago I wrote a sort of white paper on the subject. It's way more than anyone really wants - "I didn't have tome to make it shorter". Here's the link:

http://bottlehead.com/signals-noise-and-signal-to-noise-ratio/

If you have a high-gain power amp AND a highly sensitive speaker, you may want to explore what are called passive preamps, whose gain is always less than unity. The Bottlehead Submissive is an example:

http://bottlehead.com/?product=submissive-volumesource-control-kit

It is possible to calculate whether a less than unity gain control will be adequate. If you are interested, start a new thread and we can explore the ideas further.

Paul Joppa