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PREAMPLIFIERS

ACTIVE PREAMPLIFIERS:

The newest REFERENCE PREAMP line-stage (March 2020) - is an important addition to our family. We took the best Amber3 scheme of noval tube stage and married it to the Vinyl Phono MC1 power supply and layout.  And here is the REFERENCE PREAMP - a line stage that enables you to connect all known analog sources, like reel to reel players, cassette decks, tuners, TV, phonostages, CD players, DACs and many more.


We put every effort to make it awesome. Every part, every operating point, every design decision was chosen because of good sound and lifetime reliability. Hence the name REFERENCE.
It is quiet, powerful, dynamic, pure and musical.

The highlights are:

  • An  all-tube design of maximum purity.

  • Ultra quiet 4-layer PCB with gold plated traces, quadruple thickness of traces, triple laminate thickness and full shielding by gold plated copper.

  • Max amplification ratio of 20x

  • Lampizator proprietary PCB base support with 360 degree all around edge holding and mass loading (the red board)

  • Tube rectified PSU with slow start of anode voltage.

  • Tube regulated PSU  (one EL43 pentode) with 1% voltage supply accuracy and 40x over-specification of peak current.

  • Superb amplification stage design with low output impedance buffer stage to drive difficult amps as well as easy ones.

  • Top of the line volume control, with 64 discrete steps by ultra precise resistors selected for purest sound by best specialist in the business - Khozmo / Hattor brand.

  • Silver wiring in teflon - inside, wherever is required

  • AC Power line filter built in.

  • Reference level power transformer, approx. 10x oversized, impregnated, potted and encapsulated. The lowest noise transformer known to us.

  • Two CLC filtering stages with ultra fast MKP capacitors instead of electrolytes, as well as our famous custom made chokes.

  • Copper metal sheet capacitors (Lampizator brand) custom made by  Miflex, Poland, without any oil or anything like that.

  • Aluminum remote control - custom made for us by Hattor

  • Balanced as well as SE channels - any combination of 4 inputs and 2 outputs, 4 analog inputs in total.

  • Real copper top cover - like in Golden Gate DAC - for gorgeous look as well as perfect EMI / RFI shielding and lifetime finish (optional)

  • LCD display with all necessary GUI user information.

  • Some degree of tube rolling ability. (6X5, EL34, ECC99, ECC82) with hundreds of possible combinations and permutations.

  • Net weight: 17 kg, shipping weight in flight case: 30 kg. Shelf size in cm: 43 (W) x 52 (D) x 13 (H)

  • Warranty 5 Years.

 

 

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PASSIVE PREAMPLIFIERS:

The newest ULTIMATE PASSIVE - an addition to our family. We use the best of the resistor ladder technology in all our DACs and amps, therefore it is a natural decision to make a dedicated passive attenuator "preamp". However, by having all the box space available, we were able to stretch the design to an abosolute maximum possible, no compromise, cost no object variant - the ONE BIT design, versus 7 bit we (and everybody else) uses normally. 

As a result, we made the largest, most impossible to make,  most impractical to build preamp, that offers the best sound quality of all the attenuators known to us.

We know for a fact, that there is a market among the dedicated audiophile purists, for such unique solution leaving nothing to be desired. The real "end of the road" volume control.

 

At the moment of writing, this preamp has the following features:

  • 4 analog inputs in total. selectable by remote or by the dial

  • Any mix of XLR and RCA inputs - up to 4 maximum

  • One RCA output and one XLR output.

  • Dot LED display with the user interface.

  • Remote control by infrared, made from solid metal, milled by CNC.

  • 64 steps, in each step only one physical pair of resistors and relays is in the circuit per phase.

  • 128 double relays - in total 256 switching contacts, of which just 4 are engaged at any moment - one per phase.

  • Balanced operation not by means of an opamp, or signal transformer, but by using quad mono topology - a fully quadrupled circuit.

  • Resistor values well under 1% tolerance, stereo tracking and phase tracking also 1%.

  • Longevity: one million turns (in practical terms - lifetime). There are no moving parts to wear and give switching noises like in rotary switches or pots.

  • Absolute thermal stability, aging stability, parameter drift, wear and tear - undetectable in a lifetime.

  • Chassis (Amber3) [cm] 43W x 33D x 13H,   weight Net 6 kG, Gross 10 kG.

  • Front: silver or black, button and display color by customer request.

  • 115 / 230 V user switchable. 100 and 240V operation possible as well.

  • SE sockets by German WBT NEXTGEN, and XLR (silver) by Neutrik of Lichtenstein.

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