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Comparison of linestage preamps from ARC, BAT, c-j, and H-CAT. Warning...LONG.

Posted by jeffreybehr (A) on April 23, 2006 at 23:33:37

WOW what an exhausting day! My 1st equipment comparison as President of Arizona Audio Video Club was a success, based on many comments received from participating members. Technically, considering how many pieces of equipment we had that Murphy’s Law could operate on, the process was wildly successful, with only one intermittent-connection problem that lasted about 2 minutes.

Associated equipment used in this comparison included:
1. an ARC CD3 CD player;
2. a pair of current-version Antique Sound Lab Hurricanes (running in pentode) with upgraded coupling and decoupling caps and resistors, driving...
3. ...the MR and treble of Eminent Technology LFT-8s. These have NO high-pass filters on the MR drivers (that is, they’re run full-range on the bottom), and the high-pass tweeter cap has been upgraded. The bass of these is actively filtered with an old Dahlquist DQLP-1 driving 2 channels of a...
4. ...200WPC-into-8-Ohms-times-seven-channels Outlaw 770.
5. Speaker cable was HomeGrown Audio’s Silver Lace/SC-16, an 8-pairs-of-solid-silver cable soldered to the ET8s’ panels, while bass cable was Audioquest’s Type 8 soldered to the bass drivers. Interconnects were a conglomeration of good-to-very-good stuff.

The room was relatively large--about nine feet high, 25 feet wide, and 60 feet deep...about 13,000 cubic feet. The rather-insensitive ET8s had to be driven hard to achieve satisfactory levels, and the woofers were overdriven several times. One listener commented that the system had little dynamic ‘life’; I attribute that to the low efficiency of the speakers and the large volume we were trying to fill.

The linestage preamps we compared were an Audio Research Reference 3, a Balanced Audio Technologies VK50SE, a conrad-johnson MET1 (note 1), and a North American Products H-CAT P-12B (note 2). All were broken in altho the c-j was new and had only about 100 hours on it (note 3). They were level matched to each other within a half deciBel, both channels combined. They were warmed for several hours before we started the comparisons. The identity of each preamp under test was kept from the listeners but not compulsively--I believe several of us knew the identity of some of the units to which we were listening. Discussions of sonics were discouraged during the listening process, and final discussions were completed before the preamps were identified. We used 5 different musical selections, 3 of which were from the Club’s 2004 sampler CD. All equipment was left turned on while I changed input and output cable between preamps while listening to all preamps with one of 5 pieces of music.

Unfortunately, I had to take notes and moderate the discussions, so my notes are too brief. I've invited participants to expand on my summary; I'll post them if they do so. Following are all substantial comments anyone made on any preamp. If the comment was merely something like X and Y were in the middle, I’ve reduced that to ‘in the middle’.

C-j MET1: best overall; with the BAT, made the 5 recordings sound more different rather than the other 2 preamps which made them sound more the same; the best, with more clarity, delicacy, and macrodynamics; the best...bass well defined; grainy; overall very good; voices too forward; very good.

BAT VK50SE: overall great sounding; in the middle; with the MET1, made the 5 recordings sound more different rather than the other 2 preamps which made them sound more the same; second best; great soundstage.

H-CAT: best of the 4--very quiet; the worst of the 4; with the ARC, made the 5 recordings sound more like each other, rather than the other 2 preamps which made them sound more different; second best; great soundstage; worst of the 4; best detailed but not attractive in the upper-midrange; with the BAT, a great-sounding preamp.

ARC Reference 3: great sounding overall; in the middle; with the H-CAT, made the 5 recordings sound more like each other, rather than the other 2 preamps making the 5 sound more different; great soundstage; sounded more like music rather than the other 3 which sounded more like preamps.

Of course, only extended use in your own system would allow you to know if one of these is for you, but I hope these comments will be useful.

Notes:
1. This is c-j’s 6-channel preamp intended for high-end multichannel-audio/video systems.
2. We were to have included my Audio Refinements Pre 5 in the comparison, but it responded to other remote controls including its powering off and changing its level setting.
3. C-j told me that the preamp would get to about 90% of fully broken in within 50 hours and probably to about 99% in another 50.

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Kimber Kable

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