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LampizatOr- Amber-3 Manual
COOPERATION WITH THE PREAMP
The DAC with volume control should sound audibly cleaner and more direct without
any preamp between the DAC and the amp. The preamp, however good, will veil a lot
of the DAC’s natural clarity, speed and directness. If you feel you need the preamp
nevertheless, use DAC at the full volume or order your DAC without volume module.
The load presented by the preamp or amp or simply the next analog component that
the DAC sees, should be as high as possible. It is measured in kilo-Ohms and 47 Kilo
Ohms is a perfect ballpark value. More is VERY rarely seen. 20 K is next common
value, and it is great too. 20 K is kind of on a low side, but we can handle that. Lower
than 10k is bad news. But our Amber-3 DAC will handle 10 as well because we
configure the DAC with additional cathode follower, low impedance buffer stage.
Having said that - every properly designed amp or preamp keeps the load value above
40k. And if it doesn’t - we simply don’t choose such amp because it was not designed
with audiophiles in mind.
Amber-3 as preamp
Amber-3 with volume control has one analog input available, where the DAC acts as a
purely analog preamp. The digital board is bypassed, and the signal goes through active
tube stage and volume control. It is of very fine sound quality and can be used for your
tuner, cassette deck, reel to reel player or phono stage, or an SACD or CD player without
digital output. A telephone can be connected via headphone jack adaptor.
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