Been on the hunt for a while looking for a good preamp for a new amplifier that I've recently purchased. I say recently, but actually I bought it back in late April and only delivered a few weeks ago. This amp being from my buddy's company Artisan Acoustics which is aptly named AmpOne; his first amplifier offering.
Knowing that this amp has an unusually low input impedance of 14.5Kohm I needed to find something that would both offer the drive I need as well as transparency. See this amp is quite good and it doesn't have an input buffer like most Class D amplifiers I've used so what you feed it is what you get out it.
I've been using my Gustard DAC-X22 as a preamp which is getting me by for the moment, and briefly I used the preamp section of a Nakamichi TA-3A to drive the amp with great results. However, I was on the hunt and took a gamble on a little all-in-one type of unit that Linear Tube Audio offers based on David Berning's original MicroZOTL (out of production).
Strangely, aside for a few mentions of it on Audiogon's forum I didn't actually know much about this unit other than it could be used as a preamp and had been compared as an alternative to Ed Schillings "The Truth" preamp. Which happened to be another consideration of mine, though the very small amount of volume travel on Ed's preamp scared me away from purchasing.
Talking with Mark at Linear Tube Audio assured me that the MZ2.0 would drive my amp like I had been so worried about so I took the plunge and ordered one up, without the linear power supply. I'll end up buying the LPS eventually as budget allows. However it wasn't till this morning that I even started looking at reviews and was quite shocked at how glowing nearly every single one of them is.
I've heard a pair of Berning monoblocks before at a local guy's house, driven by a Shindo preamp and on some heavily modded Magnepan 3.6R speakers. The pairing of everything worked well and luckily I had heard this guy's stereos with a multitude of different amplification before the Bernings and felt the Bernings offered a touch of "soul" and realism that no others he had used before could match. So in a way, I believe the Berning preamp should work out well for me.
After purchase I was emailed with a production date of 7-10 business days, so I hope to have a bit more to report on in the coming weeks. Excited for it's arrival is a drastic understatement.
-Steven
Knowing that this amp has an unusually low input impedance of 14.5Kohm I needed to find something that would both offer the drive I need as well as transparency. See this amp is quite good and it doesn't have an input buffer like most Class D amplifiers I've used so what you feed it is what you get out it.
I've been using my Gustard DAC-X22 as a preamp which is getting me by for the moment, and briefly I used the preamp section of a Nakamichi TA-3A to drive the amp with great results. However, I was on the hunt and took a gamble on a little all-in-one type of unit that Linear Tube Audio offers based on David Berning's original MicroZOTL (out of production).
Strangely, aside for a few mentions of it on Audiogon's forum I didn't actually know much about this unit other than it could be used as a preamp and had been compared as an alternative to Ed Schillings "The Truth" preamp. Which happened to be another consideration of mine, though the very small amount of volume travel on Ed's preamp scared me away from purchasing.
Talking with Mark at Linear Tube Audio assured me that the MZ2.0 would drive my amp like I had been so worried about so I took the plunge and ordered one up, without the linear power supply. I'll end up buying the LPS eventually as budget allows. However it wasn't till this morning that I even started looking at reviews and was quite shocked at how glowing nearly every single one of them is.
I've heard a pair of Berning monoblocks before at a local guy's house, driven by a Shindo preamp and on some heavily modded Magnepan 3.6R speakers. The pairing of everything worked well and luckily I had heard this guy's stereos with a multitude of different amplification before the Bernings and felt the Bernings offered a touch of "soul" and realism that no others he had used before could match. So in a way, I believe the Berning preamp should work out well for me.
After purchase I was emailed with a production date of 7-10 business days, so I hope to have a bit more to report on in the coming weeks. Excited for it's arrival is a drastic understatement.
-Steven