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Does this set-up make sense?


JoshT

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I have KLF 20s, C7s and S6s in my living room. I love them for HT and perhaps even more for two channel music. Currently I run them with a Sherwood Newcastle preamp/processor and a Rotel 5x100w amplifier (which is plenty of power for Klipsch). I have a Sony S7700 DVD player, which I also use as a CD Player (quite nice) and a Rega Planar 3 with Creek outboard phono preamp.

I am thinking of upgrading my preamp/processor. While I think the Sherwood has very nice sound overall, it has glitches: (1) there is no analogue only bypass for two channel music, so even LP signals get digitalized supposedly, (2) the internal phono equalizer does not always work very well (hence the Creek) and (3) some of the LED indicators have burnt out. Sheesh -- and it's only two and a half years old.

Here is what I am thinking of doing. I would like to buy a Conrad Johnson PV-14 preamplifier, which is a tube preamp with a theater bypass. I would then hook the theater by-pass to a decent, but not too expensive, processor (a Rotel probably). And I would keep my Rotel ss amplifier. I figure this way I would get some of the benefits of tubes through the CJ when listening to two channel music, and would get a clean analogue signal as well. I would also get killer HT through the Rotel, where the "softer" tube sound is unnecessary.

The total cost would be about $3,200, I think, which seems like a bargain -- even getting analogue bypass in a processor gets you to at least that price (e.g. NAD silver series is about $3,500 and Krell is $6,500 -- YIKES!).

So, what do you think? Is this nuts, or would it be a great solution?

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Come on guys, 58 views and no response??

I'd love to hear your thoughts on my question. Someone must have used Klipsch speakers with a tube preamp and ss power amp? Even if not CJ? Should I post this on Home Theater? I hate to double post!

Or just post a response to say "hi" -- it had been a while since I last visited the Board! Smile.gif

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I use a Dynaco PAS4 tube preamp for CDs and LPs. I feed it to the direct inputs of my Outlaw 1050. I also run two channels of my SACD player through the Dynaco with the rest to the remaining 5.1 direct inputs. For DVDs everything goes through the Outlae via digital coax. This works very well for me. The Outlaw did a very good job by itself but I needed a phono preamp and I wanted the tube sound for the Klipschorns. The Dynaco gave me this and my Perpetual Tech processing devices gave me a good aproximation of LP sound from CDs. SACDs come close to LPs, also.

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Soundog's HT Systems

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