Different pre-amp needed?

Westyman

New here.

I was brought up with Quad ELS57 and Quad II amps with Garrard 301/SME/Shure V15 that my Dad had. Now I am nearing 70 with ears that still seem to work.

I have posted my system elsewhere on the forum but I had been thinking of replacing the speakers and consulted the only hifi shop within my city. After asking about my system and my concerns about harsh higher frequencies the guy suggested that the pre-amp of the integrated amp that drives the tweeters - a separate amp drives the woofers - might be the cause.

To see if this is the case, I have been looking for another power amp to match the existing one - missed this evening by £5 on the bay of e - and a new pre-amp.

The suggested one to try was a Rotel RC-995 but some research shows Musical Fidelity A3cr, Audiolab 8000Q and NAD S100 might be worth a try. Then I happened on an auction for a TAG McLaren A32cr which I missed by £10.

I am not well off so stepping back in time through the used equipment market is where I am.

RBZ5416

You have harsh higher frequencies in your current setup or you're concerned about them in a new one?

If the former has it always been like that? Only with the TT or all sources?

If you want to try another pre-amp you already have one in the M-DAC! No good for analogue granted but you can feed the power amp & put the speaker bridges back to compare. Randomly buying replacement kit is probably not the way forward.

Westyman

The speakers have been bi-amped for many years. The integrated Cyrus 8 feeds the tweeters and the preamp-out from it feeds the SmartPower which feeds the bass units.
So any source feeds through the Cyrus 8’s preamp.

Westyman

That’s an idea. No idea where the bridge links are but I can sort something equivalent.
And yes. Always been a bit harsh, vinyl and CD. FM is better but I think there’s something like a 15kHz limit on FM anyway isn’t there?

RBZ5416

Generally yes, but I'd be surprised if your issue is that high up the spectrum given your age. Might be worth downloading some test tones to play through the setup to see where your age-related upper frequency limit is. Mine is now around 6KHz.

It would be interesting to see what effect the DACs filters have.

Westyman

Probably true