Opinions on Primare pre30 preamp

I am upgrading to a real preamp from my HK3490 and I have an opportunity to get a Demo Primare pre30 at a decent price. Anyone owns or has listened to this preamp can give me his opinion on it? Someone told me that primare is ok but they seem to be overpriced with their product for what they offer. Is it true?
Next on my list is the peach tree grand pre if it doesn't work out for the primare. But it costs twice as much so just try to save some $$$ here . Has anyone tried that also?

While I don't have experience with the Primare Pre30, I do have their I21 integrated and the A30.3 (3-channel) amplifier. I'd have to say that Primare has the minimalistic approach to their execution, putting emphasis on robust power supplies and keeping the signal path short. Their effort result in a musical signature where there is coherency from top to bottom. I'd venture to go on a limb and say that the simplistic approach will work well in the pre-amp application where you'd want to maintain signal purity as much as possible. One thing to note is that the Primare will NOT wow you initially, but you'll come to appreciate its ability to get out of the way of the music. I've auditioned the Peach Tree products and they are not my cup of tea.
Here's a picture of the internals of the Primare I21 to illustrate what I meant by "simplistic approach"!

Dan,

Can you get for a weekend and try in your own system?

GG

Hi Gordon,
I took it home and tried it for over a week and returned it. Here is my impression on the preamp and why I returned it.

1. Build quality is excellent. Solid and high quality materials. It looks great too.

2. Feature wise, it's adequate with HT bypass, level adjustment for each source, fully balanced input/output. However, no tone controls. This is partly the reason I returned it. I wish it had tone controls; if it did, I would have kept it. Beside, no phono inputs and no headphone outputs (these features I dont care much since I dont use them but it would be nice to have)

3. Now on the sound, it's a lot better than my HK3490. I could immediately hear the differences/improvement in the mid range, sound stage, depth, bass control. It's also clearer and more details. However, the high range sounded somewhat on the bright side and a little bit thin/unnatural for my taste. I tried everything to improve it like leaving the whole system on for days to let it reach its optimum stage, switching cables, putting for curtains/drapes, etc. But it still sounded a little bright for me. Some female vocals and bright recordings just sounded unpleasant. So everything improved except the highs. If it had the tone controls, I could turn up the bass a bit and tame the treble, tweaking it more on the warm side then it'd be perfect.

Too bad, I like everything else about it. Just returned it earlier today

Thanks Spike for writing up on your I21 and Primare in general to help me. I kinda liked the Pre30 but too bad that I had to return it. It's just not the right combo IMO.

danvu said:

Thanks Spike for writing up on your I21 and Primare in general to help me. I kinda liked the Pre30 but too bad that I had to return it. It's just not the right combo IMO.

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Hi Dan,
You've just learned the most important lesson in high-end: Others' opinions are only meant as general guidelines, but the ultimate decision can only be made after an in-home audition in your environment!

Regarding tone-control: I'm not too knowledgeable on the topic of pre-amplifiers with tone-controls. Being on the minimalist camp, the notion of tone-control is counter-intuitive to me. I don't like extra components in the signal path to muck up the integrity of the original signals. For me, the less components involved in the signal path, the better. But I'm sure there are those who feel that tone control is an important feature to have. When you say that the sound is on the bright side and a little bit thin, it may be due to several factors:

1. Incompatibility (synergy-wise) between Primare and Emotiva amp.
2. The Primare pre-amp, being solid-state, is in fact a bit bright and thin.
3. The Primare being a minimalist design, is exposing the weakness of the upstream sources through the Vistas.
4. You may need to tame your room with positioning and some treatment.

Regardless of the reasons, the bottom line is that if the Primare does not sound good to you, that's all the justification you'll need to return it. For pre-amps with tone controls, only McIntosh and Van Alstine (avahifh.com) comes to my mind. That said, when you mentioned the Primare sounded thin and bright, I can't help but thinking that you are a prime candidate for a tubed preamp What is the budget you have in mind for this pre-amp?

Hi Spike,
I too prefer the tone control to be at neutral if possible. However, since my stereo system is in my bedroom and I dont have much space/option to move the speakers around or position them in the most optimal way, and trust me I have tried to put things in the room as much as I can to tame the brightness, so the last thing I can rely on is the tone control. That's why I wished the pre30 had the control so I could tone down the highs a bit and keep it. I kinda liked how my hk3490 sounds, warm sounding and has sweet and smooth highs. But after hooking up and listening to the pre30, I knew what I had missed. The music details and resolution, bass tightness and control, the wide sound stage and spaciousness are the things that the hk lacks. Maybe that's the trade off for the brightness in the pre30. Or, maybe my source, the hk hd990 cdp and dac, just pairs up more nicely with the hk3490 as they are from the same brand. I dont know. Anyways, you're right. No matter how others rave about it, it's all up to me and how it sounds in my system at the end. If it doesn't sound right and is not the one, it is just not.

On auditioning and buying a preamp, I dont have the freedom and luxury of switching gears to try different things and also with a limited budget of under 2K, I can only get a few shots . So I have to rely on others' opinions and gather as much info as I can to have some guidelines, like you said, and then try whatever available at dealers around here or whereever that offers good return policy. I also think about going tube preamp, but being new to this hobby and hearing hassles about owning tube gears, I'm hesitating a little heading to that direction, things like having to change the tubes every few years and how expensive they are or they are many different tubes and they all sound different, etc. So maybe it's safer sticking with ss for now? So far, it didn't work out with the pre30 so I'll stay with the hk until this May when emotiva releases their flagship preamp xsp-1. It's supposed to be their best sounding preamp ever and better than the rsp-2 which get lots of good reviews. I hope it would sound good with the same brand amps; or, at least, if it's a bit on the bright side, I can tame the brightness with the tone control from its rich feature set. If that doesnt work out either, I may have to take some risks and try the used market, including tube preamps. Right now, I'm eyeing the mcintosh c220 ($2800 used; above my budget but wth ), wyred4sound stp-se, classe cp500 or the like around 1K - 2K.

If you or anyone have owned these preamp or know about tubes/good online sources on tube preamps, please share your experience/knowledge or point me to the sources. I'd really appreciate that.
Thanks,
Dan

Tube pre-amplifiers are pretty safe. Generally, the low-voltage signal tubes last about 10000 hours, equating to years of service. For comparison, the high-power tubes in power amplifiers last about 3000 hours. Depending on tube types, it can be expensive for NOS (new old stock). For example, the 6922/6DJ8 NOS can be very expensive hovering around $100 for good NOS. I opted for the 5687 tubes which are more reasonable. Tube preamps were finicky back in the days, but the modern ones, since late 90s have been quite reliable. For the $2k budget, you can find a ModWright SWL9.0 (my linestage), Cary SLP98, Rogue Audio, ARC, and Conrad Johnson on the tube front. For solid-state, I'd stick with Pass. The local high-end stores in the area are: Audible Arts and True Sound, both located in Campbell. The Analog Room in San Jose is pretty interesting.

Spike said:

Tube pre-amplifiers are pretty safe. Generally, the low-voltage signal tubes last about 10000 hours, equating to years of service. For comparison, the high-power tubes in power amplifiers last about 3000 hours. Depending on tube types, it can be expensive for NOS (new old stock). For example, the 6922/6DJ8 NOS can be very expensive hovering around $100 for good NOS. I opted for the 5687 tubes which are more reasonable. Tube preamps were finicky back in the days, but the modern ones, since late 90s have been quite reliable. For the $2k budget, you can find a ModWright SWL9.0 (my linestage), Cary SLP98, Rogue Audio, ARC, and Conrad Johnson on the tube front. For solid-state, I'd stick with Pass. The local high-end stores in the area are: Audible Arts and True Sound, both located in Campbell. The Analog Room in San Jose is pretty interesting.

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Thanks Spike,
I'll do more research on the brands you mentioned and check out those stores. Hope I would find time to do it